Salter Lecture 2021: Quaker Values in South Africa’s Struggle, by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge

Report by Joseph Jones

The Quaker Socialist Society’s (QSS)Salter lecture, as most Friends will know, is named after social reformers Ada and Alfred. This year’s lecturer, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, former deputy minister of state in South Africa, began by speaking of their ‘amazing lives’. The pair were not thought to have had much connection with South Africa but Sheila Taylor of QSS, introducing the lecture, told of a donation they had made to Sol Plaatje, founder member of the South African Native National Congress (which became the African National Congress (ANC)). It had been ‘an expression of our love to the people of your race’, they had said.

Nozizwe said she was ‘fascinated’ by Ada’s life, in particular how she had ‘succeeded in bringing politics and health together in the service of all’ – the lecturer having helped run a national department of health. But it was perhaps the lecturer’s role as deputy minister for defence that was most immediately striking. A believer in the Peace Testimony, the media reported that her appointment was either ‘a stroke of brilliance or a monumental gaffe.’ It had caused some debate among Quakers, she said, relating her own journey towards pacifism. In the 1980s she had not challenged the ANC’s adoption of armed struggle. Her support for members of uMkhonto we Sizwe (the armed wing of the ANC) was informed by ‘a belief that the system of apartheid was cruel and unjust, and that we were fighting an illegitimate regime.’ Her view began to change ‘after engaging with Quakers in my small Meeting in Durban’, she said, to one in which she could ‘fully embrace non-violence as a method of struggle’. ‘However’, she went on, ‘while always anti-military, our nonviolence must be ever-more militant, supporting revolutionary change in the face of oppression’.

As deputy minister, Nozizwe was influenced by the writing of British Friend Sydney Bailey, which ‘assured me of the important role Quakers can play in influencing high level diplomacy’. She worked with the understanding of human security as freedom from want and freedom from fear. ‘My work as a deputy minister of defence while attending Quaker Meeting opened a world not of conflict or contradiction but of challenging questions about creative nation-building.’ This applied to the ministry of health too, where she ‘drew strength from the call to speak truth to power’. She ‘could not understand the refusal by my government to deny HIV+ pregnant women access’ to drugs. She took a principled stance, and was fired.

‘I have learned that freedom is a constant struggle and that every generation must play their part’, she said. This took us back to the beginning of the lecture, when Nozizwe had described her upbringing. ‘I was raised on the African values of ubuntu – a person is a person through others’. As Friends gather to address issues like identity and diversity, it was a fascinating insight.

Joe is editor of the Friend. The lecture can be found at https://quakersocialists.org.uk. Yearly Meeting Gathering coverage will begin in earnest in next week’s issue.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment