Nomfundo Walaza leads the way forward

Walaza is the chief executive officer of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre (DTPC) and is in charge of perpetuating the towering legacy of peace that is the "Arch".

From the August edition, commemorating Woman's Month. On sale at bookshops now

A sonorous gong reverberates deeply down the valleys. The bell is so colossal it takes 10 men and women to swing the huge log striker. As it strikes, the sound is so intense you can feel it engulfing your body, ringing through your head, wrapping around your heart, touching your very soul.

This huge gong is made from the scraps of war: metal from cannons, shrapnel, bomb fragments, remnants of bullet casings, twisted gun carriages and broken helmets; a massive amount of spent debris from the conflict zones of this war-torn planet, melted down and reformed into one giant memorial - a bell for peace.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu sent Nomfundo Walaza to be present as the first gong was sounded over the hills and valleys of South Korea.

Tutu is well known for his outspoken views and his willingness to challenge hypocrisy. It becomes clear to me that Walaza, whom I met shortly after a speech she gave at The Cape Town Press Club, is not afraid to do the same.

Walaza has come a long way in her own personal quest as a peacemaker and I sat entranced by the story of her life: her role in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) hearings; her views on the way forward for South Africa in light of the current climate of violence; and her views on empowering women.

When she speaks, her sentences form huge mind murals that open a portal to her world. In the course of our lengthy interview, she sweeps me along with her and it is this talent for engaging people that must be helpful to her with what must be an extremely difficult mandate.

On her immediate agenda is overseeing the building of the Peace Centre, which will host outreach programmes to promote peace. The projects include teaching young people the value of tolerance and understanding, and helping them to shape a future where they can become leaders. It will also assimilate knowledge on the causes of conflict and the challenges of world leaders.

Inspired by her moving experience at the opening of the World Peace Bell Park in South Korea, Walaza plans for the building to be a living memorial that will inspire within people an emotional connection to their hard-won heritage of peace - a place to remember the miracle of our country's peaceful transition to democracy and the responsibility we have in sustaining it.

South Africa is still known to the world as a beacon of hope. And it was on the subject of our Global Peace Index (GPI) ratings that she was her most blunt in her address to the Press Club.

"According to the Global Peace Index, South Africa has just slipped 15 places - we are now ranked 123rd out of 144 countries.

"We scored badly on violent crime, the number of murders, ease of access to weapons, level of organised internal conflict, perceptions of criminality, respect for human rights, and likelihood of violent demonstrations."

Walaza describes these ratings as a red warning light! And she emphatically states that it was time for South Africans to stop relying so heavily on the Madiba Magic and the Archbishop's notion of the Rainbow Nation. "We expect from the world that we have given them Mandela and they must give us the cheque."

She adds that now that the euphoria is over, it is time for the individuals of our society to take responsibility and start working on their own personal contribution toward peace.

In light of our sliding ratings on the GPI, one of the elements central to brokering peace must be to stop the vicious war of violence against women in South Africa. Our rape statistics are of the highest in the world and the last time I wrote on this subject, one in every four women who dies in this country is killed by a partner or husband. This climate of abuse can surely not be conducive to ensuring an authentic democracy where all are deemed free.

Expanding on this, we discuss some of the thorny cultural differences endemic in this country, particularly the divisions with regard to tribal culture and where many feminist movements are of the belief that the patriarchal nature of tribal thinking is hampering the progress of gender empowerment. In her response, Walaza exhibits the kind of fair attitude that we have also come to know in the Archbishop.

Firstly, she prefers the term 'woman activist' to 'feminist'. And though she distances herself from some feminist theory, she agrees that women still play an active role in perpetuating the male agenda, and often hurt each other and themselves in doing so.

Having said that, she believes it would be better for everyone if feminists, particularly white women, were to take more time to find out how tribal women feel about their culture - "Instead of forcing change - how about encouraging it? We all need to be humble enough to walk with rather than in front of each other. One day these women will be ready to champion their own cause," she says.

Walaza is a clinical psychologist, and decided to work with communities rather than in private practice. Her experience as a counsellor for survivors of violence and torture, and her knowledge of working with political prisoners released from Robben Island, would be crucial to the role she played in the TRC hearings. The hearings were set up for all South Africans as a way to accommodate a peaceful transition _to democracy.

Walaza's initial involvement was to counsel the victims, a role that soon extended to the interpreters themselves. "Interpreters suffered greatly from having to recount the many stories of violence and torture; as an example, they would have to translate very disturbing narratives using direct speech - instead of saying 'he' or 'she', they were required to _say 'I'."

The result was that the facilitators experienced the disturbing admissions of the victims in a first-person context, which took a huge toll emotionally.

It was fascinating to be able to follow Walaza, down the corridors of our recent history, and to talk about these hearings in which, as she rightly put it, "white people did not fully participate".

I can personally agree with that statement, and admit that I only caught snippets of what the hearings entailed by catching glimpses of the proceedings on the news.

Before our interview, I had read up on the techniques employed in other countries when handling the emotional fallout after the brutalities of war. In all cases, mankind seems to have a built-in mechanism; a mind that will reject all knowledge of what is uncomfortable to it.

Perhaps the ability to override this impulse should be part of our mission and would aid our ability to make peace more than a mere concept but rather a condition and a lifestyle.

There were many important questions posed at the TRC hearings, but the most poignant was: "Does truth have a gender?"

Put to the TRC by Walaza and a group of progressive women's organisations, this question would turn out to be catalytic, and in asking it, reshaped the history of the hearings in a powerful way.

Until that time, women were often left out of the process or at most were only giving testimony on behalf of their husbands and sons who had died. Through the lobbying efforts of Walaza and company, special hearings were set up. And in the course of those proceedings, the suffering of women was formally recognised, and their status as the cornerstone of the Liberation Struggle fully acknowledged and formally documented.

"From then on, women were empowered to talk about their own pain: what it meant to lose their husbands, and to have to carry on alone.

They were given a voice to express their own experiences of unlawful arrests, rape and the inhumane conditions in prisons."

While Walaza feels that much was achieved by the TRC, she also believes that many South Africans remain ignorant to the suffering experienced due to the apartheid regime; and have thus missed out an important step in the peace process - that of truthfully recognising and owning the mistakes of the past.

In 1994, South Africans chose not to kill each other, instead they chose to stand together and begin the process of acquiring a new definition of nationhood - willing to begin the knitting together of a social identity that traversed the many social divides. Sadly, it seems that we have dropped some stitches along the way.

Can we truly excuse ourselves by saying that we are worse off then than we are now, and blame poverty, our disparities in thought, creed or culture?

Peace is not the absence of war; it is the absence of war within ourselves. Peace was not a mere handful of people shining the way; it was a position we assumed and it reflected to the world an inner state that was, under the circumstances, nothing short of miraculous.

Having conversed with Walaza for an enlightening two hours, I left her office convinced that South Africa has found in her a custodian who will continue to lead us back to the path of peace, and inspire others to do the same. _

Simone Tredoux

Also in this edition: 

A profile on Michelle Obama by Michal Leon