Black Sash leader Sheena Duncan dies

Sheena Duncan - for many years the president of the Black Sash, a nonviolent women's organisation in South Africa - has died at the age of 78.

Sheena is honoured in the first sentence of WRI's recent published anthology Women Conscientious Objectors:

"When apartheid South Africa made it illegal to advocate conscientious objection, it was a woman - Sheena Duncan, president of the Black Sash - who saw the opportunity: that it remained legal to campaign against conscription and that such a campaign would have the potential to open a new front in the struggle for a non-racist South Africa ... In 1983 Black Sash's annual assembly called for a campaign against conscription, thereby triggering the foundation in 1984 of the End Conscription Campaign."

Sheena was someone really in touch with her own power - her mind, her wit, her commitment and her generosity of spirit. She played a vital in putting international groups, such as WRI, in contact with counterparts in South Africa and finding channels for us to express solidarity with the struggle against apartheid.