There are so many striking pieces from this week’s readings. The chapters from the book are unlike anything I have read and just as interesting too. However, having to pick one aspect that really stood out are the conversations between the two white people and the two black people on Mrs. Konile’s testimony. The idea that the two whites questioned whether black people think three-dimensionally (which is my QUESTION: how does one think three-dimensionally and what does thinking three-dimensionally look like?). Just in that wondering alone of the two whites, the prediction by the two black people is confirmed: “why should we treat whites as individuals when they treat us as a group?”
What is interesting about the conversation is that both sides ask how the testimonies apply to them – who owns them, who it is for and what it should mean, through this ownership or lack thereof. How the white people think it is for them so that they know what they will be living in and after having heard Mrs. Konile’s testimony, worry about living in this kind of “blackness” – “a superstitious senseless world in her testimony that I [he] really want to flee from”. Again, speaking of black people as a group, no distinguishing factor and seeing difference as the element of “otherness”. But all that aside, what speaks to me is this ownership of the testimony – why it could not be framed, outlined and structured for the white person to understand and why the black person in the other conversation felt “it would be hard to persuade me [her/him] it was truly for us. No, it was not about our pain, not about how we could really overcome the brutal history of the white racist regime”. This also makes me question what and for whom is the Truth and Reconciliation investigation into Indigenous people’s pain of residential schools and colonization – continued colonization at that. Is it for them to heal or is it for us to learn, to “hear”, like the white person could not for Mrs. Konile?
In attempts of answering these questions I find myself swaying back to this quote: “At the end of the story, we do not want to be the same person as the one who started listening”. Maybe it is as simple as seeking change within us, whether it is in the form of making white people see who they were for themselves or forgiving ourselves, as the black people in the conversation suggest, to accept that “we are fine people…that we are capable”.
This book was an exploration of a testimony and the multiple personal and social, geographic, historic and economic aspects it touches. It was an entire book and it seems that’s what was required to truly understand the depth of a narrative that did not fit easily into a normative structure. As the authors describe each narrative is rooted and it was an exploration of those roots that actually brought the narrative to life. Exploring reactions to the narrative, burden of explanation, interpretation and translation errors, omissions of belonging or ancestry, gestures, symbolism and contextualising the physical environment of those giving testimony.
The way Mrs. Konile was asked questions during TRC versus how she was asked (and affirmed) during her interview give such a different perspective. Going to hear the testimony rather than removing people from their context aids both the listener and is probably easier on the survivor. Can this model be used more broadly for reconciliation efforts? Most testimonies seem to be moulded in the “forensic truth” model rather than personal, dialogical or healing structure.
I wonder if Mrs. Konile’s testimony was read to someone from Indwe how they would have reacted? I also wonder what barriers I have to overcome to understand and empathise with people who might use different language and mannerisms to express certain things?
We often say how jokes don’t translate well from one language to another. Yet we expect the language of trauma to do so.
I could very much relate to what a goat meant in her dream, especially how it stood. Growing up I have always been confused about the symbolism of an owl. In Western culture its a symbol of wisdom, while in South Asian culture its a symbol of stupidity!
I’m interested in discussing the question Kopano asks (pg. 129), “Now whiteness literally surrounds us and we never had a chance to say: so here are our some white people, how do we interact with them? We have never asked ourselves that question without losing ourselves.”
What struck me most in this week’s readings was the challenge of translations. The authors describe how Mrs Konile’s testimony was heavily affected by translations and interpretations, her name was misspelled and she remained known only as Mrs. Konile in the TRC’s archive-even her first name was never known. ‘She disappeared on the TRC website’ writes Krog and others.
Another mother’s (Mrs. Ngewu) testimony stood out as well by her view about reconciliation. She says ‘we want to demonstrate humaneness towards them (perpetrators) so that they in turn may restore their own humanity.’ Mrs. Ngewu’s view of reconciliation is in stack contrast to Mrs Konile’s view who even after the authors visited her home in Indwe, narrated how she never forgave the perpetrators. I thought her reaction to the plea for forgiveness was particularly powerful given her question to the perpetrators on why they never forgave her son Zabonke when he ‘put his hands up in the air’ the day they killed him.
Mrs. Konile’s poorly translated testimony generated several reactions from listeners (both white and black). 2nd black raised questions about the structure and set up of the TRC, and how certain people felt excluded by the language used. She notes ‘it was staged for the world and for whites, not for us…language changes reality, it constructs what counts as effective and failed communication.’ While both black and white conversations agreed that Mrs. Konile’s story was incoherent, the black conversation quickly attributed this to language, while the white conversation didn’t see the language gap. Instead, the 1st White (and possibly other listeners) expected Mrs. Konile to tell them a story they wanted to hear, not the story Konile told. First White notes ‘she could have talked about her son’s death and demanded justice, she could have described an activist.’ How was a rural woman supposed to know about activism? I don’t think human rights is only about the deceased, it is also about the pain it leaves survivors with.
This book pointed out the areas that are often neglected in most human rights redress -translation and interpretations-as one interpreter rightly noted in Chapter 7 that interpretation is a challenging task, and only 80% or less information may be translated. How can South Africa and the rest of the world believe the quality of information presented in the TRC’s report and archive if this book was able to re-write 1 page of Mrs Konile’s testimony to 8 pages? I might have missed this from the book but I wonder what Mrs. Konile’s reaction was after learning that her testimony was not translated appropriately (if at all she ever got to know that before her death), and I wonder what the reaction of the translator of this story was.
Questions
1. What makes testimonies such as Mrs. Konile’s acceptable, recognizable and coherent when listeners are full of culturally and structurally heavy expectations and judgments?
2. What should have the TRC done to ensure that Mrs. Konile’s testimony was well recorded in the national archive of South Africa?
