I'm glad that Madiba is dead: Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is glad Nelson Mandela is dead - so that he cannot see what the ANC is doing to South Africa.

The outspoken cleric, who regularly raises the ire of the ruling party with his candid comments, said in an interview this week he was relieved Madiba and other freedom fighters of his generation were no longer around to witness the slow pace of transformation.

"I didn't think there would be a disillusionment so soon," he said.

He then quietly added: "I'm glad that Madiba is dead. I'm glad that most of these people are no longer alive to see this."

His comment has riled the ANC, with secretary-general Gwede Mantashe retorting: "The problem in this country, in general, is everyone speaks for Nelson Mandela, but the people who speak for him do not do so efficiently."

Tutu and his daughter, the Reverend Mpho Tutu, were interviewed ahead of the release of their book, The Book of Forgiving. It details the steps towards forgiveness, using key events in their lives.

Mpho Tutu said that she never thought voting for the ANC would require her to "hold my nose".

However, she said, she would not be taking part in any no-vote campaign.

But she expressed her anger at the slow pace of change in 20 years of democracy.

"Why are our children still sitting under trees, and why do we still have shacks and not houses? Why don't we have electricity? Why are we still having service-delivery arguments 20 years down the line?" she asked.

Tutu has in recent years publicly expressed his concern at the direction the ANC is taking.

In 2011, he vowed to pray for the downfall of the ruling party after his friend, the Dalai Lama, was denied entry into South Africa to attend his 80th birthday party.

Last year, he wrote in an article that he would not be voting for the ANC, and this week he repeated his concerns about voting ANC and his pain at initially being excluded from his "very dear friend" Mandela's funeral.

Professor Ben Turok, a long-standing ANC member, said he was "surprised that anyone can say we're pleased to see Mandela gone, because we all wanted him to live, if not forever, for a very long time".

Turok said although there was an air of pessimism in the country, there were "irreversible achievements" South Africa had made since 1994.