Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
Director
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge joined QUNO (Geneva) on 11 November 2021. She is a pacifist and lifetime campaigner for human rights and justice. She has wide-ranging experience as a leader, working inside and outside of government structures. In her youth, she joined the national liberation struggle to end apartheid and co-founded the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW), an affiliate of the mass democratic movement led by the United Democratic Front (UDF). She was a delegate at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), a multi-party negotiations forum which negotiated South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. During South Africa’s first democratic national election in 1994, she was high on the African National Congress (ANC) party list to Parliament and served for fifteen years as a Member of Parliament. During this time, she also served as Deputy Minister of Defense (1999-2004), Deputy Minister of Health (2004 – 2007) and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (2008 – 2009). In 2009 she co-founded Embrace Dignity, a feminist, human rights non-governmental organisation campaigning for law reform to end the gendered power inequalities that continue to oppress women and girls through the intertwined systems of patriarchy and sexual exploitation. Nozizwe has Diplomas in Microbiology, Chemical Pathology, and an Advanced Diploma in Adult Education, a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Political Science from the University of Natal, and a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) Degree in Philosophy from the University of Cape Town. She is a recipient of the Tanenbaum Peacemakers Award and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Haverford College, Philadelphia. She is a member of the Quaker Community of the Western Cape.