There was this Goat traces the testimony of Mrs. Konile regarding the murder of her son in the Western Cape (5). We see how Mrs. Konile?s testimony changes. Her testimony at the Truth Commission in 1996 differed from the testimony she gave Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie in Indwe. On the one hand, the authors explored the difficulty in interpreting Mrs. Konile?s story in the original testimony in 1996. Significant parts of a story can be lost if cultural allusions or knowledge are left without interpretation (53-55). More specifically, much is lost in an interpretation if the interpreter lacks a cultural understanding of rural speech and ways of communication (66). The authors explore how testimonies can reinforce stereotypes (21). Other themes explored are the following: reconciliation as a redefinition of self (36); the importance of collaborative, communally oriented, human-centered methodology (46); the understanding of how dominant epistemologies can ?rupture indigenous modes of knowing? (58). The authors emphasized how Mrs. Konile was connected to the idea of achieving a sense of wholeness through ?us? and how the killing of her son rendered her into an ?I? (62). When Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie traveled to Indwe, Mrs. Konile?s testimony was recontextualized since it was embedded in ?indigenous cultural and psychological practices? (91). There, they understood how poverty affected Mrs. Konile and how destructive it was for her when her son was not buried in Indwe (88). They also understood much clearer the symbolism and dreams related to the goat and the rocks to which Mrs. Konile was referring. Additionally, they noted the destructive impacts of ?cumulative waves of trauma and grief? (i.e. colonization, apartheid, and poverty) since it becomes part of the collective memory of indigenous people (181). In comparing her testimony 10 years later, Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie recognized healing.
1) I would like to reflect as a class on Ubuntu. According to the book, ubuntu is the innate desire from within to help another (129)? ?ubuntu?[is] in all of us?in some culture sit is nurtured, in other cultures it is done away with. The African kind of interconnectedness is much more open than the community sense of other cultures.? (204). Do you agree that ubuntu can be found within all of us? It seems that processes such as neoliberalism that increasingly value individuality, puts responsibility on the individual to be successful, etc. will not garner ubuntu but rather stifle it. Do you think there is a way to garner ubuntu under forces such as global capital that seem to reinforce the splitting of human connection (i.e. through consumption or competition)?
2) Near the end of the book, the authors argue ?those first Truth Commission hearings that in a way compelled Mrs. Konile into processing her intense experience of loss? (206) and that ?the hearings changed her life?for the (slightly) better? (207). Do you agree? I wonder if the Truth Commission was really necessary or if a local communal process in Indwe could have better served Mrs. Konile.
“We constitute our social identities through narrative and, although life is much more than stories, stories also try to create order in the chaos of our lives.”
First of all, it seems like the book is a very good of example of the quote above. As I see it, the authors takes an active part of their review of the testimonies of the four mothers. They realize that the testimony of Koline doesn’t not fit into the overall narrative of the TRC and is thus labeled as the outcome of a traumatic experience, something incomprehensible.
Once again we are shown that stories has a certain narrative which raises the question of how do we understand stories that doesn’t fit in these structures.
By engaging in that particular testimony they are creating meaning out of it, first through the elaborated translation (xhosa), then the cultural approach, both in terms of local culturally understanding (indwe, forgot the originally name) but also from a critical examination of science and the western, Anglo-Saxon bias(however it felt like they almost disqualified science) and then through different african and western psychological insights.
By focusing on a fracture, a contrast, they give themselves the opportunity to understand something different about the TRC and the spirits of the gugulehu Seven and themselves, something that they probably wouldn’t be able to identify if it was four narratives blending in the big narrative of the TRC. In engaging in the story of Koline and visiting her, they achieved a higher level of insight about themselves, South Africa, the tension and the intersubjective relation between black and white, perpetrator and victim, identity, selves and belonging to a community.
That kind of method have in itself a value and the insights of the book has value.
However it seems that in their dissection of Koline’s testimony, are forcing the testimony into their own narrative/system of meaning which must also(according to their own definition) have a certain structure and rules.
For me it felt like, that they were extracting meaning out of elements that not necessary have any meaning and I couldn’t help thinking of the quote from last time: please don’t turn us into novels, or situations where I have myself, said something, and then somebody weighed it and interpreted completely different from what I meant when I said it.
When they were interviewing Koline, they never really presented their own interpretations for her. So for me it will always(to some extent) be their own interpretations and i’m not sure what that mean for the generel validity (and now im using a western biased concept…).
Moreover I felt, that their presentation and interpretation of Koline, kind of reduced the testimony of the other mothers testimony to something that just was an expression of the TRC, which I didn’t think was fair.
Questions:
What is forgivesness?
Who is forgiveness for?
What is reconciliation?
What are the relation between forgiveness and reconciliation?
From the merriam-webster:
: the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement
: the process of finding a way to make two different ideas, facts, etc., exist or be true at the same time It
It seems that reconciliation is about restoring something (becoming friendly again), but what if the starting point was not just? Is reconciliation then the right concept?
This week’s readings brought us back to testimony and truth and reconciliation. There was this Goat was a captivating read and focused on the meaning of testimony and who it is really for.
A couple of key points about testimony that I noted from this reading:
-Testimony is not something we can define
-There is not “right” way to give a testimony
-Testimony can and often benefits the privileged “We are just the entertainment before dinner. It was not about us,” (32).
Chapter 3 ” A possible black conversation” was probably one of my favourite chapters in this book.
The discussion between “first black” and “second black” was very telling about who a testimony belongs to and if it is an effective way of communicating injustice and human rights violations.
For instance, most of the time those who give testimony are the most vulnerable in a community. That is, they are the ones who experience the injustice. In this case, the colonized were to give their testimony to the colonizers. Black 2 asked, ” Why should it always be the indigenous people who have to reconcile and teach whites about the pain that apartheid inflicted on us?” This question was so telling of how testimony can be ineffective and carry on the pain of colonialism.
For a really long time, I thought giving testimony and truth and reconciliation was a positive thing. After this week’s readings, I am skeptical. I still thnk giving testimony can be positive, but is it effective or does it just re-traumatized those who have experienced trauma. Second Black said to Frist Black that South Africa’s TRC “was all staged for the world and for whites, not for us, sister.” That quote also made me think about the continued racism that can occur with testimony.
I think we all have this idea that testimony and TRC are processes that will make things better after an injustice. But that is not the case. Testimony can be misunderstood and in the case of this book, testimony can even be lost in translation.
My questions:
1) So I am really left wondering how we create TRC processes that are fair and benefit the survivor.Who should be involved in a TRC process ?
2) How do we make sure that the survivors are made the priority during a TRC?
This week’s reading can be considered to be an interesting study that touches upon the implications of systemic violence, and the challenges that come with witnessing structural inequalities and difference, the rootedness of testimony and last but not least, the reproduction of privilege and exclusion. One aspect that I believe this reading relates to with regards to our former readings is narrative. Once more we are reminded of the importance of narrative and the way it is transmitted. Throughout the reading not only is each narrative explored in terms of its roots, but also each narrative reveals to us the troubles of translating systemic violence.
The way testimony is set up affects the narrative that comes along. One interesting thought that has revealed this is what Mrs. Konilie emphasizes as a world that doesn’t belong to them. Staged for the world and the whites, we see that the testimony was framed in a way where genuine narrative has been devalued, misunderstood, set aside and disregarded. As a result, one can say that the reality or the genuine narrative of what people have to say throughout a testimony is long gone and altered to what others who have framed proceedings to their understandings define as a world and a language of their own. This unfortunate consequence can only be described as a form of systemic violence that victimizes one mentally. How can we overcome such a solidified barrier? I believe that this barrier formulates another complication that might never come to an end. Not being able to transmit a reality, as it is creates the hardships we see today in terms of reconciliation. Can we ever get to the point where people are no longer dehumanized and re-humanized again? The complications that come with a world that is already set for the others can only take us away from this idea. Past violence is not the only subject that matters once it comes to reconciliation, because how perpetrators ask for forgiveness and how they are willing to reframe the language that is used in testimonies constitute other aspects that might matter even more. However, we are faced with this dilemma where we have not yet seen in different situations moments that are promising once it comes to reconciliation. Some of the points that I believe this reading leads to for discussion include the following,
1) Explore the term “otherness” and what it means once it comes to a testimony.
2) Are there specific ways that reconciliation can be genuinely initiated? Is there one promising way that comes to mind and how can this way come about?
‘We often assume that a story by someone who looks or speaks like ourselves will be easier to understand than a story by someone from a completely different culture’ (p. 98). In this fragment of There Was This Goat Kopano expresses his uncomfortableness with the realization that a shared culture and history of oppression does not lead him to understand the testimony of mrs. Konile. There is more needed than knowledge of culture and history in order to understand mrs. Konile’s testimony. Kopano speaks of the strangeness and familiarity that resides in every other, including the ones of our own community. He encourages to embrace the strangeness of the other. ‘It was out of her strangeness and ordinariness that we were able to resuture her self in-culture wholeness’ (p. 99). I want to talk about this selected fragment because its message and value beyond the issue of truthful testimonies struck me. I believe that it contains a big lesson and even a solution for many current problems of intolerance in the world. If we would only listen to the other, embrace the strangeness of another persons, explore it and learn from it instead of being afraid by the unknown and unfamiliar it would lead to a bigger mutual understanding and a better world.
Question: how much do you need to expose of yourself as a listener in order to find the truth of a testimony?
Question: what makes Krog, Mpolweni and Ratele the ones to tell Mrs. Konile’s story?
Week Six readings response – Curtis Rowland
There was this goat
This reading (in addition to several other readings in class) had me thinking about Hegel’s dialectic theory:
“Dialectic ….the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite… development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism ….any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict …
….the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements.” (Merriam-Webster)
The part that I thought was relevant is that these continuing efforts to wrong past human-rights injustices fall short in hindsight. They either neglect the context and culture of those wronged, or serve to assuage the guilt of the colonizers or dominant structure. Not to absolve the mistakes, but are these half measures necessary steps from ignorance on a longer path toward some form of enlightenment or compassionate behaviour?
The problems of interpretation and cultural frames of reference had to be identified and analyzed by the experts, but the hope would be that their scholarship influences the next tribunal.Their work to credence to dreams and traditional ways of sharing meaning can now be added to the growing body of knowledge. Also considerations on avoiding pre-expecting narratives that fit standard hero arcs in a Joseph Campbell style as problematic.
The story of the researchers also brought some ethical issues to mind. Had Mrs. Konile’s testimony changed in her head during the time that passed and she had time to ruminate? Never before had I considered the trauma on interpreters. Also the power dynamic between the interviewers and the destitute Mrs. Knonile. And even some issues I personally faced that brought the whole story home as an English reader struggling with some of the English words – ie. “Umm!” in the South African sense versus “Ummm?” in the Canadian sense made a big difference in meaning.
Question: I struggled with the meaning around the post-interview scene where the university folk celebrate with a nice meal and some fancy wine. Was this self-congratulatory?
Quote: A person is made into being by another person (60).
While the work made by Krog, Mpolweni and Ratele is very valuable and shows to what extent the regular process of hearings can miss the details of testimony (and undermine its power to produce justice), I wonder what the available options are to “correct” that. There is a trade-off between what can be accomplished in a timely manner and what should ideally happen. Here we return to the questions of who is justice working for and what justice is. As my classmates, I wonder about the concept of reparation as well and the balance between the need to say and the need to communicate. After all, Mrs Konile seemed to be satisfied with her testimony in the final assessment. For her everything was crystal clear, so the frustration shared by the researchers at the begginning of the book was a projection of societal expectations of justice, which is interesting as well. From Mrs Konile’s point of view, however, things worked.
Another question that comes to my mind then is: Are there minimum standards that court procedures should meet? What would they look like if we focus on the victims? What would they look like if we have a different focus–using justice as social catharsis? If we apply both criteria maybe we could find the minimum requirements of interpretation.
It was interesting to see how the authors try to comprehend and unpack the “incoherent” testimony of Mrs. Konile. As we see in this book, stories are rooted in and derive meaning from their context, and often do not fit into western-centric frameworks. The authors try to retranslate and reinterpret Mrs. Konile’s words based on her reality and her world.
As pointed out in the book, it is challenging to achieve coherence and accurately interpret stories that do not belong to oneself, particularly those that are translated and come from a different context. However, trying to understand and interpret the contextual realities is an essential step towards creating empathy, offering respect and dignity, and recognizing the importance that each story deserves. The authors call for a “communally-oriented, human-centred methodology”.
Questions for discussion:
– In our quest for meaning, do we unnecessarily try to search for or derive meaning in places where it does not exist? Does that then not represent our understanding of what the truth is, rather than the intention of the person whose story it is?
– What purpose did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process serve for the relatives of the victims? In Mrs. Konile’s case, we see that it pushed (or at least expected) her to construct her intense emotional experiences into a logical narrative. What is the alternative to this type of framework that is biased and unjust towards those who’ve already suffered deep trauma and loss?
– A lot of the times, meaning is lost or altered in translation. We see these struggles with the translation and interpretation of Mrs. Konile’s story as an extreme case. How do we overcome this challenge of translation to preserve the story?
