SUSTAINABLE PEACE

Connecting North and South, politics and environment, perpetrators and survivors

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About the speaker

Wilhelm Verwoerd first came to public prominence in South Africa in 1992, when he joined the African National Congress. While any Afrikaner joining theANC would have been newsworthy, Wilhelm’s membership was a sensation, because his grandfather was Hendrik Verwoerd, the South African prime minister almost invariably described as “the architect of the apartheid state,” who had been murdered in Parliament in 1966, when Wilhelm was just two years old. His decision was the fruit of a long, complex, and sometimes painful journey, spiritual and intellectual, personal and political.


Opportunities to act on his new convictions were many. One of the most significant was his role as researcher and writer for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996 to 1998, and ever since he has been a central participant in the international debate on the meaning and significance of the TRC. This aspect of his work continues, but in 2001, he accompanied his wife, Melanie, to Ireland in her role as South African ambassador. There he soon became immersed in reconciliation work related to conflict in Northern Ireland, including serving as the first director of the Glencree Reconciliation Centre’s program for ex-combatants—military, police, and paramilitary alike. Growing out of the Ex-Combatants Programme has been a new emphasis on “Sustainable Peace,” allowing the ex-combatants, so deeply divided, to develop shared perspectives and deeper relationships around broader issues of environmental sustainability and global inequality.