Abstract:

The Bo-Kaap is a historical centre of the Cape Malay community and the oldest surviving residential neighbourhood in Cape Town whose cultural history faces significant threat due to gentrification and infringements from cultural tourism. Minoritized communities should find self-recognition in a way that offers them agency outside of the racial violence and logic imposed by settler-colonialism. This paper aims to demonstrate how liberatory memory work for the community of the inhabitants of the Bo-Kaap can aid in self-recognition through the creation of an alternative community-based archive. Urgent archiving can be enacted through generative art-based modes of collaboration, using the spoon as a material marker.

Within a feminist critical New Materialist theoretical framework, objects emerge as vibrant matter that have agency to expose intra-actions between enmeshed realities. A spoon draws together themes of identity formation in post-Apartheid South Africa, tying in food, material histories and notions of the heirloom. The spoon serves as an anchor for engaging with intra-disciplinary, mixed-methods qualitative research that draws on approaches from cultural studies, critical design and archival practice. Through creative practice, autoethnography and an intended focus group, this paper aims to explore how making can contribute to building an alternative archive underpinned by social justice.

Mishkah Abrahams is an artist, designer and researcher pursuing a MA in Visual Arts from the Stellenbosch University’s Visual Arts Department. She is a joint fellow of the Centre for the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest, Stellenbosch University and Imagining Futures Through Un/Archived Pasts, University of Exeter. Her creative practice merges illustration, design and installation pieces to interrogate temporal and geopolitical factors in identity construction within contemporary South Africa.

Biography:

Abstract:

I investigate the trauma of the Herero and Nama women and children at the hands of the German colonialists by narrating their experiences as depicted in The Lie of the Land (2017) by Jasper D. Utley. I especially explore the under-investigated sexual violence against the women and children during the Herero and Nama genocide as portrayed in the selected literary text. Wolfram Hartmann (2007) notes that sexual violence during this period is largely undocumented, though can be traced to have occurred. Thus, literary texts such as the one under exploration, reconstruct and re-enact the brutalities and violence that women and children endured during that period. I read and interpret trauma in a literary context in order to adequately explore the overlapping systems of oppression of these women and children as depicted in The Lie of the Land (2017). This selected literary text speaks to the realities of the Herero and Nama women and children’s lives as victims and contemporaries from a contiguous country with long histories of violence which has cumulative trauma that is linked to several violent events of the genocide

Biography:

Eva-Liisa Andima is a literary scholar affiliated with the AVReQ centre and is currently pursuing her PhD in English literature at Stellenbosch University. Her PhD project is titled “An African Ecofeminist Exploration of the Gendered and Environmental Facets of the Herero and Nama Genocide as Depicted in Selected Narratives of the Genocide”.

Abstract:

During apartheid, South Africans were mass classified by race, giving rise to racialized hierarchies based on the dehumanizing ideology of ‘Whiter is superior’. A history of gross violations of human rights ensued. Despite the transition to liberation in 1994, the deeply rooted racial hierarchies constructed during apartheid remain entrenched in South Africa today. To better understand how this socio-historical hierarchies continue to impact experiences of dehumanization in post-apartheid South Africa, we applied a meta-dehumanization theoretical model to the South African context. The model, which was originally based on dehumanization in clinical contexts, presents a broad framework that contextualizes the factors that precipitate experiences of dehumanization, considering both internal and external processes that may interact to influence outcomes. In essence, this work underscores the fact that the subjective experience of dehumanization goes beyond social interactions that frustrate fundamental human needs; these experiences are also deeply rooted in the historical dehumanizing system of apartheid, which crafted physical environments and structures that continue to signal social exclusion to many Black South Africans. Underlining the structural barriers that perpetuate these experiences could curb system-justifying myths that support hierarchical inequality and open new avenues for intervention to tackle the structural conditions that maintain institutionalized dehumanization.

Biography:

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Abstract:

Of the challenges in interrupting the ongoing intergenerational legacies of colonial violence and trauma is recognising how these play out in the present. Three key issues are critical: what we understand by violence, what we recognise as trauma, and how these two things are interlinked. By analysing collective killing of Abongile Mafalala and the ongoing political assassinations of leaders of the landless peoples’ movement as examples, this presentation argues that violence often takes different forms from those most commonly represented in the media and everyday conversations. It shows that violence is not simply a tactic used by criminals, but a range of practices built into all aspects of everyday life. Understanding it this way helps us to move beyond reducing the problem to punishing criminals, and rather to investigate how it is an expression of deep historical brutality, and how this continues to reproduce itself in the present. It then becomes clearer how seemingly inexplicable acts of individual and social dysfunction can be more clearly reconceptualised as expressions of unresolved intergenerational trauma, and we can explore exactly how these historical forms of violence continue to be reproduced in current generations. As specific problem here is the risk losing a credible vision of a society that is not just less violent, but that is actively caring, inclusive, nurturing, and supportive. In a global context of waning democracy and the resurgence of aggressive authoritarian politics, and local disillusion with historical liberation networks and corrupt politics on every level, the very idea of a society beyond trauma may be increasingly hard to imagine. This paper shows how it is precisely by understanding this difficulty that it may be possible to articulate the conditions that are necessary to create a society beyond the relentless cycles of historical violence and trauma.

Biography:

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Abstract:

The preamble of the South African Constitution states: “We, the people of South Africa, recognise the injustices of our past.” How could this “recognition” be embodied for the generation of white South African men who faced compulsory conscription into the South African Defence Force during the Nationalist Party’s strategy of “total response”, to what was construed as a “total onslaught” of communism and African nationalism? From 2021-2022, Anelia Heese interviewed 50 veterans of this conflict for her podcast, diensplig.org. The podcast’s objective was to test whether the ritual of storytelling can contribute to intergenerational reconciliation for white, Afrikaans speaking South Africans. During these semi-structured phone interviews, Heese asked veterans to recall the key events such as receiving their force number, basic training, deployment in Angola and involvement during the Mass Democratic Movement of the 1980s. Interviews concluded with a discussion on current South African affairs. For many veterans, the interview evolves into an attempt to find meaning in their own involvement as enforcers of the Apartheid regime. Some question their role as soldiers in this delegitimised conflict. For most, however, admitting to suffering from trauma robs them of agency in their post-conflict narrative. Admitting to inflicting trauma implies retribution for behaviour that was state sanctioned and socially sanctified at the time. During this multimedia presentation, Heese argues that for younger generations, the victim-perpetrator dichotomy is not a helpful moral model to judge the legacy of this group. Rather, communities could consider psychosomatic scarring as a proxy for accountability. Instances of stress related stuttering corresponding with their attempts to elucidate military euphemisms (“contact”, “enemy”, “trouble”, “cleaning up”, “bodies”) will be presented and analysed. Heese suggests that stuttering could be a veteran’s technique of recognising injustice. Moreover, it could imply that this recognition is enough to set reconciliation in motion.