There Was This Goat, investigates the testimony of Mrs. Konile, who is the mother of a young man that was murdered by apartheid forces. Based on the reports from the Truth and Reconciliation, Mrs. Konile’s testimonies were incoherent and hard to understand. In addition, these testimonies was not translated and transcribed correctly. Mrs. Koniles testimonies were excluded and not paid attention to properly and was labeled as “strange”.
In this book (p. 62) the author talks about the notion of “restoring dignity”. It is mentioned that one of the tasks of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to help to begin restoring the personal dignity of victims; however, the TRC fails to accomplish the promised task. For example in the case of Mrs. Konile’s, her testimony was not heard properly. The possibility that the setting of TRC was a barrier to a true testimony didn’t occur to anyone and she was labeled as incoherent and unintelligent. In this book we are reminded that even missing quotation marks in a testimony could drastically change the meaning and interpretation of words (p. 95). Through interviews and analyzing Mrs. Konile’s testimonies, the authors are proving that the conditions, which TRC provided for Mrs. Konile, were limiting her ability to testify and therefore they are truly restoring her dignity. The authors also call for new types of evidence that could supplement the traditional archival testimonies to help us better understand the true narratives.
Question:
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission helps to create more safe spaces and a more inclusive attitude towards the marginalized groups. However, the TRC itself has created a new set of exclusions and miss-understandings. What changes in the structure of the TRCs could improve the inclusive attitudes and help to protect the marginalized voices?
There was This Goat made clear a personal challenge I have with the readings. This is perhaps something that should have been obvious to me a long time ago, but I think I was just able to articulate this now – its my struggle with defining myself in relation to the readings. This particular concept really stuck with me as it was expressed in the following quote. ?At the truth commission hearings Mrs. Konile was constituting an identity for herself at that moment in that particular context. But she was not the only one who was narrating? While listening, people were also reformulating their own identities in response to her.? I do not know how to digest the definitions I create of myself in relation to the readings. I think this challenge is posed to audiences in many books, but made very obvious to readers of this book through the many different lenses and styles used to analyse Mrs. Konile?s testimony. Most interesting was how each person explained their approach to analysis which exposed the reader in some instances to how the voices of the book were understanding themselves in relation to the subject matter too.
Q1: What are the benefits and what are the challenges to defining yourself in relation to this book?
?How do we hear one another when the past is still so present among us??
This quote stuck out as a second clear message in the book. I think that here past pertains to established historical narratives of dominant groups and unique historical experiences of every village. Past also pertains to individual experiences and the development of relationships between groups and individuals through time and space. The issues with hearing were made obvious with every different interpretation of Mrs. Konile?s testimony and called to attention the inadequacy of a shorted analysis. However, often there is not time and space for this long analysis. This brings to light problems we are likely to face in our careers as policy makers. We will be forced to draw conclusions of groups of people from interviews and observations and we will not have the resources to analyse a situation in as much detail as was represented in this book. Therefore, we can use this book as a lesson to inform process.
Q2: What are tools we as policy makers could develop to challenge immediate understandings, interpretations and conceptualizations to create the most ?correct? interpretation possible?
The readings raised so many key elements of discussion:
1) Racial discourse ? black vs. white
2) Translator/Interpretation – Language vs. Cultural
3) Power and Pitfalls of Narratives
4) Self vs. Community
5) Trust and Legitimacy of TRC as a Process/System
6) Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Status
We continue to explore three main concepts ? storytelling, memory, and listening.
?We constitute our social identities through narrative?stories also try to create order in the chaos of our lives?Stories bring order or tell about chaos.? We continue to explore the importance of voice and hearing all types of voices. The readings indicated the key difference between Traumatic memory vs. Narrative memory ? where a victim could completely transform the traumatic memory into a narrative memory and so integrate it into the survivor?s life story.
The book dissects the testimony of Ms. Konile that was seen as unconventional and not your ?ordinary? story. Each chapter produces a new layer of thought on how the testimony was interpreted and thus revealed many questions. ?Her narrative defied all the elements that render narratives ?audible? within what was considered to be the dominant discursive framework operative at the hearings.? It was interesting to read about how different people (Black or White) received and interrupted her (Ms. Konile) testimony. Where it seemed people were focused on how she told her story rather than the words, actions, and context behind her story. This was elaborated further in an aspect which I believe is constantly overlooked ? cultural interpretation. Translating from one language to another can be difficult but to fully interpret the mannerism, cultural context and nuisances that comes with telling a story is not captured in written transcript especially in setting with its own agenda. As a reader I never considered that Ms. Konile had to provide her testimony in four broader narratives: personal (loss of her son), communal (Gugulethu Seven), regional (Western Cap hearings), and national (Apartheid as a whole). Lastly, another matter that was brought to my attention is how audience members receives a testimony can vary; not only does their pre-biases and context matter but someone who was to read a testimony vs. listen to an audio tape vs. see it live would react differently. Therefore, the delivery of the testimony is also a factor to consider.
Questions
1. There are many players who participate (actively or passively) in a TRC; what are their incentives and what do they hope to gain?
Players: Victims and their Families, Perpetrators, Bystanders, New Generation, International Community, Elite (Political) etc ?
2. I also would still like to break down and hear thoughts on the original question posed by the author ?So What? Why is it important to try to understand this unmentioned, incorrectly ID-ed, misspelt, incoherently testifying, translated and carelessly transcribed woman??
In this week’s reading we’re invited to reflect once more on the value of testimony. The authors pay particular interest to one of the mothers of the victims from the Gugulethu killings, Notrose Nobomvu Konile. At the time, her testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was seen as incomprehensible, a mix of reality and fantasy. For one of the authors, Krog, representing such testimony as a journalist was a challenge back in the day. She then revisits the case and, with the help of two colleagues, they try to “come to terms” with Konile’s testimony. The book unveils the major problem of the “incomprehensible” testimony all along: it had nothing to do with the testimony itself, and the person who provided it, but with those who took the challenge to translate it. When translating, one should be aware not only of the linguistics peculiarities, but the culture (and what it represents) that’s being translated. Each society has its own identity, although sometimes it might not be clear. Cross-cultural communication can be very challenging when one does not make the effort to take aside her position of privilege (as an outsider). This all made me reflect on the social contingency of language, and how problematic it can be when people are not aware of this crucial aspect of language when “making sense” of testimonies.
Questions:
1) What can be made of restorative justice in the context of this book?
2) Is there an equivalent or better alternative to testimonies? How can we get rid of them? Can we?
