South Africa: Civil War or Civil Peace?
ACCORD’s Founder and Executive Director, Adv. Vasu Gounden, was invited as the guest speaker to deliver the 7th Annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture on Monday, 9 October 2017, at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa.
The International Peace Lecture is an annual event hosted by the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, in partnership with the University of the Western Cape. It was conceived to provide an opportunity to access our adherence to the values of respect, compassion, fairness, Ubuntu and celebration of diversity. In support of this event and its values, the previous guest speakers were, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mr Kofi Anan, Mrs Graca Machel, Mrs Mary Robinson, Adv. Thuli Madonsela, and Ms Hina Jilani.
Adv. Gounden is a globally recognised conflict management specialist and has spent the last twenty five years working in the most protracted conflict situations globally. Prior to this, he was Student President of the University of Durban-Westville during the State of Emergency in South Africa in 1985/6 and led many student protests against the apartheid regime. He has sat on several Commissions investigating the impact of violence in post-apartheid South Africa and currently sits on the Moerane Commission investigating political murders in KwaZulu-Natal, a province of South Africa. His long history as a protagonist in conflict during apartheid South Africa and as an impartial peace broker in post-apartheid South Africa have placed Adv. Gounden in a unique position to address the topic of South Africa: Civil War or Civil Peace?
To watch the recorded Lecture online, you can follow this link.
Adv. Gounden’s speech can be downloaded here.