Biography:

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Abstract:

‘Now You’ll See How this Place Works’: A Fanonian Reading of Luister

Luister (2015), a documentary produced as part of the Open Stellenbosch movement, opens with a discordant montage of images and voices, which highlights the stubborn, palimpsestic memories that shape Stellenbosch town. In the opening shot, voices and images are hauntingly layered to create a sense of multiple disembodied presences struggling to come to consciousness. The documentary then cuts to the face of a young Black man who dejectedly declares: “I feel like it’s wrong to be black”. His statement is eerily evocative of the decapitating experience of blackness described by Frantz Fanon in his essay, “The Fact of Blackness”. Thus, using Fanon’s chapter as heuristic guide, I read Luister as an archive of Black affect, and as a diary of black students’ traumatic encounters with Stellenbosch town. My aim is to examine the forms of disembodiment produced at the intersection of race, gender, and space. I am particularly interested in the images invoked by the interviewed students to narrate their experiences. By drawing a link between the creative autobiographical account of unmaking presented by Fanon in “the Fact of Blackness” and the traumatically fracked accounts of being presented in Luister, I also seek to make a case for the continued relevance of Fanon as a companion through the global, unceasing weather of anti-blackness.

Biography:

Stephen Temitope David is a postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ) at Stellenbosch University. He holds a PhD in Literature from Stellenbosch University and a master’s degree in African Literature from the University of Ibadan. His research takes the Nigeria-Biafra Civil war and its afterlife as a point of departure in examining the links that exist between nostalgia and political violence in African countries with emotionally charged histories

Abstract:

Frank Kitson’s experience as a young military officer in colonial Africa had sealed his reputation as a military strategist and propelled his career to the extent that he became the General Commander of the 39th Brigade in Northern Ireland during the most violent years of the conflict (September 1970 to April 1972).   Kitson wrote extensively about his various ‘successes’ in infiltrating the Mau Mau and Kukuyu tribes by ‘turning’ tribesmen into informers where they had demonstrated loyalty to the crown.  This raised questions about the influence of the Kenyan uprising on the conduct of the British Army in Northern Ireland.  His textbook for counter-insurgency operations recommends infiltrating insurgent groups to collect ‘background information’ that can become ‘contact information’ to ‘eliminate the enemy’.  Covert surveillance is to be key to the information gathering techniques used by the M.O.D. to collect ‘target information’.  In this paper, I demonstrate how his strategies for surveillance, developed in the bush and jungles of Africa and Malaya, were applied at the Shankill Falls Divide in Belfast, during 1972.  Using architectural drawings of observation posts, the Commanders Diary, and Kitson’s manual, I will demonstrate how Kitson’s stewardship of the conflict in Belfast coincided with a shift from overt to covert surveillance.

Biography:

Architect Dr. Karin Reenie Elliott ARB RIBA has taught at Oxford Brookes University, London Metropolitan University, the University of Greenwich, Norwich University of the Arts and Queens University Belfast. Her specialisms are architectural design, technology and theory: postmodernism, contextualism, constructivism, post colonialism, and surrealism.  She recently completed her PhD in Architecture entitled ‘Invisibility, Appropriation and Subversion: Observation Positions at the Shankill Falls Divide’ and co-ran a conference entitled Borderlands Architecture. Her work in practice in New York, Paris, and London can be seen on her website: www.invisiblearchitecture.co.uk.

Abstract:

Exploring multidirectional memory: Africa and the First World War

This paper takes seriously the entanglement of traumatic histories. Following Stef Craps’s call to scholars in memory studies to pay greater attention to links between First World and colonial trauma – an awareness he considers essential “for trauma studies to have any hope of redeeming its promise of ethical effectiveness” (2013: 72), I examine and compare two works that portray trauma of the First World War in relation to trauma of colonialism. The Head and the Load, a multimedia opera directed by William Kentridge, with music by Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi, aims to inform about the relatively unknown history of porters enlisted on the African continent in the war effort. French author David Diop’s acclaimed novel, At night all blood is black, told through the perspective of a Senegalese colonial soldier, explores both the harrowing experience of trench warfare and the narrator’s identity as racial and cultural outsider among his French comrades. Drawing from Michael Rothberg’s conception of “multidirectional memory” (the idea that memory is not stable, but rather “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing”) (2009: 3), I argue that these recent works complicate understandings of the Great War and thereby illustrate the multi-directionality of traumatic histories.

Biography:

René Esterhuyse completed an undergraduate degree in music, an honours degree in French and is currently a master’s student in Musicology at Stellenbosch University. Working under the supervision of Dr Carina Venter, her dissertation considers contemporary portrayals of traumatic histories in music and literature, with a specific focus on African perspectives of the First World War. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, memory in a South African and African context, and the use of the arts for commemoration and social justice.

Abstract:

Aftermath of assassinations: working with leaders of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement. 

I will describe my experience and work with leaders of the Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dweller movement in Durban after the assassinations of four young leaders earlier this year.

I refer to an Op-Ed for Daily Maverick (Citizen) in which I describe visiting the homes of two of the assassinated leaders in the eKhanana settlement, where I met family and commune members in the Frantz Fanon school. I reflect on the isolation and struggles of the Abahlali people over many years and describe the impact of these assassinations on the community, its leaders , on myself and former Bishop Verryn, who accompanied me on one visit.

I discuss how the Abahlali leaders struggle and cope with daily life, losses and stresses, the symptoms they manifest, and the ways in which they manage them. I draw on literature on the therapeutic value of witnessing and on AbM’s collective mourning and grieving processes.

