South African Quaker Leader Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge joins Hal Weaver as special guest for World Quaker Day ProgramSunday, 1 October 2023 - 1-2 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)

Dear F/friends,

The BlackQuaker Project (BQP) of Wellesley Friends Meeting is thrilled to be joined by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former leader in the South African freedom movement against apartheid and a current leader in the Southern Africa Yearly Meeting, for our World Quaker Day (WQD) presentation this coming Sunday, 1 October. Her numerous achievements in politics and religion allow her to give deep meaning to the WQD theme of Ubuntu, as well as her thoughts and experiences in healing historical and current injustices, activities of collaboration with the BQP.

Friend Nozizwe was a delegate at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), a multi-party negotiations forum which negotiated South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. During South Africa’s first democratic national election in 1994, she was high on the African National Congress (ANC) party list to Parliament and served for fifteen years as a Member of Parliament. During this time, she also served as Deputy Minister of Defense (1999-2004), Deputy Minister of Health (2004–2007), and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (2008–2009). She is a recipient of many awards, including the Tanenbaum Peacemakers Award and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Haverford College. In April of this year, Nozizwe worked with Tim Gee, FWCC General Secretary, and other Friends to produce a working document on Reparations and Historic Injustices, to stimulate discussions for the World Plenary Meeting South Africa in August 2024, where this will be one of the themes of the conference.

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Our History with Friend Nozizwe

The BlackQuaker Project has been blessed to collaborate with Friend Nozizwe since 2020, beginning with an interview for the Quakers of Color International Archive. In this interview, Nozizwe emphasized the importance of reconciliation and reparations following structural harms to correct the wrongs of the past.

In February of 2022, our partnership with Nozizwe continued at the Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival & Forum, which honored the work of Nozizwe at the first film screening. In the panel discussion following this screening, special guest Joyce Ajlouny, General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, joined Mandala-Routledge and host and program organizer, Hal Weaver. The panel reflected upon the similarity between the structural oppression faced by Palestinians in occupied Palestine, South Africans during apartheid and under more contemporary iterations of racialized economic inequality, and African Americans.

In September of 2022, Nozizwe and Hal presented to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, defining retrospective justice and providing compelling reasons as to why Quaker institutions and individuals should take action in retrospective justice to address healing for historical and current injustices in order to rebuild communities harmed by structural and direct violence, including damages remaining from Quaker violence in South Africa during 1980’s apartheid.We are excited to continue our collaboration with Nozizwe through this WQD presentation and highlight her and our ongoing work in the international Quaker community. This event is co-sponsored by the Quaker Action for Racial Equality and the Quaker and Wider World Connections Clusters of Wellesley Friends Meeting.

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How To Register for Our Program

As a reminder our WQD program will take place on Sunday, 1 October, at 1 PM EDT over Zoom Webinar. Please click here to register. To register for this event, you will need to provide your name and email address. By registering you are also agreeing to sign up for our ministry's mailing list, from which you can unsubscribe at any time.

Please write to us at the theblackquakerproject@gmail.com with any questions about the registration process.

Peace and Blessings,

The BlackQuaker Project

26 September 2023