Recently one of the most disgusting and insulting decisions was made in the name of the international community. Side by side with comrade Nelson Mandela, a racist murderer Frederick W. de Klerk was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Even though I am not entirely aware of the Nobel Peace Prize committee's procedures in making such decisions, I had come to think that the peace prize was given to people that had committed their lives to creating situations wherein all men and women could co-exist peacefully.
The peace prize, I thought, was given to people who, due to their commitment to the ideal of peace and prosperity, challenged the forces of oppression at all costs. These are men and women for whom the sanctity and respectability of every human life is the foundation for their political philosophies, associations and activities. Thus the list of the peace prize winners includes such honorable men as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, men who, to the very last days of their lives, challenged despotism and never gave in to it.
Nelson Mandela is a man of this caliber. A man for whom the Noble Peace Prize has long been over due. Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest sons of Africa. He is leader of a movement that has nearly liberated a people from three hundred years of inhumane oppression and deprivation.
From his maturity and prevalence as a political leader in the early fifties, he committed himself to a struggle against the forces and structures of oppression. Even at times when he was faced with the ugly, naive and misguided face of pan-Africanism, Mandela never held any race in contempt.
He, like us all who believed in the people's Freedom Charter of 1952, held the view that it was not the white South African who was at fault but the institutions that held him superior. Nelson Mandela echoed this sentiment when he was being tried in 1963 by the very same government which is led by de Klerk today.
In his persecution, Mandela extolled the sentiments of equality, non-racialism and non-violence and concluded that, "If it needs be, these are principles for which I am prepared to die." Even in his years in prison one only needed to mention the name of Mandela and the South African people would continue to pursue our dreams of a non-racial democracy which we knew were the same as his.
The only things that we as black South Africans have experienced from de Klerk and his government have been terror and inhumane exploitation. As recently as 1986, de Klerk sat in a cabinet that declared a state of emergency that brought horror to our people. Children were jailed, tortured, maimed and massacred. Mothers and fathers were exiled and thereby separated from their loved ones. The children of the brown earth were killed and maimed for want of respect as human beings.
In 1989, de Klerk, on a white mandate, became president of South Africa. His government was responsible for the creation and funding of institutions and parties which today are terrorizing black communities under the pretense of "nationalism." Black people are dying at the rate of about 80 a fortnight due to these organizations that the government is still covertly supporting.
The fact that de Klerk's government continues to fund these organizations shows that he has never been committed to change nor the ideals that are symbolized by the Nobel Peace Prize. It is well known in South Africa that de klerk's changes and programs are nothing but an admission of defeat. Such a man, an ochestrator and perpetrator of genocidal crimes against a defenseless and helpless, people does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
Even if the committee that chose to give de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize chooses to act like the international media and treat the loss of black life cheaply, or even if it chooses to be selective in its memories of the past and forget one of the greatest crimes in the history of the African continent, my people will not. De Klerk and his colleagues do not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. They deserve to be put in jail on the charge of murder.
