Peter Hannon

Guests to Peter Hannon’s homes, whether in Coleraine or Cape Town, could never be sure who they might meet.  He devoted his life to building bridges between antagonists – both in his native Northern Ireland and in South Africa.

Peter’s friends included Protestant Loyalists and Catholic Republicans in his own country and people on both sides of the apartheid struggle in South Africa. Franklin Sonn, later South Africa’s first post-apartheid ambassador to the US, said Peter’s wise counsel and support for him during the darkest years of apartheid “enabled me to remain focused and to resist bitterness”, adding that “he convinced me that the higher ground of moral leadership and reconciliation was my calling”.