Questions I tackle include: How do Abahlali leaders face their need to be strong, whilst recognizing the need for honesty about their vulnerability? And: How do they and commune members cope with the constant, sustained violence, and threats to their lives?

Biography:

Lauren Gower works in Johannesburg as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and clinical psychologist. She is a human rights defender working with the leadership of the Abahlali baseMjondolo shack dweller movement. She is a member of the South African Institute of Responsive and Accountable Governance, working on whistle-blower and witness protection. She is a writer, editor, and proof-reader.

Abstract:

She is “Women”: The Unending trauma of female Indian indentured labourers in South Africa

Trauma emanates from incidents that are life threatening and emotional disturbing. In 1860, Indians were brought to South Africa by the British Government to work as indentured labourers on the sugar cane plantations. The realities for these indentured labourers were harsh and their experiences could best be described as traumatic. Although both indentured Indian men and women were abused and experienced trauma, this research focuses on the indentured women as they suffered additional abuse and oppression because of their sex. They were placed at the very bottom of the class, race and gender hierarchy. Indentured Indian women were afforded no respect as they were classified as unskilled. Patriarchal oppression and abusive slave-like treatment on the sugar cane plantations shaped their lives. Furthermore, they had to juggle back breaking work on the plantations with wifely and motherhood duties.  Overburdened and caught in a vicious cycle of abuse and trauma, the Indian indentured woman is subjected to a myriad of challenges, more  than any one woman should experience or deal with in her lifetime Hence, as the title indicates, ‘she is women’.

Biography:

Dr Claudine Anita Hingston is an academic, gender expert, researcher, mentor, humanitarian, African feminist and an advocate for women’s empowerment and rights. She has over twenty years working experience in various institutions in Sierra Leone, United Kingdom and South Africa. Dr Hingston holds a B.A degree, a Diploma in Mass Communication, a Diploma in Cultural Studies, a Masters in Gender Studies and a PhD in Gender Studies. Currently, she serves as a senior academic lecturer at MANCOSA and also plays an active role at the Mancosa Centre for Women in Leadership.  Her areas of interest and expertise are gender, women’s empowerment, leadership, feminism, media and Africanism and she has published several articles in these areas.  Dr Hingston loves dancing, cooking and networking.

Abstract:

How might one study violence in Fisantekraal and how one might reimagine futures

In South Africa, high levels of violent incidences continue to persist in the Western Cape, in areas such as the Cape Flats and Fisantekraal (South African Police Department, Quarter One Crime Statistics, August 2021/2022).  The works of Veena Das (2003) and Laurence Ralph (2014) show how experiences of violence and the social significance attached to it are not always easily expressed or made knowable through discourse. In employing ethnographic methods and using spatial theory , this research aims to explore the lived experiences of young adults living in Fisantekraal who live amidst violence on a daily basis . It aims to understand how their spaces of residence and movements might shape who and how  violence is experienced and how experiences of violence shape and are shaped by where and how people inhabit space. In observing how they navigate their daily lives, routines and space amidst violence, this research hopes to elicit how they reimagine their futures and envision development within and through living in the wake of violence. This way of studying violence may also reveal insight into how concepts of trauma, testimony and “bearing witness” are understood and may shape and be shaped by residents’ discussions and interpretation of violence and its effects within their daily life.

Biography:

I am currently completing my Masters degree in Sociology at Stellenbosch University from 2022-2024. I am based in Durbanville, Cape Town. I’m currently interested in how experiences, interpretations and effects of violence might be shaped by and shape spaces of residence, daily life and envisioning of futures, development and transformation within post apartheid South Africa.

Abstract:

Local memories of slavery and slave trade in southwestern Tanzania

Local people living around Livingstone mountains close to Lake Nyasa in southwestern Tanzania repeatedly mention ‘Lilanga la Ngondo’ (sometimes spelled ‘Lilangangondo’) in reference to rocky inselbergs in which their forefathers previously retreated to avoid slave raids and other attacks. Our test excavations at one such inselbergs near a small town of Ruanda in Mbinga district yielded a few 19th century European glass beads, local ceramics as well as human and animal bones. Taken together, these materials are sufficient to prove local narratives that Lilangangondo held some advantage for hiding especially when considering clear disadvantages of occupying those areas, in particular complications around securing water and food. Surprisingly, European travelers who journeyed southwestern Tanzania and documented the happenings of slavery and slave trade missed these important information on how locals in this region navigated through the throes of enslavement. This paper will discuss the major findings to relation to reading and recording slavery in African archaeology.

Biography:

Baraka Edward Ibare is a postgraduate student at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) pursuing MA. in Archaeology. Baraka has been appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Exeter, UK., and he is a beneficiary of the Imagining Futures Scholarship. Having interests in Historical Archaeology, Baraka has been assisting in various researches of the same across the country (Tanzania). His current research is on the “Local Memories of Slavery and Slave Trade in Southwestern Tanzania.”

Abstract:

In this presentation I aim to reflect on how traditional Rwandan songs that form part of a national repertoire and archive become crucial modes of articulating a sense of belonging for refugees living in exile. I will draw from my own experience and memory – as both a traditional dancer and refugee – in Gihozo Cultural Group to consider the ways in which songs emerge and create an affective-scape where history surfaces in the body through performance. Gihozo Cultural Group is a traditional Rwandan dance group that was established in 2004 by Rwandan refugees living in Johannesburg who wished to maintain ties to the country after the war in 1994. My research seeks to explore the role that Gihozo has in the reconstruction of narratives of identity, amongst its impunzi or refugee members. This will be done by investigating the curation of songs and dances as narrative modes that can provide insight into the self-making of impunzi.

My presentation will be focused on literature that is supporting my current thinking and theoretical framing. I will analyze the limitations of current scholarship and propose the value of considering the animated body of impunzi in performance as a crucial intersectional site that creates new ways of understanding intergenerational transmissions of loss, longing and belonging.

