Development Talk

Kader Asmal (8 October 1934 – 22 June 2011)

 

June 23, 2011

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Creative Consulting and Development Works would like to extend our sympathy to the Asmal family as we join the rest of South Africa in celebrating Kader Asmal and his life as an activist academic and politician.  His ANC comrades hail him as a “selfless man of honour” and that “his death must be a reminder for all of us of the non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa we committed to build”.  Kader represented the anti-Apartheid movement as a committed ANC member from the United Kingdom during his early professional life after being exiled by the Apartheid government.  In exile he was awarded the Prix UNESCO award for his work in human rights, founded the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, and served as Chairperson for the Irish Apartheid movement.  When he returned to South Africa he became a professor of human rights at University of the Western Cape before he was tapped by the first democratic government to be the Minister of Water and Forestry and later as Minister of Education (a position for which he was appointed personally by President Nelson Mandela).  He was also involved in many other anti-racism and human rights commissions and movements throughout his life. 

Professor Asmal’s memoir will be released in August, and the official launch for the book will be in September at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town.

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Filed under: Africa,Awareness,basic human right,better life for all,Breaking New Ground,civil society,community,Constitution,CREATIVE CONSULTING & DEVELOPMENT WORKS,democracy,DEVELOPMENT WORKS,education,election,ethical leadership,ethics,Family,Fatherhood,forgiveness,Government,History,Hope,identity,Inequality,legislation,nationhood,Parliament,Policy,politics,power,race,reconciliation,rights,social transformation,South Africa,TRC,Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 3:39 pm

Power of Narratives of Forgiveness

 

July 26, 2007

Conference On Memory, Narrative And Forgivenesss

Held on the 22-26 November 2006 At The University Of Cape Town, Co-hosted By Faculty Of Humanities And The African Ethics Initiative, University Of Natal.

Siphokazi (Spoki) Mlandu, a previous research intern at DEVELOPMENT WORKS, shares her experiences of the Conference ….

The session I attended was on the Power of Narratives of Forgiveness, seeking to show the importance of story to forgiving and healing process.

Speakers at this session viewed forgiveness as a hard term to define as most believed that forgiveness is a process rather than a once off thing. One speaker suggested that the term could rather be broken down and be understood in two ways such as paradigm case and non-paradigmatic case. The former is a process in which both parties are able and willing to converse about the matter and the latter is the case in which one of the parties is unable and unwilling to engage in the process of process.

Speakers maintained that one of the conditions for forgiveness is closely connected with narrative. The forgiveness process must create a space where the one who asks for forgiveness and the one who is to forgiven narrate their stories in public. This gives an opportunity for the victim/survival to narrate how the injury fits into a self that seeks to get over the pain and violence of the injury. So as with the offender he has to come into public and offer narrative to make himself intelligible and offer reasons to trust that he is a changed person. This process is hoped to bring about healing to both parties since story telling is regarded as the most powerful tool to forgiveness.

The TRC was a powerful a space for the story telling. Some victims and survivals felt that the TRC helped them in the process of healing while others felt that TRC did not do much for them. Two people narrated their stories, one was the victim of the 1993 High Gate attack in Grahamstown and the other one was one of the mothers of the 7 boys who were killed in Gugulethu in 1986. However both parties maintained that telling their stories has helped quite a lot in the process of forgiveness and healing.

Filed under: development,DEVELOPMENT WORKS,forgiveness,healing,TRC — @ 4:45 pm

The Afterlife of survival: memory, recovery and voice

 

Narratives of Memory and Forgiveness Conference…

Yazir Henri from Action Centre for Peace and Memory

A thought provoking session that left the audience in silence as Henri spoke of how survivors of apartheid in South Africa have to find common ground to mediate in order to publicly articulate them-selves 10 years after TRC hearings.

Yazir presented ideas from the paper he wrote which was looking at the current cultural issues and socio-political challenges that are present to date and are somewhat hindering the individual to heal and recover fully. He reflected on survivors’ experiences and suggested the importance of having a voice, in a public space, that allows one to narrate ones experiences in manner that will allow South Africa to recover from the extremities of violence during the apartheid era.

