Facing the shame
Interview by: Sue Segar. Article from the August 2014 issue of Noseweek Magazine.
The black middle class must confront SA’s problems – or be forced to handle serious accusations, says Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela.
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a busy woman. As I wait for our interview on a Saturday afternoon at her unpretentious home in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, I witness the departure of her lunch guest, American colleague Jennifer Fish, who is chair and associate professor of the Women’s Studies Department at the Old Dominion University in Virginia. “Goodbye, my manifestation of all things peaceful and sisterly,” says the friend as they embrace at the front door.
South Africans know Gobodo-Madikizela as a clinical psychologist, a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), one-time University of Cape Town academic and author of the award-winning book A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness. The book is an account of her prison interviews with apartheid hit-squad commander Eugene de Kock, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the extraordinary relationship that developed between the two.
The theatre production of the play, by Nicholas Wright, at Cape Town’s Fugard Studio Theatre and at London’s Hampstead Theatre earlier this year, was also widely acclaimed.
For the past two-and-a-half years, Gobodo-Madikizela has been Senior Research Professor in Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconcilation at the University of the Free State. While she loves her work in Bloemfontein, she considers Cape Town to be home and she returns to Fish Hoek as often as she can.
Besides her work on forgiveness and reconciliation, Gobodo-Madikizela remains closely plugged into current developments in South Africa. These days, the comfortable indifference of the black middle class is a red flag to this concerned member of their ranks, who loves opera, jazz, movies, gardening and walking at the seaside.
Gobodo-Madikizela, is about to launch her latest book, Dare We Hope? Facing our Past to find a New Future – a collection of local and international writing that offers a unique perspective on healing a wounded South Africa. She has become increasingly preoccupied with the need for engagement by the black middle class. Her book tackles, head on, the lack of hope that seems to have taken root in South Africa in a context of scandals, corruption and protests.
She argues that it is only by confronting our past that we will find ways of forging a new and different future. Key to this process is the involvement of the middle class, black as well as white.
“Black middle-class people who have benefited from transformation must start engaging with and taking action on the country’s problems, or else they will face the same kind of guilt and shame that white people who benefited from apartheid face today,” she says.
“It is precisely because we are black that we should not wait too long to take action, lest we be faced with serious accusations against us.” According to the respected academic, the whites who benefited from apartheid are reminded constantly that they were beneficiaries of apartheid’s evil.
“Twenty years after democracy, even black people who are comfortable in their positions in the new South Africa and who have their homes and two or three cars are still pointing fingers at white people. Very, very rarely do we, as black people who have had these advantages, point the finger at ourselves.
“Who is speaking for the poor? Who is identifying with them and engaging with the critical issues of poverty and inequality? Certainly not the ANC government,” she says.
The growing appeal of Julius Malema exists precisely because he has shown a willingness to engage with the issues of the poor and disempowered people of South Africa, she says. “At the moment, he is the only person who identifies with the poor and who best defines their identity.”
Gobodo-Madikizela cites the example of the women who recently barricaded Chris Hani Road in Diepkloof, Soweto, and resorted to exposing themselves in protest against the bucket system and other service-delivery failures.
“We saw them out in the streets, baring their bottoms, just crying out to be heard. What they were saying is, ‘if you can’t hear my words, my voice, then I will show you my bottom… You are not shocked enough to hear my pain about the conditions I live under so I will show you my nakedness. I will shock you… just so that I am heard’.
“Julius Malema speaks for those very voices. He is very important for us right now. All this support |for Malema] is about ‘who identifies my identity best’. He hears them saying, ‘we are the poor, we are the children of the domestic workers, the children who sometimes had to go to bed with no food, who have been downtrodden in the past and who still are downtrodden’.
“Never mind that Malema had a multi-million-rand house. He has had these experiences and can articulate them because they are real. His power lies in the fact that he shows he is engaged and that he promises to do something about it.
“So, also the women… Malema speaks for them. The ANC does not.
“If the black middle class doesn’t get involved now, we will face the same kind of guilt and we will struggle to deny it… the pattern will play out all over again. That is a danger that we have to keep in mind.”
Gobodo-Madikizela’s preoccupation coincides with what she calls a dramatic change in the perceptions of South Africa.
“I remember going to the United States after the TRC… the interest in South Africa was phenomenal. Everybody wanted to know more about us. The words, ‘behold, I do a new thing…’ come to mind. It was as though South Africa was standing on the top of the mountain shouting, ‘behold I do a new thing’… and the world was watching.
“But these days, when I go back to the States… people are asking difficult questions — about the leadership of our country, about the government and our president.
“On a recent trip, I was so ashamed and embarrassed. I walked out of a lecture and thought, ‘this must be the same kind of shame that white people felt when they travelled abroad during apartheid… because this is my government, it’s a black government and all these questions are coming, and all this stuff is happening now and how do I hide myself? But I can’t hide myself. I have to face the shame.”
Gobodo-Madikizela’s position at Free State University, involves looking particularly at how transformation comes about. “I focus on what are the experiences that bring about transformative moments, for instance, in the relationships between former enemies, or between survivors or victims and perpetrators. When these two sides come together, what are the moments that shift the relationship in a particular direction? So my work focuses on deepening the understanding of change and transformation…”
It is clear that Gobodo-Madikizela is not only loving the work: (“I supervise masters and doctoral students, some from South Africa, some from Rwanda, some from Kenya”) but she is also in awe of the man at the helm of the institution, the inimitable Jonathan Jansen.
“Fascination and awe is a good way to describe my experiences here,” she says. “This place is truly a hub for transformation…
“Of course, it’s complicated as there is also the other side, which is resistance, but the overwhelming, most visible side is the incredible transformation and process of change that’s happened here. There are negative stories, but the change is visible at Free State University”.
Her experiences at the university are all the more intriguing to her because of her first visit to the Free State.
“The last and only time I went to the University of Free State before going to work there was in 1987 for my first ever academic conference. I was unsure about driving to the Free State and I couldn’t find any accommodation… So my father, who was chair of a Roman Catholic orphanage in the Eastern Cape, organised accommodation for me through the nuns in Bloemfontein. That’s where I stayed. I went to the university to give my talk, then I drove back… that was my only experience … Today, the change is palpable. You walk on campus and you can feel it.
“What sets Jonathan Jansen apart is his selfless sense of empathy and his absolute commitment and desire for things to change… With many leaders it is all about the self, but with him it is done out of a real concern for the human aspects of change. It’s not about the financial bottom line, it is about the human being.
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