Biography:

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Abstract:

Victim or perpetrator, or victim and perpetrator: Examining identity in Gilbert Gatore’s The Past Ahead

Gilbert Gatore’s 2008 novel The Past Ahead traces the journeys of Niko and Isaro. Niko is trying – literally – to run from his past while Isaro is attempting to situate herself within the history of her country and her family. While the novel does not name the country in which it is set, the general consensus, given Gatore’s Rwandan nationality, is that it occurs in post-genocide Rwanda. Gatore challenges the opposing definitions of victim and perpetrator, asking if it is possible to be both victim and perpetrator and if so, what this means for how we view identity in the aftermath of the genocide. Presented first as a neglected child, Niko’s story inspires sympathy in the reader. It soon transpires, however, that he participated in the slaughter of Tutsis. As he grapples with his guilt, so we struggle to reconcile these two versions of him. Gatore forces us to confront some uncomfortable questions: Is it possible to sympathise with a murderer? Should we? Such questions are directly tied to the definitions of perpetrator and victim, categories which are often oversimplified, thereby eliding the perpetrator’s own trauma.

Biography:

I am currently studying for my Master of Arts in English literature at Rhodes University with a thesis titled “Rwanda cannot be exorcised”: Representations of the Trauma of the Rwandan Genocide in Selected Films and Novels. My research focuses on the ways in which a number of literary works, both cinematic and written, engage with the trauma of pre- and post-genocide Rwanda. I hold a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education – specialising in English and History at the FET level – from Rhodes University. I have previously presented papers at the SASGLS conference, the UP Femicide round-table and African Feminisms conference. Previous writings include papers on trauma, masculinity and violence in war films as well as France’s burqa ban.

Abstract:

Youth and adolescents in Kenya, and across much of Africa, experience chronic stress and trauma due to high levels of poverty, unemployment, domestic violence/abuse, police harassment, exposure to events such as violent crime, electoral violence, witnessing extra-judicial killings, and terrorism (i.e., youth recruitment by al-Shabaab). Transgenerational and historical trauma is also a challenge in these contexts. Studies have shown that trauma can reduce futures thinking skills and aptitudes, and thus reduce an individual’s futures consciousness. Neurobiological studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging reveal that past and future thinking are processed in the same regions of the brain, thus the semantic memory works to project the past into the future. Therefore, unresolved, constraint-laden, traumatising pasts can lead to limited abilities to envision a better future. This paper provides preliminary evidence to suggest community-led trauma healing interventions that utilise holistic mental health and psychosocial support approaches within these marginalised groups result in increased capacity within five dimensions of futures consciousness (agency beliefs, systems perspectives, time perceptions, concern for others, and openness to alternatives). This is equipping current/future generations with the ability to proactively identify new pathways for fostering the conditions and behaviours that will facilitate building flourishing societies in Kenya.

Biography:

Dr. Steven Lichty is a strategic foresight consultant based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a managing partner and co-founder of REAL Consulting Group, a research, evaluation, and management consulting firm serving clients in the humanitarian aid and international development sector. Steven recently completed his MPhil in Futures Studies at Stellenbosch University. His research focused on community-led trauma healing programmes and their impact on futures consciousness.

Abstract:

Re-imaging and Redressing Trauma Through Art

South Sudan in its independence, echoes the same forms of violence which it sought to liberate itself from. Thus, the hope bestowed by its secession was short-lived as the country relapsed into a state of civil war which culminated in the signing of the R-ARCSS peace agreement in 2018. While the agreement restored relative negative peace, the country still grapples with various forms of actual and structural violence.

An artist collective- Ana Taban emerged in 2016 to confront the state on issues of corruption and social injustice. The group consisting of refugee youth based in and outside South Sudan leverages the unfettered, unbridled nature of art to both hold the government accountable and articulate their aspirations for a prosperous South Sudan.

This roundtable seeks to interrogate the antagonistic relationship between state and its use of coercive power to enforce dominance; and art as an ally to the human pursuit of freedom from subjugation. Situated within the context of Ana Taban’s artistic works, the dialogue will explore art as a tool to confront violent pasts and presents, but also as a medium of repair and reconciliation towards peaceful futures.

Biography:

Margaret LoWilla is a practitioner and researcher in the Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace and Security space. She is currently a Programme Associate at the African Leadership Centre. Her research interests include: Women and the state in Africa, Youth, Peace and Security, Political Resistance in Digital and Creative Spaces and Post Conflict Reconciliation and Societal Healing.

Abstract:

Culture as Medicine?  Exploring Substance Use Addiction and Recovery through the lens of Historical Trauma and Indigenous Medicine

My doctoral research – Culture as Medicine? South African indigenous understandings of addiction and recovery – is a performative and experimental exploration of Critical Indigenous Pedagogy grounded in my ancestral cosmology of Ubu-Ntu. It plays with ancient and modern ways of knowing – storytelling and dreaming – and contributes a personal narrative on addiction and recovery. It seeks to deepen understandings of substance use addiction and recovery, to include notions of historical trauma, dispossession, alienation and insecure attachment to ancestors, nature, and land. It is a co-creative project, collaborating with Indigenous Health Practitioners, researchers and people in recovery to explore the limitations of current allopathic treatment offerings in South Africa and explore how the field of indigenous medicine has understood and responded, historically, to high levels of alcohol and drug addiction in South Africa, a lasting impact of colonialism and dispossession.

Biography:

Ntsiki Mackay-Anderson is a mother, dreamer, researcher and community-wellness practitioner.  Community-wellness, land and nature connection are themes that pull together her life’s work and activism. After vowing never to return to academia, her doctoral research has taken her on an uncomfortable journey of personal and collective healing – of body-mind-spirit and the legacy of historical trauma and epistemicide.  She is based in Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, and is a recipient of a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities studentship.   Her work is a process of re-memorying and recovering indigenous ways of knowing, learning and being, especially storytelling and using dreaming as methodology.

Abstract:

This paper looks at the methodology, benefits and accessibility of healing circles in the context building resilience amongst women (and men) in high violence communities in South Africa. It examines the methodology and effectiveness of healing circles in two communities (Manenberg and Lavender Hill) where pilot projects are being undertaken.

Healing circles can help to provide a safe space to those working through continuous trauma, allowing participants to articulate their wounding as part of a shared experience. Healing circles as an intervention are low hanging fruit, not requiring large capital costs or specialist personnel. They can benefit those with little access to expensive professional specialist help.

The methodology of healing circles aligns with the values of restorative justice and Ubuntu . We are all interconnected through a web of relationships.

Healing Circles embody the best of the ancient practice of gathering around a campfire, weaving Restorative Justice principles in to some key discussions about incidents and policy in South Africa’s post Apartheid era. This paper will touch on some of those incidents in practice.

Biography:

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Abstract:

Youth violence as  form of  resistance  in Pre and Post-Apartheid South Africa’s predominantly Black Townships

Over the years, exposure to violence in South Africa has become common, and victimisation and the witnessing of violence has directly contributed to more violent behaviour. Although, the forms and reasons for violence have shifted over time. Certain provinces and cities, have been most afflicted by the new form of youth violence, code-named ‘Gurans’, consisting mainly of secondary school male youths. Who appear to indiscriminately practice blood shedding, ruthlessness, and killings. The paper uses the results from focus group discussions with affected youth in Khayelitsha Township and uses Violentisation theory to interrogate the violent behavior of these youth in their communities. It is suggested the most critical step necessary in the quest to eradicate the scourge of youth violence from communities is to first understand the personal experiences of youth living in violent-ridden communities, which encourages youth to practice violence, as a means of  survival. Such an approach will help to understand the underlying circumstances on why more youth are turning to violence, why they are devising new methods to mete such violence and as well as the broad effects of the violence.

Biography:

Sisanda is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape Town. She completed a Master’s in Social Development from University of Cape Town, and a PhD in Social Development from the same university. Her PhD dissertation involved the collection of empirical data on youth violence focusing on perpetrators, secondary schooling learners, educators and community members, case study in Khayelitsha.  Sisanda’s research interests are youth violence and crime with a focus on marginalised communities. She is passionate about peace and conflict resolution, and youth and community development.

Abstract:

The paper is based on a qualitative study conducted in Johannesburg to explore the ways in which the memory of gukurahundi has been forged, transmitted and altered within the social site of family. Operation Gukurahundi was a mass killing of the Ndebele ethnic group in Zimbabwe from 1983-1987 ordered by the state. The government enforced repressive conditions to police the silencing of this event (Sisulu; 2007, Cameron; 2017). The research argues that the story of gukurahundi was never monopolized by the Zimbabwean government despite their efforts to repress it. The research further demonstrated how the memory of gukurahundi is constituted in a variety of situations within the social site of the family. For example, the cultural-historical socialization of younger generations, as well as relatives who were killed in the violence being memorialized in family portraits. The research also revealed that the social site of family complicates the transmission of the memory of gukurahundi because of the ways in which members relate to one another. This mixed terrain of recalling, transmission and interpretation of the memory of gukurahundi has kept the violent memory alive but also creates tensions across the different generations in each family.

Biography:

Nomaqhawe Molife is a PhD candidate in Migration and Displacement at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests are centered around matters of identity and belonging in contemporary Africa.

Abstract:

The complexity of the Majimaji Memorial Museum exhibition in Songea Tanzania

Majimaji Memorial Museum is the only museum in Tanzania designated to the memories of colonial violence. The museum was officially opened in 1980 by community members who were affected by the Majimaji war to remember their ancestors who were the victims of the war. The museum is located in a place where community members used to hold their traditional ceremonies to honor the Majimaji heroes and where the mass graves of the victims of the colonial atrocities during the Majimaji were buried. The Majimaji Museum is unique. It includes graves, artifacts, and monuments that collectively serve as a memorial for war heroes and heroines. The nature of the museum ownership, landscape, collection, exhibition, memory, trauma and design present a diverse range of material and meanings which brings in a complex and extraordinary form of museum in Africa.

This paper will explore this complexity of the Majimaji Memorial Museum which has not been a subject of research since its establishment, and propose plans to contribute to the co-creation of a new museum exhibition, using the tools of inclusivity and digital design.

Biography:

Zuhura is currently a MA candidate in Heritage Management at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She is also a beneficiary of the Imagining Futures Masters Scholarship and Honorary Associate research fellow from the university of Exeter. Currently Zuhura work on her MA. project entitled “The Complexity of the Majimaji Memorial museums exhibition in Songea Tanzania”.

Abstract:

What meanings do black South African women construct about testifying in African Pentecostal churches about their suffering? 

This study engages with religious testimony within African Pentecostal churches as a key site which black women in post-conflict societies use to engage in the practice of testifying about their suffering. It explores how testimony functions in the everyday struggles of black women in South Africa whose lives are shaped by multiple experiences of suffering. In locating testimony within the religious lived experiences of black women, this study provides key insights into the complex intersection of testimony, suffering and religion by drawing on trauma and theological literature. The findings are drawn from a thematic analysis of four black South African women’s narratives and ask what meanings they construct about testifying in church about their personal suffering. The findings highlight the importance of religious testimony in the lives of African Pentecostal black women as a way to deal with varied meanings of traumatic experience that range from PTSD, continuous trauma, and spiritual oppression. However, the findings also reflect the limitations of testimony within Pentecostal religious settings particularly as it relates to black women’s liberation and thus calls for radical theologies of healing.

Biography:

Ayanda’s work has focused on building reconciliation in South Africa working at levels of policy and dialogue. She is a facilitator of dialogue and women’s storytelling circles. She holds an Mphil in Religion and Culture (Cum laude) from Stellenbosch University.

Abstract:

Inspired by testimonies heard over the radio broadcast of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Amnesty Hearings, Judith Mason painted the triptych The Man Who Sang and the Woman Who Kept Silent (1998). The work speaks to the final acts of the two ANC cadres, Harold Sefola who asked for permission to sing Nkosi Sikelel before being electrocuted, and Phila Ndwandwe who refused to become an informant and was therefore assassinated.

South Africa’s TRC ran from 1995 to 2002 during which it received over 22,000 statements from victims of gross human rights violations and held public hearings across South Africa where victims of gross human rights violations could give testimony. In addition, the TRC received more than 7,000 amnesty applications and grated 1,500 amnesties for the crimes committed during apartheid.

Phila Ndwandwe joined uMkhonto weSizwe in KwaZulu-Natal in 1985. She was part of the unit responsible for the infiltration of ANC cadres into Natal. From about July/August 1988 she became the acting commander of MK in Swaziland. In October 1988, she was abducted by the Port Natal Security Branch in an effort to turn her into an informant. However she refused to work for them and for that she was shot in the head while kneeling on Elandskop farm, 80 meters from her family’s home in KwaZulu-Natal.

