Seraphina Twala
Seraphina Twala | |
|---|---|
| NSA member | Swaziland ???? - ???? |
| ABM | Africa ???? - ???? |
Seraphina Twala was a Swazi Bahá’í who served as an Auxiliary Board and National Spiritual Assembly member.
Biography[edit]
Twala was born into a Christian family and her father was a minister. In her career she began working at Malkerns pineapple cannery and she was introduced to the Bahá’í Faith when a fellow worker shared Bahá’í prayers with her and she declared in mid 1962. She gave a Bahá’í prayer book to her father who had no objections to her joining the religion.[1] She was appointed to the Auxiliary Board for Africa before the end of the Ten Year Crusade in 1963.[2]
As Twala was fluent in the Swati and English languages she began accompanying American pioneers John and Valera Allen on teaching trips across Swaziland to serve as a translator.[1] In 1965 she enrolled to study at the William Pitcher Teacher Training College in aiming to become a teacher and her College Matron Linda Kendle, who she was frightened of at the time, asked her about the Bahá’í Faith declaring through Twala. In August 1966 she married Bahá’í pioneer Charles Ducker which resulted in her father being threatened with expulsion from his church as Ducker was white and Twala was African.[2]
Twala was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of Swaziland after it was established in 1978. She went on pilgrimage in 1982, was invited to participate in the commemoration of the Centenary of the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh in the Holy Land in 1992, and returned again to attend the Eighth International Convention in 1998 as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Swaziland casting a vote in the election of the Universal House of Justice.[2]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Edith Johnson & Lowell Johnson, Heroes and Heroines of the Ten Year Crusade in Southern Africa, NSA of South Africa: Johannesburg, 2003, p 439
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Edith Johnson & Lowell Johnson, Heroes and Heroines of the Ten Year Crusade in Southern Africa, NSA of South Africa: Johannesburg, 2003, p 440
