A statue of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu wearing a Palestinian scarf will be put up in Cape Town from Friday to symbolise his decades-long work championing justice for Palestinians, his foundation said.

The late Nobel peace laureate’s “life-size statue” will be temporarily on show “until the bombing of Gaza stops”, the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation has said.

“He was an outspoken critic of the State of Israel’s policies and treatment of Palestine and Palestinians, which he likened to the policies and actions of apartheid South Africa,” the foundation said.

AFP reports Tutu’s statue will be on display on the balcony of his foundation’s headquarters.

Tutu visited both Israel and Gaza “on a number of occasions, including as an emissary of the United Nations” his foundation said in a joint statement with the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Intellectual Property Trust.

The peace icon “fervently believed that the greatest beneficiaries of a just dispensation for Palestine, besides Palestinians, themselves, would be the citizens of Israel”, they added.