This information came to light during the TRC Amnesty Hearings, which received seven amnesty applications from members of the Port Natal Security Branch. Using these hearings and Mason’s piece I look at how art has been used to address apartheid violences. Inspired by the work of Saidiya Hartman, I read for Phila Ndwandwe in the transcripts and Mason’s piece. I read for her body, in how it is described and depicted, focusing on the relationship between the body, violence, and the body as archive.

Biography:

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Abstract:

Silence as a mothering practice: Stories of motherhood during and after ‘the Troubles’ 

This paper explores the meanings of silence about the troubled past within families through the voices of ordinary mothers in Northern Ireland. By doing so, the paper will engage in a re-conceptualisation of silence in conflict-affected societies. In 2021, the presenter conducted ethnographic research with mothers who lived through ‘the Troubles’. The study suggested a prevalence of mothers’ silence about their past in front of their children.

Silence is considered crucial in the ghost and haunting of the past. Recent research calls attention to silence as a choice in conflict-affected societies, not as a consequence of repression. Brewer (2022) called such self-imposed silence ‘voluntary silence’, contrasting it with ‘involuntary silence’ imposed by social power relations.

The study suggested that mothers in ‘peacetime’ are starting to regret their ‘voluntary silence’. For instance, some regret their silence believing that they passed down their trauma to their children. The paper will suggest calling such silence among mothers ‘remorseful silence’.

The paper will argue for a typology of silence that pays nuanced attention to different meanings attached to silences. The paper will show that while many mothers choose silence as a coping strategy, their everyday actions constantly interact with the moral landscape in societies.

Biography:

Yumi Omori is a PhD student in Sociology working at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral research explores motherhood experiences during and after ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Her research interest is in how ordinary mothers’ mundane reasoning and practices in everyday family life interact with the transformations of the moral landscape in conflict-affected societies.

Abstract:

Breaking the Axis of Reflection: A Critical Inquiry into Institutional (Re)membrance of Student Activism at Stellenbosch University

The erasure of student-led redress in retelling activist stories in the Stellenbosch context raises questions surrounding the continual erasure of marginalised bodies within violent histories. Does this (re)membering of Stellenbosch form a counter-archive alongside actual institutional realities? If there is amnesia, who is under its wrath? And to what end? For whom does Stellenbosch (re)member? The reclamation of student activist narratives by South African universities and academics has had violent consequences on remembrance and memory. Yet these practices of (re)membering indicate what an activist in the Waking Stellenbosch film stated is a symptom of “institutional amnesia”. If there is indeed “institutional amnesia,” what do institutional language and memory campaigns alongside activists do?

Reflecting on this, Basson and Abba-Omar (2022) argue that “an important distinction must be made between un-remembering and forgetting.” This paper will critically and reflexively consider the above implications utilising critical fabulation theory (Hartman, 2008) through an autoethnographic lens. Furthermore, the reflections form part of the first in a series of reflexive academic engagements between two former student activists to consider how far beyond the line Stellenbosch is willing to venture in their (re)membering practices.

Biography:

Ijeoma Opara is currently a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Stellenbosch University, under the auspices of the SARChi Chair in Gender Politics – her project investigates the construction of black femme postfeminist identity in South Africa through the lens of Slay Queen culture. After being awarded the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship in 2017, she completed her Masters in International Relations at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is also a freelance creative writer, DJ and research consultant with a keen interest in African politics, transnationalism and gender studies.

Abstract:

Healing the canvas body: A performance as research responding to the effects of storytelling within legacies of violence.

This presentation is a ten-minute devised physical theatre performance processing how stories in the media as well as personal ones, come together to ignite conversations about lingering wounds. Its purpose is to explore what it means to hold stories of violence in the body and how a symbolic ritual with the audience can co-create meaning to honour collective efforts for repair. I conceptualise the body as a ‘story carrier’ and canvas. The work is inspired by my doctoral study which investigated the experiences of applied drama and theatre practitioners working with vulnerable communities, and their relationship to place and space. My artistic influences draw from the works of Lloyd Newson and Akram Khan, and anchors them within the paradigm of arts-based research; performance as research. The methodological approach veers away from traditional means of inquiry by prioritising artistic practices as valid modes of knowledge production. The performance therefore uses a combination of choreography and spoken word to foreground a story’s relationship to the body (as space and the body in place). Using creative instruments, performance as research enables me to ask: how can using a physical theatre performance respond to the effects of storytelling within legacies of violence?

Biography:

Lireko Qhobela holds an MA in drama therapy and is currently a PhD candidate with The Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and Reparative Quest together with the drama department at Stellenbosch University. She is a performer, drama therapist, and a drama facilitator.

Abstract:

Mine Mine Mine is a personal narration of Uhuru Portia Phalafala’s family’s experience of the migrant labor system brought on by the gold mining industry in Johannesburg, South Africa. Using geopoetics to map geopolitics, Phalafala follows the death of her grandfather during a historic juncture in 2018, when a silicosis class action lawsuit against the mining industry in South Africa was settled in favor of the miners. Phalafala ties the catastrophic effects of gold mining on the miners and the environment in Johannesburg to the destruction of Black lives, the institution of the Black family, and Black sociality. Her epic poem addresses racial capitalism, bringing together histories of the transatlantic and trans-Indian slave trades, of plantation economies, and of mining and prison-industrial complexes. As inheritor of the migrant labor lineage, she uses her experience to explore how Black women carry intergenerational trauma of racial capitalism in their bodies and intersects the personal and national, continental and diasporic narration of this history within a critical race framework.

Biography:

Lireko Qhobela holds an MA in drama therapy and is currently a PhD candidate with The Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and Reparative Quest together with the drama department at Stellenbosch University. She is a performer, drama therapist, and a drama facilitator.

