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South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been honoured by the South African Mint at a ceremony in which he struck a commemorative gold coin celebrating his achievement.
"We are too prone as South Africans to sell ourselves short,"
Tutu, the former head of the country’s Anglican church said at the 28 March ceremony. "We have so much about which to be proud. We ought to be a country that can show the world how to be compassionate."
The gold coin is one of a series struck to pay tribute to South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize winners. It features Tutu’s image, with his hands prominent, and part of the acceptance speech he gave at the ceremony in Norway when he was awarded the 1984 peace prize.
The governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, paid tribute to Tutu’s role as head of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which probed gross human rights violations during the country’s years under apartheid.
"The archbishop is a very, very special person from a religious and spiritual point of view, also as a counsellor, peacemaker and [for] playing an important role in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Mboweni said, the South African Press Association reported.
South Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chief Albert Luthuli, the former African National Congress president, was featured on commemorative coins issued in 2005. Luthuli, awarded the prize in 1960, was a deacon of the Groutville Congregational Church in the Natal province.
South Africa’s other Nobel Peace laureates, former presidents F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, who shared the award in 1994, will be commemorated on coins at a future date.
(c) Ecumenical News International
Photo : South African Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu
