Kumi Naidoo

Kumi Naidoo (b 1965 in Durban, South Africa) is a human rights and climate justice activist.

His work made him a target for the Security Police This led him to having to go underground before he was forced to flee into exile to the United Kingdom until 1990.

He suspended his studies at Oxford to return to South Africa in 1990 in order to conduct literacy campaigns after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and Mandela's decision to run for president of South Africa.

He was later asked to lead the process to formally register the African National Congress (ANC) as a political party.

Naidoo's doctorate was earned in the late 1990s, after he returned to England from South Africa.

After Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990, Kumi Naidoo returned to South Africa to work on the legalisation of the African National Congress and to lead the adult literacy campaigns and voter education efforts.

Kumi's current voluntary roles include:

His previous voluntary roles include:

Member of the Board of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)

Kumi then served as the official spokesperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the overseer of the country's first democratic elections in April 1994.

Naidoo was the founding member and executive director of the South African National NGO Coalition.

(SANGOCO).

Naidoo, like many South African-born Indians, identifies himself as a Black South African.

He noted that the completion of his doctorate was absolutely essential given that he was told he was "the first Indian activist" from South Africa to earn a doctorate at Oxford.

During the apartheid period, Naidoo was arrested several times and was charged for violating provisions against mass mobilisation, civil disobedience and for violating the state of emergency.

This led him to having to go underground before finally deciding to go into exile, ending up with time in England and the United States.

During this time Naidoo was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford and he eventually earned a PhD in political sociology.

Naidoo served as the Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the international alliance for citizen participation, from 1998 to 2008.

As a fifteen-year old, he organised students in school boycotts against the apartheid regime and its educational system in South Africa.

Naidoo’s activism went from neighbourhood organising and community youth work to civil disobedience with mass mobilisations against the white controlled apartheid government.

Naidoo is a co-founder of the Helping Hands Youth Organisation.

He has written about his activism in this period in his memoirs titled, Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker.

In the book Naidoo recounts the day of his mother’s suicide when he was just 15 and how it became a catalyst for his journey into radical action against the Nationalist Party’s apartheid regime.

From 1998 to 2008, he was the Secretary General and chief executive officer of the initially Washington-based Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, which is dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society throughout the world.

During this time, Kumi also served as the founding chairperson of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

He was International Executive Director of Greenpeace International (from 2009 through 2015) and Secretary General of Amnesty International (from 2018 through 2019 ).

Kumi Naidoo joined Greenpeace in 2009.

He had been persuaded by his daughter Naomi to take on the role.

Greenpeace's commitment to direct action and civil disobedience was what attracted Naidoo to the organisation.

Naidoo saw his role as the executive director of Greenpeace as that of an alliance builder and an agent of change.

Importantly, Naidoo saw the intricate connections between environmental justice, women's and human rights as being interconnected, occasionally bringing him much criticism from Western-born environmentalists who tended and tend to see environmentalism as a discrete cause.

Naidoo has been actively involved in acts of peaceful civil-disobedience in the Arctic Ocean region against Shell and Gazprom's plan to drill in the Arctic's melting ice.

Kumi served as the Launch Executive Director of Africans Rising for Justice, Peace & Dignity (2016) and he was appointed as the Inaugural Global Ambassador in June 2020.[8] He has also served the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the Global Call for Climate Action (Tcktcktck.org), which brings together environmental aid, religious and human rights groups, labour unions, scientists and others and has organised mass demonstrations around climate negotiations.

Kumi Naidoo was most recently a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy He has lectured at Fossil Free University (2019 through 2021).

He has served as a Special Advisor to the Green Economy Coalition.

Kumi is an Honorary Fellow at Magdalen College and a Visiting Fellow at Oxford.

Born in Durban, South Africa, Kumi Naidoo became involved in anti-apartheid activities, resulting in his expulsion from high school.

As a fifteen-year old, he organised school boycotts against the apartheid educational system in South Africa.

In this era, he was involved in neighbourhood organising, community youth work, and mass mobilisations against the apartheid regime.

Naidoo was arrested several times and was charged for violating provisions against mass mobilisation, civil disobedience and for violating the state of emergency.