In Oslo City Hall, Nelson Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk accepted the Nobel Peace Prize together, recognizing their fraught but consequential partnership in ending apartheid. Mandela had spent 27 years in prison under the system de Klerk's government began dismantling in 1990. Their joint award, delivered five months before South Africa's first fully democratic election, symbolized reconciliation despite deep mutual distrust between the two men.
The pairing struck many as uneasy. Mandela had spent nearly three decades imprisoned by the apartheid state, and he remained sharply critical of de Klerk even as they negotiated the country's future together, at one point publicly accusing him of tolerating black-on-black violence orchestrated by security forces. De Klerk, for his part, had unbanned the African National Congress and freed Mandela in 1990, decisions that cost him support within his own Afrikaner base.
In his acceptance speech, Mandela honored de Klerk's 'courage' while insisting that the prize belonged to the people of South Africa who had suffered under apartheid. De Klerk spoke of a shared vision for reconciliation, though the two rarely displayed warmth toward one another in public.
Five months later, Mandela would become South Africa's first Black president after the country's first election open to all races, with de Klerk serving as one of his deputy presidents in a government of national unity. Their prickly alliance, forged from necessity rather than friendship, helped avert a feared civil war and remains one of the twentieth century's most consequential political transitions.