Many young South Africans continue to be affected by the trauma of oppression and dehumanisation experienced by their parents and grandparents.

This was one of the viewpoints of Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela of the Office for Studies in Transformation and Historical Trauma at Stellenbosch University (SU) on Thursday (20 October 2016). She was the speaker at the fourth Stellenbosch Forum lecture of 2016.

The Stellenbosch Forum lecture series provides regular opportunities to staff and students at SU, as well as interested people from the public, to learn more about the relevant and world-class research that is being done at SU.

Gobodo-Madikizela said for many South Africans, especially young people, the trauma of the past is still happening and often causes rage and violence.

"Young people today carry with them the trauma experienced by their parents and grandparents."

"Years and years of trauma is now experienced as memory and one's identity becomes imbued with stories of oppression. Young people know this trauma intimately even though they haven't experienced it themselves."

Gobodo-Madikizela added that many people's lives have not improved and the brighter future that they were promised has not materialised.

She pointed out how poor black students at SU often see privilege on campus but when they go home they are confronted with poverty.

"At SU you are looking in the face of privilege and at home you look in the face of despair, the face of contradiction."

She also mentioned how visible and invisible memory, as a representation of the past, traumatises these students.

"In our context there is this feeling that we are supposed to be free, to have access to things that our parents did not have access to, yet the means for us to become that we aspire to is unavailable."

Unsurprisingly, people get caught up in rage and violence when they continue to experience poverty, Gobodo-Madikizela said.

"The constant sliding back into poverty causes rage and violence in people. The expression of violence becomes a way of crying out and speaking about the deep feelings of trauma."

To understand these feelings of trauma we need an ethos of empathy, Gobodo-Madikizela said.

She added that this type of empathy allows us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and brings us at a place of understanding the worlds of people who are traumatised.

"Through empathy, we must acknowledge the suffering of others. The absence of empathy leads to the dehumanisation of the other."

• Photo: Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela speaking at the fourth Stellenbosch Forum lecture.
  
• Photographer: Justin Alberts