When asked what the Centre for Peace and Memory is doing to promote and ensure that stories are told in manner that does not undermine the narrators or the users of information, Henri responded that a lot more collective action needs to take place with their organisation.

If anything the paper presented by Henri highlighted that the Centre for Peace and Memory could help bring together the survivors of South Africa to reconcile in order to collectively articulate their experiences 10 years after the TRC.

www.dacpm.org.za

Filed under: cultural issues,forgiveness,healing,peace,TRC — @ 4:30 pm

Disappearances in South Africa

Narratives of Memory and Forgiveness Conference

(November 2006)

Speaker: Dr Ollie Mahongo – Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Can they be asked to forget about their loved ones? Where are they buried?

Yvonne Wabagatore, a researcher from DEVELOPMENT WORKS, attended this Conference and shares below the key points of Dr Mahongo’s presentation.

For the affected families who have lost loved ones, those who never returned home during or after the apartheid era, issues surrounding healing, not having closure and not coming close to some form of reconciliation continue to haunt them in their daily lives.

Ollie painted the image in our minds of how hard it is for those who lost their loved ones to move on. One wants to seek the full truth of the fate of those un-countered for.

Records are not available or were destroyed by apartheid authorities or perpetrators of violence are unwilling to come forward. Some promises made from the TRC were not fulfilled or materialise are some of the issues that Dr Ollie Mahongo spoke about.

Relatives are subjected to ongoing or perpetual suffering…” If we could just have the bones of our loved one are sentiments expressed so often.

Healing and reconciliation is an ongoing process. Issues of disappearances must be made public and perpetrators bought to book.

Filed under: DEVELOPMENT WORKS,forgiveness,healing,memory,peace,reconciliation,TRC — @ 4:25 pm

Forgiveness and Reconciliation regarding former child soldiers in Northern Uganda

Narratives of Memory and Forgiveness Conference : Cape Town (25 November 2006)

Presented: Annemiek Richters Leiden University Center & Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, The Netherlands

Yvonne Wabatagore, a researcher from DEVELOPMENT WORKS attended this conference and shares her thoughts and experiences…

I was really looking forward to this session. I wanted to understand why children end up committing such atrocities and at such a tender age. I believe the talk, although very open ended, did somehow help me understand the plight of the former child soldiers and also that of their immediate family and community.

Annie Marie presented a paper that she co wrote with Ria Reis and supervised Grace Akello, her PhD student. Explaining that the research was very open ended helped as she touched on how their focus was to find out why reconciliation of families and communities with former child soldiers has not worked as well as has been anticipated.

Sadly when the former child soldiers come back into the community they suffer from Cen. Cen usually involves having nightmares, flashbacks and possibly sleepless nights. What intrigued me was how NGOs that have taken to counselling and helping the former child soldiers reintegrate into the communities having committed a number of atrocities. Locally it is believed that repenting and asking God for forgiveness will help one heal from Cen or alternatively joining the rebel soldiers or the government army helps as well.

However Annemiek highlighted that the former child soldiers suffer from post traumatic stress which thus affects their behaviour as they have been exposed to extreme violent activities. Citing many case studies and showing pictures taken in Uganda, children from 8 years and 16 years old (when abducted) can murder members of their own community. Their research highlighted that the reintegration process becomes difficult as the immediate communities find it hard to deal with someone who could have potentially killed their loved ones. Coincidently Annie spoke of a counsellor who found out that her client had killed her uncle. On finding this out the counsellor broke down and could not continue seeing the former child soldier

The former child soldiers who go through the reintegration process are usually rejected and are heavily stigmatised by their immediate community as they suffer from Cen which is believed to be caused by revenge of the spirits of those they killed.

The findings of the paper were interesting but one could not help but comment that possible western methods of reintegration used by the NGOs might not be as effective in reintegrating the former child soldiers. One would suggest involving immediate community and families to be part of the reintegration process using their own indigenous or traditional methods of healing.

Filed under: DEVELOPMENT WORKS,forgiveness,healing,memory,NGOs,peace,reconciliation,TRC — @ 4:18 pm