Benny Wenda, the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated West Papuan independence leader, has arrived in South Africa this week on his first official visit to the country, aimed at building support for the self-determination struggle in West Papua. The tour begins only days after Wenda and fellow members of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua resubmitted their application for West Papua to join the Melanesian Spearhead Group — a move widely regarded as a significant step towards eventual Papuan statehood.
The first day of the visit saw Wenda taken on a tour of Soweto by local commanders of the Pan African Congress, visiting the homes of leaders of the anti-apartheid movement and meeting survivors of the Soweto Uprising of June 1976, in which hundreds of South African students were killed. The parallels between the apartheid system Soweto’s residents lived under and the conditions facing indigenous West Papuans under Indonesian occupation are ones Wenda has drawn repeatedly in his international advocacy.
During the tour Wenda is expected to meet politicians and family members of South African luminaries including the late Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani and King Mandla Mandela, as well as General Bantu Holomisa. He will also open a new branch of the Free West Papua Campaign — the international lobby group he founded in 2004, which now has offices in Oxford, The Hague, Port Moresby and Perth — before travelling on to Cape Town, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Durban.
Wenda was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom after fleeing West Papua in 2003. In 2011, at the behest of the Indonesian government, Interpol issued a red notice placing him at risk of extradition should he travel internationally. The notice was lifted the following year after being deemed predominantly political in nature by Interpol’s panel. Since then, Wenda has conducted an ongoing worldwide Freedom Tour, visiting Senegal, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Guyana, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the United States and across Europe.
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The Road To Home is a feature-length documentary that Dancing Turtle Films produced about Benny Wenda, tracing his life and the broader struggle for West Papuan independence. Available now on DVD and HD stream.
