02/09/2026
TUTU LECTURES 2026
Join us on Monday 28 September for the second COTT Tutu Lecture of 2026. Our speaker will be our alumnus, the Rev'd Dr Brent Frieslaar, who will be addressing the topic The Image That Cannot Be Sold: Ubuntu, the Imago Dei, and the Church’s Response to Human Trafficking. Rev'd Dr Frieslaar will argue that human trafficking is not only a social, legal, or policy crisis, but a theological crisis because it treats God’s children as though they were not fully human. Drawing on doctoral research into the testimony of five South African survivors of s*x trafficking, gathered in the field by a co-researcher, it will be argued that exploitation cannot damage or erase the image of God in a survivor. Her dignity is not damaged property waiting for repair, but a divine truth that trafficking was never able to reach. This claim will be brought into conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s theology of ubuntu, African feminist theology, and Appreciative Inquiry as a resurrection-shaped pastoral practice. It will be contended that incarnation and resurrection are not doctrines the Church merely recites, but truths it must practise through preaching, safety, accompaniment, advocacy, and sustained communal presence. What then, are we called to do as the Church?