Why do others listen to testimonies? What are they supposed to gain from the losses of others? It is hard to bear witness and it is hard to give testimony so what are the motives for doing so?
“There are witness stones along all roads” – from the Book Launch of 100 Days
Everywhere we live and walk others have been before us. The spatiality of memory is a really important.
Where we stand affects what we see.
Where we have been affects how we see.
Where we are affects why we look.
Reading about Mrs. Konile really made me question the effectiveness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It presents itself as a vehicle for many, saying come one, come all, but it was not prepared for who came. Some of who came were unintelligible within the space the TRC created. They assume a lot about what people bring to the ending they are creating.
She is disconnected from Cape Town the site of national reconciliation. They are not “her” public and are therefore, not prepared for what she had to say. So the question really is why did she say it? The claiming of words and being claiming by them.
There are so many striking pieces from this week’s readings. The chapters from the book are unlike anything I have read and just as interesting too. However, having to pick one aspect that really stood out are the conversations between the two white people and the two black people on Mrs. Konile’s testimony. The idea that the two whites questioned whether black people think three-dimensionally (which is my QUESTION: how does one think three-dimensionally and what does thinking three-dimensionally look like?). Just in that wondering alone of the two whites, the prediction by the two black people is confirmed: “why should we treat whites as individuals when they treat us as a group?”
What is interesting about the conversation is that both sides ask how the testimonies apply to them – who owns them, who it is for and what it should mean, through this ownership or lack thereof. How the white people think it is for them so that they know what they will be living in and after having heard Mrs. Konile’s testimony, worry about living in this kind of “blackness” – “a superstitious senseless world in her testimony that I [he] really want to flee from”. Again, speaking of black people as a group, no distinguishing factor and seeing difference as the element of “otherness”. But all that aside, what speaks to me is this ownership of the testimony – why it could not be framed, outlined and structured for the white person to understand and why the black person in the other conversation felt “it would be hard to persuade me [her/him] it was truly for us. No, it was not about our pain, not about how we could really overcome the brutal history of the white racist regime”. This also makes me question what and for whom is the Truth and Reconciliation investigation into Indigenous people’s pain of residential schools and colonization – continued colonization at that. Is it for them to heal or is it for us to learn, to “hear”, like the white person could not for Mrs. Konile?
In attempts of answering these questions I find myself swaying back to this quote: “At the end of the story, we do not want to be the same person as the one who started listening”. Maybe it is as simple as seeking change within us, whether it is in the form of making white people see who they were for themselves or forgiving ourselves, as the black people in the conversation suggest, to accept that “we are fine people…that we are capable”.
This book was an exploration of a testimony and the multiple personal and social, geographic, historic and economic aspects it touches. It was an entire book and it seems that’s what was required to truly understand the depth of a narrative that did not fit easily into a normative structure. As the authors describe each narrative is rooted and it was an exploration of those roots that actually brought the narrative to life. Exploring reactions to the narrative, burden of explanation, interpretation and translation errors, omissions of belonging or ancestry, gestures, symbolism and contextualising the physical environment of those giving testimony.
The way Mrs. Konile was asked questions during TRC versus how she was asked (and affirmed) during her interview give such a different perspective. Going to hear the testimony rather than removing people from their context aids both the listener and is probably easier on the survivor. Can this model be used more broadly for reconciliation efforts? Most testimonies seem to be moulded in the “forensic truth” model rather than personal, dialogical or healing structure.
I wonder if Mrs. Konile’s testimony was read to someone from Indwe how they would have reacted? I also wonder what barriers I have to overcome to understand and empathise with people who might use different language and mannerisms to express certain things?
We often say how jokes don’t translate well from one language to another. Yet we expect the language of trauma to do so.
I could very much relate to what a goat meant in her dream, especially how it stood. Growing up I have always been confused about the symbolism of an owl. In Western culture its a symbol of wisdom, while in South Asian culture its a symbol of stupidity!
I’m interested in discussing the question Kopano asks (pg. 129), “Now whiteness literally surrounds us and we never had a chance to say: so here are our some white people, how do we interact with them? We have never asked ourselves that question without losing ourselves.”
What struck me most in this week’s readings was the challenge of translations. The authors describe how Mrs Konile’s testimony was heavily affected by translations and interpretations, her name was misspelled and she remained known only as Mrs. Konile in the TRC’s archive-even her first name was never known. ‘She disappeared on the TRC website’ writes Krog and others.
Another mother’s (Mrs. Ngewu) testimony stood out as well by her view about reconciliation. She says ‘we want to demonstrate humaneness towards them (perpetrators) so that they in turn may restore their own humanity.’ Mrs. Ngewu’s view of reconciliation is in stack contrast to Mrs Konile’s view who even after the authors visited her home in Indwe, narrated how she never forgave the perpetrators. I thought her reaction to the plea for forgiveness was particularly powerful given her question to the perpetrators on why they never forgave her son Zabonke when he ‘put his hands up in the air’ the day they killed him.
Mrs. Konile’s poorly translated testimony generated several reactions from listeners (both white and black). 2nd black raised questions about the structure and set up of the TRC, and how certain people felt excluded by the language used. She notes ‘it was staged for the world and for whites, not for us…language changes reality, it constructs what counts as effective and failed communication.’ While both black and white conversations agreed that Mrs. Konile’s story was incoherent, the black conversation quickly attributed this to language, while the white conversation didn’t see the language gap. Instead, the 1st White (and possibly other listeners) expected Mrs. Konile to tell them a story they wanted to hear, not the story Konile told. First White notes ‘she could have talked about her son’s death and demanded justice, she could have described an activist.’ How was a rural woman supposed to know about activism? I don’t think human rights is only about the deceased, it is also about the pain it leaves survivors with.
This book pointed out the areas that are often neglected in most human rights redress -translation and interpretations-as one interpreter rightly noted in Chapter 7 that interpretation is a challenging task, and only 80% or less information may be translated. How can South Africa and the rest of the world believe the quality of information presented in the TRC’s report and archive if this book was able to re-write 1 page of Mrs Konile’s testimony to 8 pages? I might have missed this from the book but I wonder what Mrs. Konile’s reaction was after learning that her testimony was not translated appropriately (if at all she ever got to know that before her death), and I wonder what the reaction of the translator of this story was.
Questions
1. What makes testimonies such as Mrs. Konile’s acceptable, recognizable and coherent when listeners are full of culturally and structurally heavy expectations and judgments?
