Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams to Deliver 2026 Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams will deliver the keynote address, with an intimate performance by acclaimed South African composer and singer-songwriter Msaki, as the 16th Peace Lecture asks what it means to turn our shared humanity into action.

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, the activist who helped transform a seemingly impossible campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines into one of the world’s landmark disarmament treaties, will deliver the keynote address at the 16th Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture in Cape Town on 9 October 2026.

Williams was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) for their work to ban and clear anti-personnel mines.

When the campaign launched in 1992, a global ban on landmines was considered unrealistic. Williams helped build a coalition that grew from a handful of NGOs into a movement of more than 1,000 organisations across dozens of countries and within five years, governments had negotiated the Mine Ban Treaty.

This experience of turning outrage into organised action is what Williams will bring to South Africa as the Foundation marks what would have been Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 95th birthday under the theme United for Humanity.

“Jody Williams represents something Archbishop Tutu understood deeply: that change does not belong only to presidents, governments or institutions. It happens when ordinary people decide that something is no longer acceptable and act together to change it,” says Janet Jobson, CEO of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

“At a time when South Africans are grappling with violence, inequality, division and a growing sense that some of our biggest challenges are too entrenched to change, hers is an important voice to hear,” she adds. “Jody’s life is evidence that what looks impossible can become possible when humanity moves from concern to action.”

Throughout her career, Williams has challenged conventional thinking about peace and security, advocating for human security centred on people's safety, dignity and wellbeing rather than simply the absence of armed conflict. Her work has spanned human rights, women-led peacebuilding, disarmament and the threats posed by autonomous weapons.

Her keynote will bring this global perspective into conversation with South Africa today, asking what peace means in societies where people may not be at war, yet continue to experience violence, fear, inequality and exclusion and what responsibility individuals and communities have to change the conditions they have come to accept.

The lecture forms part of TUTU95: United for Humanity, the Foundation’s programme commemorating Archbishop Tutu’s 95th birthday and asking people in South Africa and around the world a deceptively simple question:

What does humanity ask of us now?

The event will also feature a special performance by acclaimed South African composer, singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Msaki, bringing a distinctly South African expression of humanity, protest, hope and collective experience to the Peace Lecture.

Msaki has built a body of work spanning folk, soul, African traditional and electronic music, exploring love, struggle, healing and collective memory through music, visual art and performance.

A two-time South African Music Award winner and 2022 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music, Msaki also contributed as a writer, composer and artist to Black Coffee’s Grammy Award-winning album. Songs including Fetch Your Life have become part of South Africa’s contemporary musical landscape.

“Jody and Msaki bring two very different voices to the same fundamental question,” says Jobson. “One has demonstrated what becomes possible when people organise against injustice; the other expresses through music what it means to love, struggle, hope and belong in South Africa. Together, they ask us not simply to reflect on Archbishop Tutu’s legacy, but what we do with it now.”

The programme will also bring the next generation of peacebuilders into the conversation through PeaceJam and Mentoring Peacebuilders, partner organisations working to connect young people with Nobel Peace Laureates and equip them to turn ideas for peace and social change into action. Representatives from the organisations will join the Peace Lecture programme, reinforcing a central idea of United for Humanity: that building peace is not only the work of established leaders, but of the generations being equipped to lead next.

The 16th Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture takes place at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town on Friday, 9 October 2026.

The Desmond Tutu Annual International Peace Lecture was first held in 2011, when His Holiness the Dalai Lama addressed audiences via livestream after being denied entry into South Africa, which became a symbolic beginning that underscored the Lecture’s founding principle that peace speaks truth to power.

Since then, the Peace Lecture has hosted global figures including Kofi Annan, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, Maria Ressa and Melinda Gates, bringing leading voices on peace, justice and human dignity into conversation with Tutu’s legacy.

Event Details:

Friday, 9 October 2026 | Baxter Theatre, Cape Town
Keynote: 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams
Special performance: Msaki
Tickets: FREE - booking essential via Webtickets.