Clowes Center Past Events
Veterans of Inter-communal Violence series
Guerilla Peacemakers
Note: QuickTime and a high-speed connection are required to view this video.
Yazir Henri
Co-founder and Director, Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory in Cape Town,
South Africa
May 31, 2006
University of Washington
Anti-apartheid combatant turned peace activist and scholar, Yazir Henri will address the questions: how does one make the decision to take up arms in a political struggle? And, once the armed struggle has ended, how does one build peace in post war contexts?
Yazir Henri is the co-founder and director of the Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory in Cape Town, South Africa. Since 1997, the centre has worked with former combatants, torture survivors and political prisoners. Henri joined Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Conference at age 16, when the apartheid government still held power over South Africa. He received military training in Angola and the Soviet Union, and returned to South Africa as an MK officer, only to be imprisoned under Section 29 of the then Internal Security Act. Henri emerged from the hands of the police, and from an ambivalent testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to re-define himself as a poet, writer and peace activist.
Henri will share his personal experience of the liberation war, detention, survival and recovery and explain how these have shaped his current beliefs. He will also describe his Centre’s response to the manifold challenges facing young combatants previously involved in the South African war for freedom, and the larger context of challenges that hamper the building of long term peace and human security in post conflict South Africa.
Series Information:
The Clowes Center was formed in 2004 in order to provide a forum within which students, faculty and members of our communities (both local and international) can develop projects, programs, events and research that explore specific efforts to create and sustain dialogue across social and political, and national boundaries.