'The Color of the Skin doesn't Matter'


Sr Janice McLaughlin (1942-2021) was a remarkable woman, an American 
Maryknoll nun who dedicated her life to the twin causes of education and
 justice. This memoir, completed just before her death, tells her story 
with refreshing candor. Acknowledging her naivety, which so often gives 
sustenance to idealism and the drive for a better world, she wanted to 
be a part of the struggles for freedom and independence in Africa. 
Trained as a journalist, she first began work in East Africa in 1969. 
Eight years later, she came to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to work as press
 secretary for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace at the 
height of the liberation war. Here, her outrage at the brutality of the 
Rhodesian regime led her to be denounced as a 'terrorist sympathiser'. 
She was imprisoned and deported. This defining incident led her to the 
ZANLA camps in Mozambique where she worked as an educator. 
 Sr Janice spent four decades of her life in Africa, mainly in 
Zimba­bwe. Celebrating the country's independence in 1980, she was 
consistently committed to work in social justice with the newly 
developed ZIMFEP schools, at Silveira House, and with marginal­ised 
communities. As Bishop Dieter Scholz points out in his Foreword, she did
 not evade the hard truth that after forty years the new regime has not 
fulfilled its promises to create greater equality of opportunity for the
 disadvantaged; she continued to work for a better, kinder and happier 
world. 


Auteur

Sr Janice spent four decades of her life in Africa, mainly in Zimba­bwe. Celebrating the country's independence in 1980, she was consistently committed to work in social justice with the newly developed ZIMFEP schools, at Silveira House, and with marginal­ised communities.