South African Scholar Receives Templeton Prize For Her Work On Forgiveness
NEW YORK — The John Templeton Foundation announced on Tuesday that Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was named this year’s recipient of the Templeton Prize in recognition for her work around trauma and forgiveness in post-apartheid South Africa.
Gobodo-Madikizela, 69, a professor and South African National Research Foundation’s Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma and the director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University, has created a model for social healing in the aftermath of conflict — one that she calls “the reparative quest.”
“The 2024 Templeton Prize winner, Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, has a remarkable grasp of the personal and social dynamics that allow for healing in societies wounded by violence,” said Heather Templeton Dill, who serves as president of the John Templeton Foundation. “As a psychologist, scholar, and commentator, she has served as a guiding light within South Africa as it charts a course beyond apartheid, facilitating dialogue to help people overcome individual and collective trauma. Her work underscores the importance in contemporary life of cultivating the spiritual values of hope, compassion, and reconciliation.”
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The annual prize was established by the late philanthropist Sir John Templeton and is awarded to honor those who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe. Gobodo-Madikizela joins a list of 53 recipients, including Saint Teresa of Calcutta and the Dalai Lama.
Gobodo-Madikizela also served as a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that aimed to address the injustices of apartheid.
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Gobodo-Madikizela’s award-winning 2003 book “A Human Being Died That Night” recounts her conversations with the former commander of state-sanctioned death squads, Eugene de Kock, and argues for the possibility of remorse and forgiveness.
“Through the many encounters I had in my work when I served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I learned that ordinary people, under certain circumstances, are capable of far greater evil than we could have imagined,” she said. “But so are we capable of far greater virtue than we might have thought. My research is based on this possibility of human transformation, on probing deeper to understand the conditions necessary to restore the values of what it means to be human — to want to preserve the dignity and life of the other.”
In addition to writing “A Human Being Died That Night,” she is the co-author of the 2007 book, “Narrating Our Healing: Perspectives on Healing Trauma.” She has edited and co-edited several other volumes, including “Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Perspectives on the Unfinished Journeys of the Past.”
Past accolades for her work include the Alan Paton Award, the Christopher Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Award. In 2004, she was invited by the Faith & Politics Institute to facilitate a workshop on “Reconciliation Dialogue” for a group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives at La Casa de Maria Retreat Centre in Santa Barbara, California.
In 2005, Gobodo-Madikizela was named among “100 People who made a difference” in the Permanent Exhibit of the Hall of Heroes in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. She also served on the World Economic Forum’s Council for Human Equality and Respect from 2008-2010.
“This is the essence of an accountable Ubuntu, a word from my language that is a foundational moral force that reaffirms our shared humanity,” she said. “I feel a deep sense of gratitude for this prize. The great opportunity it opens for me to work with the next generation of future leaders who will pursue research on these urgent questions is a rare gift.”
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor of Religion Unplugged. He previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on X @ClementeLisi.