Review By Dr.Claude Shema Rutagengwa

General coordinator

Great Lakes Peace Initiative(GLPI)

Father Michael  Lapsley, SSM,  is the most if not the first ever white intellectual  person who  fought the Apartheid  regime in South Africa.

His struggle against the  Apartheid  regime also was a risky task until he got many pressures and threats. For example, in April 1990, Father Michael Lapsley was the target of a letter bomb from South Africa. He lost his both hands and an eye as result of that letter bomb.

Priest and Partisan describes how a deeply religious man grappled with his commitment to pacifism and his church in the face of what he came to recognize as one of greatest  crimes against humanity - the Apartheid system. Lapsley's  membership  in the African National Congress - ANC put him into conflict with the church hierarchy.

This book presents the events and the experience that converted Michael Lapsley , an  Anglican (Episcopalian) Priest, into a freedom fighter in his adopted homeland of South Africa, and then how as one more victim of Apartheid's terror, he became a healer and voice for reconciliation in the post-Apartheid era.

Michael Lapsley now works with Trauma center for Victims of violence and torture in Cape Town, South Africa, and he is also an assistant of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the head of the South African truth and reconciliation commission.

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