Ex-UN chief to give S.Africa's Tutu birthday lecture
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South African Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu celebrates his 82nd birthday next month with a series of charitable events and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan will be delivering his annual peace lecture.
On October 7 Annan will follow in the footsteps of Graca Machel -- humanitarian activist and wife of Nelson Mandela -- and the Dalai Lama.
The Tibetan spiritual leader gave his friend's inaugural birthday lecture via a video link-up, after he was denied a visa to enter South Africa.
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Pretoria has increasingly close ties with Beijing, which considers the Dalai Lama a violent separatist.
Before the speech Tutu, a retired archbishop, will donate a sports field to a school in Cape Town, and hand out gifts to the elderly.
The diminutive clergyman will also use the day to spread the message of caring for the environment.
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Tutu rose to fame in the 1980s as a vocal opponent of South Africa's white-minority apartheid regime.
A critic of the African National Congress government, Tutu remains one of the prominent moral authorities of modern-day South Africa.
His wife of 58 years, Leah, will celebrate her 80th birthday on October 14.