18 Facts About Sekai Holland

Sekai Holland was born on 1942 and is a Zimbabwean former politician who served as Minister of State for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration in the administrations of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Sekai Holland had the distinction of being the first African allowed to be designated an "employee" under the regulations pertaining to the Rhodesian Guild of Journalists in Southern Rhodesia.

Sekai Holland has dedicated her life to campaigning for human rights, democracy and the empowerment of woman.

Sekai Holland was recognised in 2012 with the Sydney Peace Prize, Australia's only international prize for peace.

Sekai Holland travelled to Australia as a student, where she attended the Australian National University in Canberra, where she met her future husband, Jim Holland, the son of an Australian diplomat.

In 1979, Sekai Holland completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Technology Sydney, from where she was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2013.

Sekai Holland was a founder of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Australia in the late 1960s, she helped to establish the Murrawina Child Care Centre in Redfern, and she worked actively with the Aboriginal community on the land rights campaign.

Sekai Holland helped resuscitate the important but moribund Association of Women's Clubs, a grassroots rural women's development organisation established in 1938 by an 18-year-old African woman.

Sekai Holland suffered constant harassment, arrests and attempts on her life.

Sekai Holland was labelled a dissident and sentenced to death.

Sekai Holland sustained a broken arm, a broken leg, fractured ribs, and over 80 lacerations to her entire body caused by whipping, beating, and being stamped on by the torturers.

Sekai Holland spent 15 weeks in hospitals in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Australia.

Three of Sekai Holland's ribs were broken when a policewoman jumped on her.

Sekai Holland has driven this agency with innovative strategies that seek to incorporate traditional Zimbabwean positive cultural beliefs and practices into the entire healing process infused with the local, regional and international best practices.

Sekai Holland has continued her consistent advocacy for women's and children's issues and she has continually spoken out against retribution and the culture of cyclic political violence in Zimbabwe.

On 30 April 2012, at a reception hosted by the Australian Embassy in Harare, Sekai Holland was announced to be the 15th recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize, Australia's only international award for peace.

Professor Stuart Rees, Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation said, 'In addition to her work for the education of rural women and her founding of Australia's anti-Apartheid movement fifty years ago, Sekai Holland has been a significant leader of non-violent, democracy campaigns, and is a key figure in her country's national dialogue on how to heal the deep wounds of social conflict.

Sekai Holland traveled to Australia in November to give the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture in the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday 7 November 2012, receiving the 2012 Peace Prize in a gala ceremony the next day.