Director's Report

I present this report on behalf of the Quaker Peace Centre with humility and gratitude.

First of all, I should mention the fact that I joined the Quaker Peace Centre in May 2003. This means that I have first-hand knowledge of the second half of the reporting period.

I found that the Quaker Peace Centre is one of several peace organizations in South Africa that are committed to building models of peaceful resolution or management of conflict amongst individuals, communities and organizations. This is happening in the context of a new democratic system that is pivoted on the principles of freedom and justice for all citizens.

However, the fact that now there is democracy does not mean that the state alone can handle all the forms of violent conflict or threats to human security. That is why QPC, as part of civil society, has a role to play in the reduction or eradication of threats to human security. This is being carried out by forging strategies of peace-building to strengthen human security against the menace of violent resolution of conflict in society.

Since April 2002 QPC has gone through profound strategic changes in order to be in line with the era of ten years of democracy and transformation in South Africa to ensure that the organization takes full part in the societal change process of the country.

During the above-mentioned change process, the Board and staff identified several strategic priorities that have necessarily placed the organization on the wavelength of transformation in the context of democracy. The crucial part of the process was to translate the strategic priorities into an operational plan from which various projects have been identified for funding and operational purposes.

The operational plan in place has a cluster of projects for implementation from July 2004 to June 2006. All the projects thus developed address various threats to peace and human security in the poor communities that we serve in the Western Cape with special reference to Metropolitan Cape Town. The communities we serve are victims of violent crime, HIV/Aids, lack of resources or basic amenities needed for livelihood.

Some of the important happenings during this period include the Alternative to Violence Project (AVP) workshops which were attended by most QPC staff in Cape Town. This means that QPC has developed usable capacity in AVP facilitation. It is envisaged that AVP and Nonviolent Communication should be incorporated into the peace-building models and training modules since both have high utility value as tools of empowering communities or individuals to apply peaceful methods of conflict resolution.

For all of this and many other activities, I should congratulate and thank QPC staff and the Board for doing their work diligently in the face of sweeping changes that created so much anxiety and uncertainty in the organization. The members of staff should be highly commended for holding on to the process despite all the difficulties of change that they experienced. One of the enabling factors that gave hope to staff was the participatory nature of the process. Even though the Board had the final say in all the matters of restructuring, staff first had opportunities to express their views and suggestions to the Board.

However, having gone through the intensely heated combustion of the change process, the staff should feel seasoned enough to take on the formidable challenges of poverty, disease, violence and intolerance of diversity in South Africa in general and the Western Cape in particular. The year 2004 should be seen as providing the opportunity to launch the new QPC programmes of peace-building onto a path that will lead the organization to full participation in South Africa's social transformation in the context of democracy and development.

Joshua Mpofu
April 2004