Take a leaf from peacemakers' book

This week is Nobel Prize week and for the next couple of days we will hear of great individuals who have exceeded expectations and given much to humanity.

The categories for the Nobel Prize are varied and diverse. The story about the origins of the Nobel Prize is fascinating. It is understood that when Alfred Nobel's brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary for Alfred and called him the "merchant of death".

A chemist by profession, he earned this reputation by inventing a product considered deadly, but which he swore was a harbinger of peace and would end all wars - dynamite.

Obviously, the premature obituary in the newspapers must have stung and the famous inventor was determined to clear his name and secure his place in the league of the good guys.

It is understood that Nobel had written several wills during his lifetime, but the last one was dated a little over a year before a cerebral haemorrhage claimed his life.

Nobel's last will left approximately 94percent of his worth to the establishment of five prizes - physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace - to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind".

Well, exactly seven years ago two South Africans, Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, won this award in the peace category.

How appropriate that on that same day another laureate, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, celebrated his birthday.

Though South Africa has had eight Nobel laureates in various fields, it is the four recipients of the peace category whose values and foresight we are most in need of today. The moral decay in our society presents us with untold challenges but if we reflect and remind ourselves of the kind of leaders we are capable of producing, then we too can take a leaf out of their books and confer "the greatest benefit on mankind".

From the first African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Chief Albert Luthuli, we can learn not to compromise on our commitment to human rights. Though he received the prize in the peace category, it was the first time the prize was awarded purely for the advancement of human rights.

Luthuli said: "Laws and conditions that tend to debase human personality, be they brought by the state or individuals, must be relentlessly opposed."

From the Arch there is a lesson for our leaders in business and politics.

He asked: "What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?" The rest of us can heed his call when he said: "Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

Our landscape is polluted by the inflammatory language of those who hold different views. So De Klerk's words to Mandela are apt today. In his Nobel acceptance speech he turned to Mandela and said: "We are political opponents. We disagree strongly on key issues and we will fight a strenuous election campaign against one another. But we will do so, I believe, in the frame of mind and within the framework of peace which has already been established."

And then there is this citizen in whose glory we often bask, Nelson Mandela. The society he described in his acceptance lecture remains elusive but now is the time to commit to a society in which "the children play in the open veld, no longer tortured by the pangs of hunger or ravaged by disease or threatened with the scourge of ignorance, molestation and abuse".

(This story is courtesy of the Sowetan. Used with permission.)