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Killing people and being an apartheid denialist seem to be acts that earn the prize. Those who don’t agree should surrender theirs, writes Goodenough Mashego
The call by the self-declared guardians of the revolution, the EFF, for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to strip former president FW de Klerk of his Nobel Peace Prize peels away another layer of a veil they have draped themselves in as internationalists and revolutionaries.
No self-respecting left-wing formation would make such an infantile call.
It exposes the EFF as having validated the committee as a structure worthy of its high standards and social accreditation.
I harbour no intention of insulting the red berets, but it must be pointed out that De Klerk deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee, by saying it has not stripped anyone who becomes a disgrace to their prize, is escapist.
De Klerk, much like fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, earned the award by leading a well-oiled machine that committed genocide and went to great lengths to conceal the crime.
Who hasn’t heard about how, before the 1994 elections, the National Intelligence Service engaged in an industrial-scale destruction of documents?
Who authorised such destruction of state property to hide the identities of ANC people who worked with the apartheid government?
That state-sponsored vandalism and arson was of De Klerk’s making.
It explains why, even though some of his foot soldiers were denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an ANC-led government would not bring them to trial because they would most likely implicate some of its parliamentarians and even De Klerk himself.
That would pose a quandary for the ANC. How would it act on such a judicial development?
However, I wouldn’t call for De Klerk to keep the coveted prize because he destroyed documents.
I call on him to keep it and the Nobel Committee not to revoke it because it’s the kind of accolade usually given to people such as him.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the Nobel Peace Prize winners:
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is heaped with praise for ending a long-standing conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.
What is not said is how, at home, he is passive to an ethnic conflict that has displaced millions of civilians.
At home, Ahmed has acted more like a dictator than the peaceful leader he has been made out to be by the Nobel Committee. What will happen come general elections on August 29?
A year after France and Italy destroyed Libya and assassinated Muammar Gaddafi, the Nobel Committee honoured them with the 2012 peace accolade.
No human rights body protested. Killing people and being an apartheid denialist are apparently acts that earn the Nobel Prize.
Former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became a laureate for breaking the glass ceiling.
Her term in office was characterised by nepotism and corruption.
Even today, Western media do not have the balls to question her about how she turned a national treasure into family China by appointing her son, Robert Sirleaf, as chairperson of the National Oil Company of Liberia because he had a “specialised skill”.
The least said about former US president Barack Obama the better.
Honoured with the accolade just before he became Potus – president of the US – in 2009, he went on to be responsible for the murder of more than 2 769 victims through his drone programme.
He, like De Klerk, deserved the prize.
Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel jointly received the Nobel Prize with Yasser Arafat of Palestine. Peres and Rabin were honoured even after they marshalled an apartheid-like occupation of millions of Palestinians and a regime that refused a right of return to millions of others.
Both men went on, after they were honoured, to authorise the killing by their country’s army of many Palestinian resisters.
The only way to protest against De Klerk’s Nobel award would be for those South African laureates who don’t agree with him, and the spirit of the award, to surrender theirs and leave De Klerk as the only one with the peace accolade.
The EFF and the public should keep quiet about it and if there’s any protest it should come from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and the estates of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli.
Let’s see if these black leaders value their association with the Nobel Committee more than the opinion of the majority of victims of apartheid.
Mashego is creative director at Smokin’ Gun Media and a journalist
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