I am an author, speaker and fighter against racism in all its forms.
I interviewed Nelson Mandela when he was on the run from the police, shortly before his incarceration. A short time later, I was forced to flee South Africa to avoid imprisonment.
My books are young adult, historical fiction. The past has a long future, as I say in my most famous work, My Sister Sara. In its 12th edition and a set work for seniors in German high schools, has created an incredible amount of discussion and has a loyal following. For the first time, it is now available in English.
The naming of the Ruth Weiss Realschule honors two central values in my work: respect and tolerance. These draw from my early life growing up near Nuremberg.
The Ruth Weiss Society emerged from Ruth’s large circle of friends. Its aim and purpose is, according to our association’s statutes, “the promotion of art and culture by spreading the values of the author Ruth Weiss, in particular her efforts to create a society that is characterized by tolerance, humanity and the fight against racism.”
Honorary President
Ruth Weiss was involved early on against racism and the apartheid system in South Africa. During those years Ruth Weiss was in close contact with Nelson Mandela, whom she met in 1960, as well as with many other leaders of the African freedom movement. She has long been considered one of the most important African voices against racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism. In the early 1960s she was on the system’s “black list” and feared personal persecution. She was officially declared persona non grata and could no longer enter South Africa. It was not until 1991 that it was removed from the “black list” there.
A child of a Jewish family fleeing Nazi-Germany and settling in apartheid South Africa in the 1930s, Ruth Weiss’ journalistic career starts in Johannesburg of the 1950s. In 1968 banned from her home country, and then also from Rhodesia for her critical investigative journalism, she starts reporting from Lusaka, London and Cologne on virtually all issues which affect the newly independent African countries. Peasants and national leaders in southern Africa – Ruth Weiss met them all, traveling through Africa at a time when it was neither usual for a woman to do so, nor to report for economic media as she did. Her writing gained her the friendship of diverse and interesting people. In this book she offers us glimpses into some of her many long-nurtured friendships, with Kenneth Kaunda or Nadine Gordimer and many others. Her life-long quest for tolerance and understanding of different cultures shines through the many personalized stories which her astute eye and pen reveals in this book. As she put it, one never sheds the cultural vest donned at birth, but this should never stop one learning about and accepting other cultures.
Ruth has arrived safely in Jutland after her big celebration in Aschaffenburg and is still busy thanking her personally for the many congratulations, including the congratulations of the Danish king. She will send us some retrospective and forward-looking words on her special birthday, which we will forward immediately.
The baobab tree—an icon of African nature and one of the most remarkable trees on earth, closely linked to local cultures and traditions—is in danger, as we heard from the NAD Africa News in May.
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