Joao and Nora Matwawana, a couple from Angola, are this year’s recipients of the Denton Lotz Human Rights Award, given annually by the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). The two are the first to be given the award jointly, which, for the first time, is renamed the Denton Lotz Human Rights Award in honor of BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz, who retires at the end of 2007.
The Matwawanas have played a pivotal role in reconciliation and peace efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Angola since the 1970s. Their peace efforts have included working among the more than 1 million refugees who fled Rwanda for the DRC in 1994, repeated visits to refugees living in camps in Zambia and visits to Burundi to discuss peace and nation-building initiatives with government officials, including the country’s president and church and nongovernmental organization leaders. They also met with a Burundi rebel leader in Holland and South Africa to successfully negotiate peace; helped train Angolan refugees in conflict resolution, mediation and reconciliation; and went on several peace missions in Angola.
Born in northern Angola in the late 1930s as direct descendants of the kings of the ancient Kingdom of the Congo, both Joao and Nora Matwawana were educators before embracing a call to train for the pastoral ministry. They were appointed by Canadian Baptist Ministries (CBM) to serve in Africa.
A former general secretary of the United Protestant Churches of Angola in Exile, Joao Matwawana and his wife had to flee their homeland three times, to the DRC in 1961 and 1975 and to Canada in the early 1980s, due to Angola’s war for independence and civil war.
Gary Nelson, general secretary of CBM and a BWA vice president, said of Joao Matwawana, “His work … is a story of grass roots actions and initiatives that took place in the most dangerous of situations and the most unlikely locations while others were meeting only to discuss peace.”
Of the work done by Nora Matwawana, John Keith, who wrote the 2006 biography “Wars Are Never Enough: The Joao Matwawana Story,” said, “The most prominent physical monument to Nora Matwawana’s investment of herself in training African women is located in Kivu Province of Eastern Congo — DRC. It is the Centre Sociale Mama Nora, which grew out of Nora’s experiences in Angola, Western Congo, Kenya, Canada and India.”
Now retired and living in Canada, the two will be presented with the award during the BWA Annual Gathering/General Council meeting set for July in Accra, Ghana. (BWA)
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