Abstract:

Archiving Mythical Landscapes Features and Ritual Objects among the Ikoma of Western Serengeti 

Most African scholars, practitioners and government perceive cultural heritage based on criteria and variables established in the global north, which includes, visibility, permanence, centrality and ubiquity, such perceptions among other things have rendered down the conceptualization of cultural heritage to mostly mean tangible sites such as monuments and/or protected areas. Moreover, the criteria used by heritage agencies in Africa determine and declare heritage assets for protection and cherishing are alien to the local custodians of heritage, consequently, local communities have been dissociating from such heritages including not to offering support to protect them. Some scholarly studies (e.g., Ichumbaki 2015, Said 2020, Said & Ichumbaki 2022) have shown that in several regions in Tanzania, local communities own ‘things’ they have declared as their heritage because they are culturally connected to them and are protecting them effectively through customary laws. In due regards, our preliminary archaeological and heritage research in western Serengeti have encountered such scenarios pertaining to ‘Machaba’ the honored God among the Ikoma ethnic group and ‘Jiwe la Wachawi’ loosely meaning the stone of witches among other things all of which remained unarchived. Therefore, this paper couple’s archaeology and ethnography in discussing local narratives and associated material evidences of selected things that the Ikoma consider to be their heritage but have never conventionally been archived partly due to the reasons outlined above.

Biography:

Javern Aveline Sabas is a junior professional in archaeology and Heritage with at least five and a half years’ experience. Graduating with honors majoring Heritage Management at the University of Dar es Salaam made him continuously being featured with both countryside and foreign principal experts in accomplishing research projects, fieldworks, outreach programs and Environmental Impact Assessments prior to developmental projects at national, regional and international levels. Currently, he is a beneficiary of Imagining Futures Scholarship pursuing he’s Master degree in Archaeology based at the University of Dar es Salaam. Javern has passionate in Digital heritage, Conservation, Landscape archaeology, and Climate change impacts to Heritage.

Abstract:

Popular Participatory Theatre As A Reparative Methodology

In this paper, I reflect on Popular Participatory Theatre (PPT) as an African paradigm of many possibilities. The form is situated within the broader realm of Applied theatre and “combines African popular performance with Freire’s problem-posing methodology to create a space to generate debate around socio-political issues often with non-actors (Young-Jahangeer, 2013:1). PPT is most notable for its dialogic and therapeutic impulses and has been used in various contexts to deal with complex, sensitive and taboo subjects.  I reflect on my own PPT practice to underscore how PPT as a storytelling practice and dialogic intervention can facilitate a space for healing and transformation. My reflections draw mainly on Project Nhanho, an intervention in which 6 queer youths and myself co-created a PPT play which sought to challenge homophobic violence, which is a pandemic in ‘post-colonial’ Zimbabwe. I end with an invitation. I proffer PPT as an indigenous methodology that can be used effectively to engage work on conflict, violence, trauma and a pedagogy of love, healing and justice that could offer recuperation for those whose lives have been characterised by long spells of violence and trauma in the Global South.

Biography:

PRINCESS SIBANDA is a scholar artivist. Her research interests lie in participatory performance forms and how they intersect with gender and sexualities in Africa. In 2018 she was awarded the Canon Collins Scholars Scholar award in recognition of her social justice work. She holds a PhD from the University of KwaZulu Natal and MA in Drama & Performance Studies (summa cum laude) from the same institution. Currently, she is a post-doctoral fellow under the SARChI Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies, University of Fort Hare.

Abstract:

Patricia Hayes writes of the dense and rich photographic archive of South Africa and how this archive has shaped memory of South Africa’s apartheid past. These photographs are real-life documentation of the injustices of apartheid and serve as a register of apartheid abuse and violence. Similarly, in the student protests of 2015 and 2016, images were used to document the experiences of students and the police brutality we faced. However, we have found that there is a significant inequality between how protests at different universities were photographically recorded and how these posters and other student protest related ephemera have not been archived.

Cheryl Finely writes about mnemonic aesthetics as the “ritualised politics of remembering” informed by a specific image. For Finley, the image of the slave ship icon allows for events and symbols of the past to be reinterpreted within current and unfolding culture and aesthetics. Students deployed apartheid-era references in their posters. These became a visual vocabulary of trauma used by students to reckon with the ongoing and evolving forms of oppression and exclusion. This re-memorying process called into question the incompleteness of the liberation struggle and the shortcomings of the rainbow nation ideology.

Our interactive session will engage photographs of posters made and used by students at university protests between 2015 to 2016 to understand how apartheid events have been reinterpreted in recent years. Students demanded a dynamic reconsideration of the past in the present, calling for a deeper look at the complexities between history and the ongoing violences of our present. Our paper and session argues that through the use of apartheid mnemonic aesthetics we were highlighting the continued unfreedoms we experience.

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Abstract:

Victims of Russian aggression: trauma and transferred trauma of dislocation, rupture, loss and reconstitution of the Polish Children of Oudtshoorn after their deportations to the Russian gulags of Siberia.

The 24 August 1939 Russian-German pact divided Europe into Russian-German spheres of influence.  Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939. Russia invaded Poland on 17th September 1939. Poland faced German-Russian ethnic cleansing campaigns in a new crime against humanity – “genocide”. From 10 February 1940 until 20 June 1941 the Russian secret police, the NKVD, deported 1,7 million Polish citizens to the gulags of Siberia.

115,000 Poles (18,300 children) escaped Siberia reaching freedom in Persia. These children were relocated to refugee camps in East and Southern Africa, India, New Zealand, Mexico and South Africa. 500 children and their caregivers arrived in Oudtshoorn on 10 April 1943.

Oudtshoorn refugees remained in South Africa after WWII to form the core of the Polish community in South Africa. A feature of the Oudtshoorn refugees and their descendants is in coping with the trauma and transferred trauma of dislocation, rupture, loss and reconstitution. This was further compounded with harrowing life experiences and re-establishing lost history, heritage, memory and identity.

Biography:

Stefan is President of the Polish Association of Siberian Deportees in Africa and Vice-President of the Polish Heritage Foundation of South Africa. Stefan was a career engineering sciences researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) until retiring in 2018. Stefan is currently a PhD candidate in history at the University of the Witwatersand.

Abstract:

How do we inherit the pain of events we have not experienced ourselves? How can we heal and put an end to our generational trauma? How can we ‘research’ this ethically? As a Tamil-Canadian activist-scholar and 2nd-generation refugee, my research seeks to answer questions with implications to refugee community healing and trauma, along with broad relevance to community-engaged health research. This presentation introduces readers to my dissertation’s methodology, where I conceptualize and apply methodology as a form of repatriation in my research project when working with my community facing continuing violence in a “post”-conflict region. I do this by first setting the stage of my dissertation, explaining my influences for this methodology of repatriation, breaking down key components of this methodology in relation to my work, and lastly, demonstrating the intent and importance of this methodology. This presentation’s purpose is to expand our methodological imaginations as qualitative researchers and showcase the beginnings of how our personal and political positionalities, theories, and ethics can be beautifully weaved to create research methodologies for healing – and even repatriation. Besides, being able to reimagine academic research methodology – with its roots in harmful Eurocentric, colonial institutions – is itself a form of repatriation.

