Zubeida Jaffer, Author and Journalist, will present "In Hope of Peace, Not War" as the 2018 Nelson Mandela lecture.  

Zubeida Jaffer is a veteran South African journalist. She has won several awards for her work both locally and internationally. She holds undergraduate degrees from the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University where she had to obtain government permission to study because she was not white.

Her work as a journalist led to her detention under Section Six of the Terrorism Act six months after she started her first job. This catapulted her into the resistance movement for the next ten years. Prior to the first democratic elections in 1994, she was selected as one of seven media professionals in the country to oversee the relationship between the media and political parties during the election.

A year later, Nelson Mandela raised a bursary for her to do her MSc in Journalism at Columbia University. She returned to the country after a year in New York to become one of the most senior female bureau chiefs at a chain of 14 newspapers and covered the Mandela years.

She has recently retired from her job at the University of Free State but not from her writing. She runs two websites, one her own, www.zubeidajaffer.co.za and the other, www.thejournalist.org.za.  She is also author of three books, the latest one being about Charlotte Maxeke, South Africa’s first black female graduate. After her talk, she plans to visit Wilberforce University in Ohio where Mrs. Maxeke graduated in 1901.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC