Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
South Africa

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a research associate and consultant for the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town. A clinical psychologist, she is a former member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). She initiated and developed the TRC's first outreach program, giving victims of human rights violations a chance to speak publicly about their abuses. Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela is also an adjunct professor and senior consultant for the African Ethics Initiative in the Unilever Ethics Center at Natal University, and has been appointed an associate professor of psychology at the University of Cape Town. She has received fellowships and teaching awards from Brandeis University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and the University of California at Los Angeles for her contribution to human rights in South Africa, the insight she has brought to discussions on transitional justice, and her work on forgiveness and reconciliation. Her numerous awards include a Peace Fellowship at the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award at Tufts University, the Human Rights Award from the Canadian Women for Women organization, and an honorary doctor of law from Holy Cross College.

• Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela's peace-building activities include:
  publishing A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness, which is based on interviews with Eugene de Kock, the former apartheid government's chief assassin, and highlights the complex issues surrounding apology and forgiveness after mass atrocity;
• facilitating the first public hearing process in the Western Cape Province and drafting a program on reconciliation, the model for which was adopted by other TRC regions;
• representing the TRC at a number of conferences in South Africa and abroad;
• facilitating encounters between victims and perpetrators;
• serving as an expert witness for the defense in the Supreme Court of South Africa and as consultant for human rights lawyers defending black anti-apartheid activists;
• conducting extensive investigations and consultations to prepare and present psychological profiles of accused persons for legal defense teams in a number of political trials;
• founding the first children's rights movement in the former Transkei and chairing the first UNICEF-sponsored situation analysis on the state of children in South Africa; and
• designing diversity workshops and seminars in the Western Cape Province focusing on racial conflicts, conflict resolution, peace, and reconciliation.

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