‘These Are the Things that Sit with Us’ records more than 60 stories that were documented in Bonteheuwel, Langa and Worcester as part of the ‘Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past’ research project that examined, through interviews, the immediate and intergenerational repercussions of historical trauma and traumatic memory in the context of post-apartheid South Africa.
As editors, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (Stellenbosch University), Friederike Bubenzer (Institute for Justice and Reconciliation) and Marietjie Oelofsen (Stellenbosch University) write in the introduction, “Twenty years after the TRC, this book is testament to the fact that justice and reconciliation is not merely an event or a legal process but an on-going journey that requires people to talk publicly about the effects of colonialism and apartheid, and the need to listen to one another’s stories.
“It gives publicity to undocumented, everyday experiences that shaped the lives of ordinary South Africans during this country’s brutal and painful past. It is a record of ‘the things that sit with us’. As such, this book is an effort to map a picture of the wider, and difficult, conversation about the meaning of transformation. We hope that by sharing their memories in this book, the storytellers will contribute towards a…