2. What should have the TRC done to ensure that Mrs. Konile’s testimony was well recorded in the national archive of South Africa?
There was this Goat traces the testimony of Mrs. Konile regarding the murder of her son in the Western Cape (5). We see how Mrs. Konile?s testimony changes. Her testimony at the Truth Commission in 1996 differed from the testimony she gave Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie in Indwe. On the one hand, the authors explored the difficulty in interpreting Mrs. Konile?s story in the original testimony in 1996. Significant parts of a story can be lost if cultural allusions or knowledge are left without interpretation (53-55). More specifically, much is lost in an interpretation if the interpreter lacks a cultural understanding of rural speech and ways of communication (66). The authors explore how testimonies can reinforce stereotypes (21). Other themes explored are the following: reconciliation as a redefinition of self (36); the importance of collaborative, communally oriented, human-centered methodology (46); the understanding of how dominant epistemologies can ?rupture indigenous modes of knowing? (58). The authors emphasized how Mrs. Konile was connected to the idea of achieving a sense of wholeness through ?us? and how the killing of her son rendered her into an ?I? (62). When Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie traveled to Indwe, Mrs. Konile?s testimony was recontextualized since it was embedded in ?indigenous cultural and psychological practices? (91). There, they understood how poverty affected Mrs. Konile and how destructive it was for her when her son was not buried in Indwe (88). They also understood much clearer the symbolism and dreams related to the goat and the rocks to which Mrs. Konile was referring. Additionally, they noted the destructive impacts of ?cumulative waves of trauma and grief? (i.e. colonization, apartheid, and poverty) since it becomes part of the collective memory of indigenous people (181). In comparing her testimony 10 years later, Nosisi, Kopano, and Antjie recognized healing.
1) I would like to reflect as a class on Ubuntu. According to the book, ubuntu is the innate desire from within to help another (129)? ?ubuntu?[is] in all of us?in some culture sit is nurtured, in other cultures it is done away with. The African kind of interconnectedness is much more open than the community sense of other cultures.? (204). Do you agree that ubuntu can be found within all of us? It seems that processes such as neoliberalism that increasingly value individuality, puts responsibility on the individual to be successful, etc. will not garner ubuntu but rather stifle it. Do you think there is a way to garner ubuntu under forces such as global capital that seem to reinforce the splitting of human connection (i.e. through consumption or competition)?
2) Near the end of the book, the authors argue ?those first Truth Commission hearings that in a way compelled Mrs. Konile into processing her intense experience of loss? (206) and that ?the hearings changed her life?for the (slightly) better? (207). Do you agree? I wonder if the Truth Commission was really necessary or if a local communal process in Indwe could have better served Mrs. Konile.
“We constitute our social identities through narrative and, although life is much more than stories, stories also try to create order in the chaos of our lives.”
First of all, it seems like the book is a very good of example of the quote above. As I see it, the authors takes an active part of their review of the testimonies of the four mothers. They realize that the testimony of Koline doesn’t not fit into the overall narrative of the TRC and is thus labeled as the outcome of a traumatic experience, something incomprehensible.
Once again we are shown that stories has a certain narrative which raises the question of how do we understand stories that doesn’t fit in these structures.
By engaging in that particular testimony they are creating meaning out of it, first through the elaborated translation (xhosa), then the cultural approach, both in terms of local culturally understanding (indwe, forgot the originally name) but also from a critical examination of science and the western, Anglo-Saxon bias(however it felt like they almost disqualified science) and then through different african and western psychological insights.
By focusing on a fracture, a contrast, they give themselves the opportunity to understand something different about the TRC and the spirits of the gugulehu Seven and themselves, something that they probably wouldn’t be able to identify if it was four narratives blending in the big narrative of the TRC. In engaging in the story of Koline and visiting her, they achieved a higher level of insight about themselves, South Africa, the tension and the intersubjective relation between black and white, perpetrator and victim, identity, selves and belonging to a community.
That kind of method have in itself a value and the insights of the book has value.
However it seems that in their dissection of Koline’s testimony, are forcing the testimony into their own narrative/system of meaning which must also(according to their own definition) have a certain structure and rules.
For me it felt like, that they were extracting meaning out of elements that not necessary have any meaning and I couldn’t help thinking of the quote from last time: please don’t turn us into novels, or situations where I have myself, said something, and then somebody weighed it and interpreted completely different from what I meant when I said it.
When they were interviewing Koline, they never really presented their own interpretations for her. So for me it will always(to some extent) be their own interpretations and i’m not sure what that mean for the generel validity (and now im using a western biased concept…).
Moreover I felt, that their presentation and interpretation of Koline, kind of reduced the testimony of the other mothers testimony to something that just was an expression of the TRC, which I didn’t think was fair.
Questions:
What is forgivesness?
Who is forgiveness for?
What is reconciliation?
What are the relation between forgiveness and reconciliation?
From the merriam-webster:
: the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement
: the process of finding a way to make two different ideas, facts, etc., exist or be true at the same time It
It seems that reconciliation is about restoring something (becoming friendly again), but what if the starting point was not just? Is reconciliation then the right concept?
This week’s readings brought us back to testimony and truth and reconciliation. There was this Goat was a captivating read and focused on the meaning of testimony and who it is really for.
A couple of key points about testimony that I noted from this reading:
-Testimony is not something we can define
-There is not “right” way to give a testimony
-Testimony can and often benefits the privileged “We are just the entertainment before dinner. It was not about us,” (32).
Chapter 3 ” A possible black conversation” was probably one of my favourite chapters in this book.
The discussion between “first black” and “second black” was very telling about who a testimony belongs to and if it is an effective way of communicating injustice and human rights violations.
For instance, most of the time those who give testimony are the most vulnerable in a community. That is, they are the ones who experience the injustice. In this case, the colonized were to give their testimony to the colonizers. Black 2 asked, ” Why should it always be the indigenous people who have to reconcile and teach whites about the pain that apartheid inflicted on us?” This question was so telling of how testimony can be ineffective and carry on the pain of colonialism.
For a really long time, I thought giving testimony and truth and reconciliation was a positive thing. After this week’s readings, I am skeptical. I still thnk giving testimony can be positive, but is it effective or does it just re-traumatized those who have experienced trauma. Second Black said to Frist Black that South Africa’s TRC “was all staged for the world and for whites, not for us, sister.” That quote also made me think about the continued racism that can occur with testimony.
