SA needs deep healing for traumas experienced daily, not quick fixes
Country seeks a remedy that connects individual healing to the wellbeing of the collective
Trauma is a common experience for people living in SA today. We often describe our realities with emotions that point to a deep sense of pain, disappointment, mistrust and the destruction of our being and livelihood.
A feeling of betrayal appears central to what it means to live in postapartheid SA. Hopelessness weighs too many of us down. Violence was and remains a norm.
We have seen a rise in township mass shootings and mourned the mass deaths of young people whose lives were taken at taverns this year. This week, we’re lamenting the deaths of toddlers mauled by pitbulls.
Meanwhile, pitbull owners prefer to talk about race instead of the innocent children who lost their lives.
Constantly living in and through trauma in SA makes us numb to each other’s pain. Last Monday, the Constitutional Court ruled on the case of Janusz Waluś, the man who assassinated Struggle hero Chris Hani. Hani was no ordinary political activist.
His untimely death triggered the calls for an election date for the first democratic elections to be set with urgency. It also hastened negotiations between the liberation movement and apartheid regime.
The pain of Hani’s murder sent ripples throughout the country and his death fasttracked the reality of a new dispensation. The country witnessed the pain and trauma of Limpho Hani, his widow, as she responded to the judgment with agony and feelings of betrayal.
Mam’ Limpho agonised that the same system her husband fought and died for was now giving his killer an opportunity to live. Her response was not a debate about the technical correctness of the judgment in law but whether the judgment reflected the spirit of the law in a democratic and free SA.
One she and her family sacrificed so much for. Her hurt is not isolated to the events that occurred in court on Monday, as with many who fought for liberation only to experience the reality of a broken, corrupt and unequal society. A society that in no way aligns with the values Hani so boldly spoke about and espoused.
Hani’s ideology and beliefs were starkly different from much of what our society has become, with our politics, economy and communal lives less about solidarity and more about individuality.
A country still divided along race, class, gender and ethnic lines. A society that prizes competition over collaboration and celebrates consumerism, blind to the impacts on inequality and injustice. As painful as each individual story of trauma is, we will not resolve our traumas through reactive interventions that numb our pain in the moment, or by attacking symptoms and not causes. Individualising healing and focusing on symptoms is how Western health care is enacted.
African conception of healing understands that an individual’s ailments are not solved by focusing solely on the person with the disease.
Rather, its practices often intentionally seek the source of the problem in the broader ecosystem of a person’s life. They ask about the wellbeing of the family, the nation and in relation to the land and ancestors. As a wounded and hurting nation, perhaps it is time to embark on a journey of collective healing. We cannot heal through euphoric moments of national pride or even isolated practices like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
SA cannot be healed until we all are well and our healing must connect us to our families, communities, the land and our ancestry.
Our task for the future is to build societies that promote everyday wellbeing and, true to our constitution, we must acknowledge the legacies of our past and redress them so everyone can feel that the sacrifices made to get us here were worthwhile.