ANKARA
More than twenty years after Nelson Mandela sparked a furore by turning down the Ataturk Peace Prize, South Africa's Ambassador to Turkey has sought to explain Madiba's actions.
Vika Mazwi Khumalo told the Africa in 21st Century and Diplomacy Conference in Ankara on Friday that the recently deceased South African icon did not reject, but declined the Prize.
"There is a difference between rejecting and declining something," Khumalo said. "Mandela declined the prize because it wasn't the right time".
Turkey reacted angrily when the African National Congress (ANC) announced that its leader, Mandela - also known as Madiba - would not accept the 1992 prize.
The ANC gave no reason at the time, but suggested it was linked to questions about human rights.
In a statement, it said that Nelson Mandela had spent his whole life in the service of democracy, human rights and freedom from oppression.
"The ANC wishes to state quite categorically that Mr Mandela has not accepted the Ataturk Award, and has no plans to visit Turkey," it said in May 1992, but explained that its response in no way reflected "any negative view of Kemal Ataturk, the reformer and founder of modern Turkey."
With Mandela dying on December 5, Khumalo said that the ANC were anticipating the day he would no longer be around: "However, it was (still) not easy for us," he added.
He stressed the length of South African/Turkey relations, saying that the first Turkish visit was in 1863, when the Ottoman Empire sent imams to South Africa on the request of the country's Muslims.
He added that Turkey's first official representative for South Africa was Mehmet Remzi Bey who was the Consul General of the Ottoman Empire to the capital, Johannesburg, in 1914.
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