Awards for suffering: the Nobel Peace Prize recipients of South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the biographies of the four Noble Peace Prize laureates – Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Frederik Willem de Klerk – who stood for justice during the apartheid regime in South Africa. Of interest to the Nobel Committee were these leaders’ accomplishments and efforts in the ending of apartheid. Chief Luthuli was a Christian minister and President of the African National Congress in the 1950s and 1960s. Bishop Tutu is a revered religious leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa. Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work towards the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa. The telling of these Nobel laureates’ stories through the text of their Nobel speeches illustrates the accelerated changes in the lives of black South Africans. Remarkable new justice institutions and court processes such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission emerged shortly after the demise of apartheid. In its choice of Nobel laureates, the Nobel Peace Prize committee supported social justice for black South African leadership. The prize also recognizes de Klerk’s reconciliation with an integrated South Africa that replaced the former discredited regime.