‘It is a gruesome tale – how we have moved so rapidly from the era of hope to the bleak landscape ushered in by Zuma’s ascent to power …’
Yet Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, acclaimed author and international expert on reconciliation, wants to rekindle our hope.
As a clinical psychologist who has worked for the TRC, in Rwanda and with Holocaust survivors, she offers unique perspectives on healing the wounded South African nation. In this selection of her best local and international writing, she explores our unfinished business, Afrikaner rage, the politics of revenge, why apologies are not enough and how Zuma has corrupted the soul of South Africa.
Gobodo-Madikizela offers a lucid and compelling argument that it is only in facing up to our painful past that we can find hope – and a meaningful future.
About the author
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a research professor in trauma, memory and forgiveness at the University of the Free State. She was previously Associate professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, and became a full professor at the same university in 2010.
Gobodo-Madikizela served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as coordinator of victims’ public hearings in the Western Cape. This experience led her to write the award-winning book ‘A Human Being Died That Night’ about her interactions with the infamous apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock.
She works with various organisations within South Africa and internationally to facilitate processes of forgiveness, overcoming collective trauma, and reconciliation.