John Minto, organiser of the Halt All Racist Tours campaign, declined the Companion of O R Tambo Award, saying the changes in South Africa since the end of white minority rule had benefited only an elite.

In a letter to Mbeki on his Web site www.johnminto.org.nz, the union organiser and newspaper columnist asked that his nomination for the award, named after South African anti-apartheid leader Oliver Tambo, be withdrawn.

Previous recipients included Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of Indian independence, and U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Thousands of New Zealanders, known for their devotion to their national sport, responded to Minto's campaign by taking to the streets during the 1981 tour by the Springboks rugby team.

The protests, some of which turned violent when police confronted the crowds, shocked white South Africans, who had viewed New Zealand as a friendly nation, and helped to galvanise the worldwide anti-apartheid movement.

"When we protested and marched into police batons and barbed wire here in the struggle against apartheid, we were not fighting for a small black elite to become millionaires," Minto wrote in his letter to Mbeki.

"We were fighting for a better South Africa for all its citizens."

Mbeki has led South Africa since 1999, implementing centrist, pro-business policies that his supporters say have ushered in years of economic growth and the development of a black middle class.

Labour unions, communists and other critics accuse his government of neglecting millions of poor, mostly black South Africans living on the margins of Africa's largest economy 14 years after the end of white minority rule.