In 1978, two years after the Soweto students uprising, one year after the death of the noted anti apartheid activist Steve Biko and the banning of many progressive Christian groups in South Africa, a South African family, Jimmy and Joan Stewart, moved to Lesotho in order to live a dream God had given them. Their aspiration was to establish a non-racial community which would work for peace and justice. Their call from God to serve humanity in the area of social justice marked the birth of Transformation Resource Centre (TRC).”

James and Joan Stewart, Founders of TRC

This journey takes us back to 1951 when a young couple, James Ecclestone Stewart and his wife Joan Alice (born Hope) arrived in Lesotho. James, or Jimmy as his friends called him, was a lawyer and Joan a teacher. Jimmy had left South Africa because he could not practise law under Apartheid. They made a living by teaching English at Pius XII College in Roma, Jim earning 5 pounds sterling. From Roma they started a journey that led them to England, USA, Kenya and Malawi before returning to Lesotho. What they left behind were crates of books which would later become the first stock in the TRC library. After teaching in Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana (USA), they returned to Africa. Jimmy took a post as lecturer in the English department at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. A few years later they left Kenya, after a crisis at the University.

The Stewart couple’s next stop was Malawi. Another job for Jimmy at Malawi University as Professor and head of the English department. In Malawi, President Kamusu Banda deported the Stewarts out of the country back to South Africa, for political incitement among University staff and students. But they never wanted to stay in South Africa. Their odyssey ended in Lesotho 1978. Here the Stewarts shared their vision with others. They consulted with delegates to a conference of the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Catholic Bishops in Southern Africa, which was held in 1978 in Lesotho. Archbishop Mandla Zwane of Swaziland supported the couple as they laid their plans. The late Archbishop of Maseru, A.L.Morapeli, made a pledge to help TRC with the task of fundraising. This is how the dream took shape.

First, the Assembly Bible College and then the St. Joseph`s High School gave them accommodation. There the Stewarts began to unpack the books which they had left behind so many years ago. They started writing and praying with the Dominican monks in Maseru. They also made friends with the South African refugee community. They received help from the Dominican brothers and from some of Lesotho`s leaders who had been Jimmy`s students in the 1950s. The consultation to form an ecumenical organisation also took Jimmy to Mophatong oa Morija, where he met and had discussions with one Rev. S. Nthabane and the late Edgar Motuba who was the editor of the Leselinyane La Lesotho newspaper.

The refugee community

In the refugee community, there were some militant young men who rejected the Stewart`s principle of the non-violence struggle for liberation. To them, the struggle had to be a military-style struggle against the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The focus of TRC work from the beginning was based on ecumenism supporting non-violent change in the Southern African region, in particular the struggle to liberate South Africa. For instance, Jim organised scholarships for refugees. Joan and Jimmy also started a non-formal study group with the Dominican monks for the refugees and local Basotho students who could not get formal education. This group was called ACME. It comprised lecturers, refugees, local students and the Dominican monks who lived near ‘Mabathoana High School, where Jim and Joan lectured. ACME was a project supported by Paul Potts and Joel Moitse, lecturers from the National University of Lesotho. At a later stage, one Ms Manana Hlekane the United Nations High Commission for Refugees social worker gave financial assistance to buy books and lunch for the ACME learners.

In 1979 TRC started its work with two part-time volunteers, namely Ann Parsons from England and Tony Osei Tutu from Ghana. They were later on joined by two permanent workers, Peter Brislin and Baba Jordaan, both South Africans. In 1980, the first workshop was organised by Ann Hope who was a relative of the Stewarts’ at Mazenod, 20 Kms South East of Maseru. Others followed in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe, on issues of peace, Christian social action, and development.
As TRC grew and its activities and scope expanded so were more resources needed. Following the first grant by the German Aid organisation Misereor in 1979, other German organizations, Bread for The World and EZE, later joined as the funders for the organization. The United Church of Canada and the Canadian Development for Peace also funded projects. The Lesotho Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) country representative, Robin Gibson, organised a justice and peace worker in 1981. Richard McBride of the MCC in Canada worked at TRC as chief administrator until 1985. Then came, 2the birth of the Young Christian Students (YCS) in 1981 in Lesotho. Joan Stewart, Kallie Hanekom from the Western Cape and students from St. Augustine Seminary formed this organisation.