I think we all have this idea that testimony and TRC are processes that will make things better after an injustice. But that is not the case. Testimony can be misunderstood and in the case of this book, testimony can even be lost in translation.
My questions:
1) So I am really left wondering how we create TRC processes that are fair and benefit the survivor.Who should be involved in a TRC process ?
2) How do we make sure that the survivors are made the priority during a TRC?
This week’s reading can be considered to be an interesting study that touches upon the implications of systemic violence, and the challenges that come with witnessing structural inequalities and difference, the rootedness of testimony and last but not least, the reproduction of privilege and exclusion. One aspect that I believe this reading relates to with regards to our former readings is narrative. Once more we are reminded of the importance of narrative and the way it is transmitted. Throughout the reading not only is each narrative explored in terms of its roots, but also each narrative reveals to us the troubles of translating systemic violence.
The way testimony is set up affects the narrative that comes along. One interesting thought that has revealed this is what Mrs. Konilie emphasizes as a world that doesn’t belong to them. Staged for the world and the whites, we see that the testimony was framed in a way where genuine narrative has been devalued, misunderstood, set aside and disregarded. As a result, one can say that the reality or the genuine narrative of what people have to say throughout a testimony is long gone and altered to what others who have framed proceedings to their understandings define as a world and a language of their own. This unfortunate consequence can only be described as a form of systemic violence that victimizes one mentally. How can we overcome such a solidified barrier? I believe that this barrier formulates another complication that might never come to an end. Not being able to transmit a reality, as it is creates the hardships we see today in terms of reconciliation. Can we ever get to the point where people are no longer dehumanized and re-humanized again? The complications that come with a world that is already set for the others can only take us away from this idea. Past violence is not the only subject that matters once it comes to reconciliation, because how perpetrators ask for forgiveness and how they are willing to reframe the language that is used in testimonies constitute other aspects that might matter even more. However, we are faced with this dilemma where we have not yet seen in different situations moments that are promising once it comes to reconciliation. Some of the points that I believe this reading leads to for discussion include the following,
1) Explore the term “otherness” and what it means once it comes to a testimony.
2) Are there specific ways that reconciliation can be genuinely initiated? Is there one promising way that comes to mind and how can this way come about?
‘We often assume that a story by someone who looks or speaks like ourselves will be easier to understand than a story by someone from a completely different culture’ (p. 98). In this fragment of There Was This Goat Kopano expresses his uncomfortableness with the realization that a shared culture and history of oppression does not lead him to understand the testimony of mrs. Konile. There is more needed than knowledge of culture and history in order to understand mrs. Konile’s testimony. Kopano speaks of the strangeness and familiarity that resides in every other, including the ones of our own community. He encourages to embrace the strangeness of the other. ‘It was out of her strangeness and ordinariness that we were able to resuture her self in-culture wholeness’ (p. 99). I want to talk about this selected fragment because its message and value beyond the issue of truthful testimonies struck me. I believe that it contains a big lesson and even a solution for many current problems of intolerance in the world. If we would only listen to the other, embrace the strangeness of another persons, explore it and learn from it instead of being afraid by the unknown and unfamiliar it would lead to a bigger mutual understanding and a better world.
Question: how much do you need to expose of yourself as a listener in order to find the truth of a testimony?
Question: what makes Krog, Mpolweni and Ratele the ones to tell Mrs. Konile’s story?
Week Six readings response – Curtis Rowland
There was this goat
This reading (in addition to several other readings in class) had me thinking about Hegel’s dialectic theory:
“Dialectic ….the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite… development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism ….any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict …
….the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements.” (Merriam-Webster)
The part that I thought was relevant is that these continuing efforts to wrong past human-rights injustices fall short in hindsight. They either neglect the context and culture of those wronged, or serve to assuage the guilt of the colonizers or dominant structure. Not to absolve the mistakes, but are these half measures necessary steps from ignorance on a longer path toward some form of enlightenment or compassionate behaviour?
The problems of interpretation and cultural frames of reference had to be identified and analyzed by the experts, but the hope would be that their scholarship influences the next tribunal.Their work to credence to dreams and traditional ways of sharing meaning can now be added to the growing body of knowledge. Also considerations on avoiding pre-expecting narratives that fit standard hero arcs in a Joseph Campbell style as problematic.
The story of the researchers also brought some ethical issues to mind. Had Mrs. Konile’s testimony changed in her head during the time that passed and she had time to ruminate? Never before had I considered the trauma on interpreters. Also the power dynamic between the interviewers and the destitute Mrs. Knonile. And even some issues I personally faced that brought the whole story home as an English reader struggling with some of the English words – ie. “Umm!” in the South African sense versus “Ummm?” in the Canadian sense made a big difference in meaning.
Question: I struggled with the meaning around the post-interview scene where the university folk celebrate with a nice meal and some fancy wine. Was this self-congratulatory?
Quote: A person is made into being by another person (60).
While the work made by Krog, Mpolweni and Ratele is very valuable and shows to what extent the regular process of hearings can miss the details of testimony (and undermine its power to produce justice), I wonder what the available options are to “correct” that. There is a trade-off between what can be accomplished in a timely manner and what should ideally happen. Here we return to the questions of who is justice working for and what justice is. As my classmates, I wonder about the concept of reparation as well and the balance between the need to say and the need to communicate. After all, Mrs Konile seemed to be satisfied with her testimony in the final assessment. For her everything was crystal clear, so the frustration shared by the researchers at the begginning of the book was a projection of societal expectations of justice, which is interesting as well. From Mrs Konile’s point of view, however, things worked.
Another question that comes to my mind then is: Are there minimum standards that court procedures should meet? What would they look like if we focus on the victims? What would they look like if we have a different focus–using justice as social catharsis? If we apply both criteria maybe we could find the minimum requirements of interpretation.
It was interesting to see how the authors try to comprehend and unpack the “incoherent” testimony of Mrs. Konile. As we see in this book, stories are rooted in and derive meaning from their context, and often do not fit into western-centric frameworks. The authors try to retranslate and reinterpret Mrs. Konile’s words based on her reality and her world.
As pointed out in the book, it is challenging to achieve coherence and accurately interpret stories that do not belong to oneself, particularly those that are translated and come from a different context. However, trying to understand and interpret the contextual realities is an essential step towards creating empathy, offering respect and dignity, and recognizing the importance that each story deserves. The authors call for a “communally-oriented, human-centred methodology”.
