boost the spirit towards excellence and progress
so necessary for a continent plagued by civil wars, epidemics, droughts, bureaucratic dishonesty
BBC onlines list the African winners
" " • 2004: Wangari Maathai of Kenya becomes the first African woman to win the Peace Prize "for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace".
• 2003: South African writer J.M. Coetzee wins the literature prize.
• 2001: Ghanaian-born UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is awarded the peace prize jointly with the world body "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world".
• 1993: Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to South Africa's Nelson Mandela, a symbol of the country's fight against the apartheid system, and then president Frederik de Klerk, "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa".
• 1991: South Africa's' Nadine Gordimer, whose work deals mainly with the racially driven tensions in her country, wins the literature prize.
• 1988: Novel and short story writer Naguib Mahfouz becomes the first Egyptian to win the literature prize.
• 1986: Nigeria's ethnic Yoruba playwright, poet and novelist Wole Soyinka wins the literature prize.
• 1984: South Africa's black Anglican archbishop, Desmond Tutu, wins the peace prize for his role in the battle against the apartheid regime.
• 1978: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shares the peace prize with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who both signed the Camp David peace accords for the Middle East.
• 1960: Zulu chief Albert John Lutuli, head of South Africa's African National Congress — then a banned resistance movement and now the majority party in South Africa — wins the peace prize for his fight against apartheid.
• 1951: South African Max Theiler wins the Nobel prize for medicine for developing a vaccine against yellow fever. " "
see also on
CNN " "
John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa , has won the
2003 Nobel prize for literature ;
has won the Booker Prize twice, plus other literary awards.
According to Horace Endgahl, permanent secretary Nobel Academy permanent secretary, the decision to honour Coetzee was an easy one to make.
"We were very much convinced of the lasting value of his contribution to literature," he said.
"I think he is a writer that will continue to be discussed and analysed and we think should belong to our literary heritage". " "
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