Wednesday, May 31, 2006 - 7 PM // Kane 120

GUERILLA PEACEMAKERS: Streaming Video

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 for terrorism and treason. 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.

Sponsors:
The Comparative History of Ideas program at UW

Since 2006, the Clowes Center has organized public lectures by individuals who have been involved in violent political struggles and subsequently adopted different tactics for achieving social and political changes.

Speaker Archive:

Max Hunter (2010)
Gangster Epistemology: Urban Crime & the American Dream

Nirmala Rajasingam (2009)
Gendering Conflict — Disarming Nationalisms

Marco Antonio Garavito (2007)
The Dream of Peace in Guatemala