In 1983 another dream came true: the quarterly newsletter, Work for Justice was born. Shortly after that its Sesotho supplement, Litaba tsa Lesotho, appeared. It is through these two publications that TRC shares what we have been learning from our resources, workshops, research and from the community groups we work with. The Stewarts didn`t have a chance to learn of the impact of these publications. In July 1984 they were killed in a tragic car accident on their way to Maseru. They were buried at the Catholic cemetary at the Roma valley. After the shocking death of Joan and Jimmy, TRC was left very weak with only three staff members running the organisation. This team were Richard McBride, Baba Jordaan and Peter Brislin together with some sympathetic local volunteers.
The TRC team organised a consultation workshop at the Anglican Training Centre in 1985, with supporters and friends of the centre. The idea behind this consultation was to find out from the supporters if it was still necessary to continue after the death of the founders. The consultation workshop participants came with good ideas and suggestions that gave the TRC team mandate to go-ahead with the work and not to close the organisation. It was also at this workshop where the first TRC management committee was selected. From here TRC grew from strength to strength. Today, 30 years later, TRC has grown to include more than 15 dedicated staff members and 8 executive board members.

The Transformation Resource Centre (TRC) has taken a lead in the NGO movement. Over the 30 years, the organization has proved beyond doubt that it can provide leadership and direction to the NGO fraternity. The centre’s programmes, approaches and ethos have kept it above par. This niche dictates its spectacular position as a grassroots-oriented civil society organisation that addresses the concerns of the people. However, trends and developments that influence the organization as a social-purpose organization, pose a challenge on how it crafts its advocacy strategies. These include social ills such as abject poverty, hunger and famine that demand a drastic intervention in the form of handouts to the affected people. But TRC is not a philanthropic organization.
The strategic position that TRC has occupied in the NGO fraternity is in the democratic dispensation. TRC has been prominent in implementing robust programmes, education, advocacy and a wide range of activities which have had a huge impact on society. TRC’s outstanding role is that it has community-orientation, playing a fundamental role in the area of participation in democracy – pushing the frontiers of good governance close to people. To see people governing in the essence of the word, through parliament, grappling with the people in law-making exercise, the executive implementing policies that are informed by the people’s participation and that there is no passage of laws without the involvement of people are also on the shoulders of TRC.

TRC’s programmes are continuous and address the core problems that are at the center of the people. Some organizations only emerge during elections, but TRC’s programmes go on throughout. TRC’s community-orientation, which is the angle from which TRC is driving its programmes. It is the core for the existence of the organisation. Its association with the poor, the marginalised, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. Secondly, democracy; not only in our programmes, but in the whole management of the organization should be inculcated.
Since this organization is an ecumenical institution, we have to put Christianity on top of our agenda. Not to say that it should be a church denomination, but should be based on practical theology.

The manifestations of the church into the people and from the people into the church are cardinal. But these have not allowed the teachings of the church to filter down to the people. These manifestations have come in the manner of social ills such as criminality. There must be a sense of morality that is being injected to people by TRC. There must be a theology of action and a moral regeneration that has to be revived.

TRC is placed on a tight rope of being a community-oriented organization, but at the same time, it is supposed to have shock absorbers for politics and decision-making that seeks to address the concerns of society. This it should do without being an elite organization, serving the interests of certain seclusion within society. It should still remain credible enough to be a place to be reckoned with. It should determine a position on which it can be placed within the higher ranks of knowledge and decision-making. These two have to be balanced so that the organization does not move away from its fundamental principles.
There are also feelings even within the higher ranks of management of TRC who argue that TRC has ceased to be a resource centre at the time that refugees who founded the organization left. That thinking should be tested as you may know that TRC has been in the forefront in the formation of some key organizations such as the Lesotho Young Christian Students (LYCS) in 1981 when it was only two years old.

In 1991, it led the formation of the Lesotho Youth Federation. These organizations used to benefit from the resource centre of TRC. Methodologies that TRC uses such as training for transformation (T4T) are emphatic for serving the people. We are not saviours of people but we have to provide them with instruments that will assist them. T4T is a basic instrument that ensures that true liberation comes from the people themselves. Food and handouts come from the periphery.

But TRC has to develop shock absorbers as it conducts its affairs on that front. It is a challenge really that we cannot survive without. It presents itself in the form of whether we should sell the skills we have in democracy. For the prosperity of the organization, we can do so to use them for a good course. Trends of dwindling donor support, affect TRC as to whether it should retain its foundational philosophy. Whichever way we decide to take, we should be guided by membership of the organization. Not necessarily that we should go corporate, but have to respond to challenges of survival. Government also poses a challenge and the organisation should stick to its ethos when addressing this external factor.