South African Press Association - December 13, 2004

The Kenyan was officially awarded the prize on Friday at a ceremony in Oslo.

Thrust suddenly into the limelight like never before, the 64-year-old Kikuyu woman has taken it all on with grace and good humour.

"I have had to turn down some public appearances so as to get some shopping in," Maathai joked to journalists in Nairobi last month. "I am told it is very cold in Oslo. I need blankets."

Maathai has always been an outspoken fighter for the environment but now she has been given a much wider audience, and a much louder microphone.

Since the award was announced in October she has been inundated with invitations, requests for money, and -- surely most exhausting of all --requests for her opinion about anything from global warming to the HIV/Aids epidemic.

It must surely be quite disconcerting to have one's opinion blazoned in headlines across the world when one is accustomed to having to fight tooth-and-nail for attention, but the feisty woman has a message, and she is delighted to be given the chance to get it across.

"The rest of the world is ready to support us. They are applauding our efforts," she says, as if the award had been given to the whole of Africa, instead of just to her.

Maathai's message, unlike that of many outspoken Africans, is that solutions must come from within the continent. That it is up to Africans to improve their livelihoods, their environment, and to resolve their conflicts.

"We make excuses. We say we are poor: Don't feel you can't do things. You can do a lot with little things," she entreated. "We should challenge ourselves."

Maathai sets an example for many reasons: being a woman, and African, an environmentalist, and someone who lived and worked in civil society.

She makes no bones about using this to make her points -- sending gentle jibes to African leaders who are "mostly men": "We [women] give them children to nurture, not to send to war," she says.

Wangari herself was divorced by her husband for being "too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn, and too hard to control," but she doesn't seem to hold a grudge.

As well as single-handedly starting the "green-belt movement" -- a reforesting programme that has now spread across the continent -- she has also studied environmental science in Kenya and abroad.

She was imprisoned by the previous government -- headed by Daniel arap Moi, who found her a nasty thorn in his side.

Many great African leaders have received the award in their time: Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, and Albert Luthuli, to mention but a few.

However, perhaps Maathai's most valuable role as the Nobel prize winner will be her ability to make global issues relevant to the rural African people she has spent most of her time working with.

Maathai was a surprise announcement for the Nobel prize -- not least the present government of Kenya, which made her deputy minister of the environment but has not given her much recognition.

However she is not just a token.

In choosing her the committee was also indicating that they recognise peace and environmental sustainability were inextricably related, she argues.

"The Nobel peace prize usually goes to people who are trying to reduce conflict, but the majority of wars in Africa are fought over natural resources. There is a big connection between quality of life, the way you manage your environment, and the way you govern yourself."

It sounds simple, but it seems to have taken the world an awfully long time to recognise this.

Prizes are generally given for achievements, but with a Nobel Peace Prize many of the challenges are yet to come. So with Maathai, who was suddenly expected to pronounce knowledgeably on any matter from the war in Iraq to climate change.

While her bodyguard struggles to protect her from the crush of people outside the conference hall of the United Nations Environmental Programme buildings in Nairobi last month she listens cheerfully to the barrage of questions.

She thinks before she answers, fashioning a response not out from a stock-pile of platitudes, like many more world-weary public figures, but from the information and experiences she has available.

There have been some hiccups. Her suggestion, in a press conference a day after receiving her award, that Aids was a biological weapon of mass destruction, resulted in derision from across the globe. Her subsequent comments were more restrained.

There were rumours that Maathai was planing to retire from Kenyan politics, due to frustration with the government's stalling over a key environmental bill, but she is not making any pronouncements yet.

"Some people preferred it when I was in civil society, because I was making noise all the time. I can't be making noise now. I would be complaining to myself," she laughs.

Her plans for the prize money -- which is around R10 million -- are varied.

"I will establish a foundation. Some [of the money] will go towards supporting my work. Some towards cultivating and helping to preserve biodiversity, some towards education. It is important to teach people of the link between the environment, governance, peace and development.""She's humorous, she's brilliant. She's just utterly genuine," says filmmaker Lisa Jane Merton who, with her husband, was lucky enough to be making a documentary on Maathai at the time when her nomination for the prize was announced. Their footage is now in demand all over the world.

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