South African churches launch attack on ANC During apartheid, some Church leaders wrote to political leaders but they often failed to listen to these voices. Unfortunately we find a similar trend today," the SACC, a major player in the struggle against the white-minority rule that ended in 1994, wrote. "We have begun to stray from the path of building a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa," it continued, adding that political leaders had "largely lost their moral compass." Founded in 1936, the SACC is an umbrella organisation that groups the country's major Christian denominations. Nobel Peace Prize-winning Anglican former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu was one of its most prominent leaders during the apartheid era, serving as its secretary general. His wife, Graça Machel, whom he married on his 80th birthday in 1998, said it was painful to see the anti-Apartheid leader "ageing" and that his "sparkle" is fading. "I mean, this spirit and this sparkle, you see that somehow it's fading," she told eNews Channel Africa on Monday in her first interview since Mr Mandela went into hospital.