Margareta Ingelstam reflects on exploring the power of nonviolence

Margareta Ingelstam reflects on exploring the power of nonviolence

msc

Thu, 10/22/2026 - 15:42

Margareta Ingelstam is a Swedish educator, author, editor, and peace activist. She is widely recognized for her pioneering work in international adoption, media democratization, and global peacebuilding.

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Photo: equmeniakyrkan.se

Please tell us about your leadership in the ecumenical monitoring programme in South Africa.

Ingelstam: I never thought about myself as a leader! We all know that Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Frank Chikane, former general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, were the strategic and courageous leaders of the struggle for democracy – including the international monitoring programme. In Sweden, Rune Forsbeck, secretary general of the Swedish Ecumenical Council, had secretly been an intermediator for many kinds of support to the struggle. He had the unusual intuitiveness needed to trust and delegate to good people in the movement.

But the process of exploring the power of nonviolence started at the Life and Peace Conference, held in Uppsala and Sweden in the spring of 1983.…