Biography:

Vivetha Thambinathan is an Eelam Tamil activist scholar, community-based researcher and critical thinker. Vivetha is a final-year doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University in Ontario, Canada and a former research director at the Washington, DC-based human rights non-profit organization called PEARL: People for Equality and Relief in Lanka. Currently, her PhD research project explores memory, trauma-informed migrant healing, arts-based participatory action research methods, and liberation psychology – specifically as it pertains to Toronto Tamil diaspora youth. Vivetha feels most inspired and at home working at the intersections of community healing, creative arts-based research methods, and justice.

Abstract:

Oppression and all forms of violence are accomplished when the ends justify the means, noted Arendt commenting on the Nuremberg trials.  She was struck by the banality of evil.  Evil has no conscience.  It recognises naught and does nothing to repair itself.  There is no reflection.  This paper explores how we attempt to cover over trauma and how we access  embodied, lived and intergenerational symptoms of trauma.  Additionally, this paper looks at forms of personal and collective psychopathy that allow systemic and traumatic repetitions to continue without redress.  In drawing upon clinical work, this paper shows how healing violence requires a much larger rehumanisation of ourselves; as well as the stark recognition that healing often means coming to terms with the fact that perpetrators–whether personal or global–rarely, if ever, admit their atrocities or allow victims peace in the recognition of the harm they have caused.  This paper therefore examines ways in which victims–despite the absent presence of recognition–can reinterpret their stories toward recovery and life itself.

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Abstract:

Dangerous Dichotomies: Reading select Representations of Genocide in Rwanda

The genocide which unfolded in Rwanda in 1994 remains a harrowing example of annihilatory violence. It is framed infamously as an expression of genocide that over 100 days saw the murder of approximately one million people and the displacement of millions more. Its psychological, social and economic devastation remains in many ways immeasurable. The literary texts I read in this paper gesture toward this unboundedness of trauma but in their representation of the genocide abide by the Manicheanism that in many ways was foundational to it. This I frame as being articulated through several dangerous dichotomies.  Thus, this paper offers a reading of how Uwem Akpan’s short story “My Parents’ Bedroom” (2008), Alan Whelan, Eoghan Rice and Elena Hermosa’s documentary Let the Devil Sleep: 20 Years after Genocide in Rwanda (2014), and Hugo Blick’s Netflix series Black Earth Rising (2020) literarily trope the Rwandan Genocide. In so doing, and in turning to the literary as itself a mode of reading but also a mode of writing grand narratives, this paper asks what is at stake in representations that reify and reinscribe Manicheanism; and those that resist such a politics and abide by plurality.

Biography:

Dr. Lauren van der Rede is a lecturer in the Department of English at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her research thinks the intersection of the study of annihilatory violence such as genocide, literary and cultural studies, and psychoanalysis; from and through Africa in relation to the question of memory. She received her PhD in Literature from the University of the Western Cape, where she was also a Next Generation Researcher based at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR).

Abstract:

In this presentation I aim to reflect on how traditional Rwandan songs that form part of a national repertoire and archive become crucial modes of articulating a sense of belonging for refugees living in exile. I will draw from my own experience and memory – as both a traditional dancer and refugee – in Gihozo Cultural Group to consider the ways in which songs emerge and create an affective-scape where history surfaces in the body through performance. Gihozo Cultural Group is a traditional Rwandan dance group that was established in 2004 by Rwandan refugees living in Johannesburg who wished to maintain ties to the country after the war in 1994. My research seeks to explore the role that Gihozo has in the reconstruction of narratives of identity, amongst its impunzi or refugee members. This will be done by investigating the curation of songs and dances as narrative modes that can provide insight into the self-making of impunzi.

My presentation will be focused on literature that is supporting my current thinking and theoretical framing. I will analyze the limitations of current scholarship and propose the value of considering the animated body of impunzi in performance as a crucial intersectional site that creates new ways of understanding intergenerational transmissions of loss, longing and belonging.

Biography:

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Abstract:

Re-membering Gukurahundi from the Diaspora: Post-genocide Trauma and Memory in Zimbabwe

Almost forty years since the Gukurahundi ethnic genocide in Zimbabwe, the daunting task of addressing and redressing the genocide exists. In this presentation, the traumatic impact on the survivors of the atrocities and how narrative therapy is used to overcome transgenerational trauma transmission is examined. Halbwach’s concept of mémore collective and Assmann’s notion of memory culture draw on the narratives of first- and second-generation survivors residing in South Africa. How distance in time and space allow survivors to remember and make sense of the genocide is shown. Given that open discussion of the genocide remains contentious in Zimbabwe, being in a foreign country proves cathartic. Further reflected upon is an ongoing narrative art therapy intervention that supports healing through continuously developing unsilenced stories. Artefacts and artworks that connect survivors and descendants with their inner strength beyond the cry for forgiveness accompany testimonials of survival and resilience. Crucial to the intervention is connecting Gukurahundi descendants with descendants of the Shona majority to foster reconciliation on a personal level. Un-silencing and sharing intergenerational genocidal experiences and creating stories and memory result in a commemoration space in South Africa that challenges the government’s silence and proves crucial for the healing of Zimbabwean families.

Biography:

Indra Wussow is a literary scholar (University of Erlangen/Germany), writer and narrative therapist (University of Melbourne/Australia). Postgraduate degrees in Social Entrepreneurship (Gordon School of Business Science, South Africa) and Innovation (Columbia University/USA).
Indra has curated and worked extensively on community projects that connect art and narrative therapy. Her primary focus is the de-silencing of intergenerational trauma to enable reconciliation in post-atrocity societies such as Chile, Cambodia, Israel, Myanmar, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Since 2010 Indra has been the editor of AfrikAWunderhorn, a series of contemporary African fiction translated into German, which has published 26 books by African writers in the past twelve years.