Excerpts from the speech by Nelson Mandela – Nobel Peace Prize, 1993
(...) I
extend my heartfelt thanks to the Nobel Committee for elevating us to the
status of a Nobel Peace Prize winner. (…) It will not be presumptuous of us if
we also add, among our predecessors, the name of another outstanding Nobel
Peace Prize winner, the late Rev Martin Luther King Jr. He, too, grappled with
and died in the effort to make a contribution to the just solution of the same
great issues which we have had to face as South Africans. (…)
We stand
here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of people
across the globe, the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and
organisations that joined with us in fight, not to fight against South Africa
as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose an inhuman system (the
apartheid) and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against humanity.
(…) Because of their courage and persistence for many years, we can, today,
even set the dates when all humanity will join together to celebrate one of the
outstanding human victories of our century.
When
that moment comes, we shall, together, rejoice in a common victory over racism,
apartheid and white minority rule. (…) Thus, it will mark a great step forward
in history and also serve as a common pledge of the peoples of the world to
fight racism, wherever it occurs and whatever guise it assumes. (…)
The
reward will not be measured in money. (…) It will and must be measured by the
happiness and welfare of the children, at once the most vulnerable citizens in
any society and the greatest of our treasures. (…) The reward of which we have
spoken will and must also be measured by the happiness and welfare of the
mothers and fathers of these children, who must walk the earth without fear of
being robbed, killed for political or material profit, or spat upon because
they are beggars. (…)
The
value of that gift to all who have suffered will and must be measured by the
happiness and welfare of all the people of our country, who will have torn down
the inhuman walls that divide them.
(…) Let
the efforts of us all prove that we were not mere dreamers when we spoke of the
beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or
silver or gold. (...)”
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