S.Africa's ailing Tutu returns home 'to sleep'

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) -- Ailing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the best known critics of apartheid, returned home thin and frail after two years in the United States on Thursday, saying he was withdrawing from public life.

"I want to come home to sleep," Tutu told reporters after a direct flight from Atlanta, where he had spent the past two years teaching, writing and receiving treatment for prostate cancer.

Pressed about his health, Tutu, 68, said he was recovering more slowly than expected from surgery last November, adding: "As you can see, I am a great deal more decrepit than I was two years ago."

Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, was greeted by a handful of friends and a local municipal official, but not by any representative of the government or of the Anglican Church, in which he retains the rank of Archbishop Emeritus.

Tutu, wearing a black suit with a purple vest and silver cross, urged South Africans to be positive about their country, saying it remained a beacon of hope for other countries facing transition.

"We spend too much time moaning. Can you tell me one country in the world that does not have problems," he said.

Tutu, who owns homes in a Cape Town seafront suburb and in Johannesburg's black Soweto township, said he would finally withdraw from public life.

"I have had the privilege of making a small contribution. It is now time to move off the center stage," he said.

He added, using the nickname by which he is widely known and an indigenous word for sleep, "The Arch is going lala."

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