Malala Yousafzai in conversation with Jude Kelly
For the last few weeks, we’ve all watched on in horror and helplessness, at the events unfolding in Afghanistan.
The threat of the Taliban to the everyday life, and indeed life in general, of the people in Afghanistan cannot be overstated. It’s something that was brought starkly to home for us at the Southbank Centre in 2014, when we welcomed arguably the most prominent campaigner against the Taliban, and the Tehrik-i-Taliban, Malala Yousafszai.
Much like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan has long waged a violent campaign against girls’ education. Continuing in the footsteps of her father, the educational activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala Yousafzai first came to international prominence at the age of 11 when she wrote a blog for BBC Urdu detailing her life under Tehrik-Taliban’s occupation of the Swat Valley.
Three years later, whilst on a bus home from an exam, Yousafzai was shot by a Tehrik-i-Taliban gunman in a retaliation of her activism. Though she received a bullet to the head, Yousafzai survived and recovered from her injuries in Birmingham, before continuing her cause. In 2013 she co-authored the book I Am Malala, an international bestseller which contributed to her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.
We were lucky enough to welcome Yousafzai here at the Southbank Centre that year as she joined our then Artistic Director Jude Kelly to discuss her book, before returning in 2015 as part of WOW – Women of the World.
It is from that first appearance, in October 2014, that we bring you this timely video. Here Yousafzai discusses her roots into activism, her love of her home in the Swat Valley, and how her brothers helped ensure she didn’t quite escape being a child altogether. And also, most importantly, why her fight against the Tehrik-i-Taliban, and similar organisations who wish to suppress women’s rights to education, continues.
‘When I saw the terrorists come to Swat and ban girls education, I realised that these terrorists are afraid of the power of education, and they don’t want women to be empowered, that’s why they are stopping us from going to school.’
Malala Yousafzai
Main image by and courtesy of Annie Leibovitz