Questions for discussion:
– In our quest for meaning, do we unnecessarily try to search for or derive meaning in places where it does not exist? Does that then not represent our understanding of what the truth is, rather than the intention of the person whose story it is?
– What purpose did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process serve for the relatives of the victims? In Mrs. Konile’s case, we see that it pushed (or at least expected) her to construct her intense emotional experiences into a logical narrative. What is the alternative to this type of framework that is biased and unjust towards those who’ve already suffered deep trauma and loss?
– A lot of the times, meaning is lost or altered in translation. We see these struggles with the translation and interpretation of Mrs. Konile’s story as an extreme case. How do we overcome this challenge of translation to preserve the story?
There Was This Goat, investigates the testimony of Mrs. Konile, who is the mother of a young man that was murdered by apartheid forces. Based on the reports from the Truth and Reconciliation, Mrs. Konile’s testimonies were incoherent and hard to understand. In addition, these testimonies was not translated and transcribed correctly. Mrs. Koniles testimonies were excluded and not paid attention to properly and was labeled as “strange”.
In this book (p. 62) the author talks about the notion of “restoring dignity”. It is mentioned that one of the tasks of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to help to begin restoring the personal dignity of victims; however, the TRC fails to accomplish the promised task. For example in the case of Mrs. Konile’s, her testimony was not heard properly. The possibility that the setting of TRC was a barrier to a true testimony didn’t occur to anyone and she was labeled as incoherent and unintelligent. In this book we are reminded that even missing quotation marks in a testimony could drastically change the meaning and interpretation of words (p. 95). Through interviews and analyzing Mrs. Konile’s testimonies, the authors are proving that the conditions, which TRC provided for Mrs. Konile, were limiting her ability to testify and therefore they are truly restoring her dignity. The authors also call for new types of evidence that could supplement the traditional archival testimonies to help us better understand the true narratives.
Question:
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission helps to create more safe spaces and a more inclusive attitude towards the marginalized groups. However, the TRC itself has created a new set of exclusions and miss-understandings. What changes in the structure of the TRCs could improve the inclusive attitudes and help to protect the marginalized voices?
There was This Goat made clear a personal challenge I have with the readings. This is perhaps something that should have been obvious to me a long time ago, but I think I was just able to articulate this now – its my struggle with defining myself in relation to the readings. This particular concept really stuck with me as it was expressed in the following quote. ?At the truth commission hearings Mrs. Konile was constituting an identity for herself at that moment in that particular context. But she was not the only one who was narrating? While listening, people were also reformulating their own identities in response to her.? I do not know how to digest the definitions I create of myself in relation to the readings. I think this challenge is posed to audiences in many books, but made very obvious to readers of this book through the many different lenses and styles used to analyse Mrs. Konile?s testimony. Most interesting was how each person explained their approach to analysis which exposed the reader in some instances to how the voices of the book were understanding themselves in relation to the subject matter too.
Q1: What are the benefits and what are the challenges to defining yourself in relation to this book?
?How do we hear one another when the past is still so present among us??
This quote stuck out as a second clear message in the book. I think that here past pertains to established historical narratives of dominant groups and unique historical experiences of every village. Past also pertains to individual experiences and the development of relationships between groups and individuals through time and space. The issues with hearing were made obvious with every different interpretation of Mrs. Konile?s testimony and called to attention the inadequacy of a shorted analysis. However, often there is not time and space for this long analysis. This brings to light problems we are likely to face in our careers as policy makers. We will be forced to draw conclusions of groups of people from interviews and observations and we will not have the resources to analyse a situation in as much detail as was represented in this book. Therefore, we can use this book as a lesson to inform process.
Q2: What are tools we as policy makers could develop to challenge immediate understandings, interpretations and conceptualizations to create the most ?correct? interpretation possible?
The readings raised so many key elements of discussion:
1) Racial discourse ? black vs. white
2) Translator/Interpretation – Language vs. Cultural
3) Power and Pitfalls of Narratives
4) Self vs. Community
5) Trust and Legitimacy of TRC as a Process/System
6) Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Status
We continue to explore three main concepts ? storytelling, memory, and listening.
?We constitute our social identities through narrative?stories also try to create order in the chaos of our lives?Stories bring order or tell about chaos.? We continue to explore the importance of voice and hearing all types of voices. The readings indicated the key difference between Traumatic memory vs. Narrative memory ? where a victim could completely transform the traumatic memory into a narrative memory and so integrate it into the survivor?s life story.
The book dissects the testimony of Ms. Konile that was seen as unconventional and not your ?ordinary? story. Each chapter produces a new layer of thought on how the testimony was interpreted and thus revealed many questions. ?Her narrative defied all the elements that render narratives ?audible? within what was considered to be the dominant discursive framework operative at the hearings.? It was interesting to read about how different people (Black or White) received and interrupted her (Ms. Konile) testimony. Where it seemed people were focused on how she told her story rather than the words, actions, and context behind her story. This was elaborated further in an aspect which I believe is constantly overlooked ? cultural interpretation. Translating from one language to another can be difficult but to fully interpret the mannerism, cultural context and nuisances that comes with telling a story is not captured in written transcript especially in setting with its own agenda. As a reader I never considered that Ms. Konile had to provide her testimony in four broader narratives: personal (loss of her son), communal (Gugulethu Seven), regional (Western Cap hearings), and national (Apartheid as a whole). Lastly, another matter that was brought to my attention is how audience members receives a testimony can vary; not only does their pre-biases and context matter but someone who was to read a testimony vs. listen to an audio tape vs. see it live would react differently. Therefore, the delivery of the testimony is also a factor to consider.
Questions
1. There are many players who participate (actively or passively) in a TRC; what are their incentives and what do they hope to gain?
Players: Victims and their Families, Perpetrators, Bystanders, New Generation, International Community, Elite (Political) etc ?
2. I also would still like to break down and hear thoughts on the original question posed by the author ?So What? Why is it important to try to understand this unmentioned, incorrectly ID-ed, misspelt, incoherently testifying, translated and carelessly transcribed woman??
In this week’s reading we’re invited to reflect once more on the value of testimony. The authors pay particular interest to one of the mothers of the victims from the Gugulethu killings, Notrose Nobomvu Konile. At the time, her testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was seen as incomprehensible, a mix of reality and fantasy. For one of the authors, Krog, representing such testimony as a journalist was a challenge back in the day. She then revisits the case and, with the help of two colleagues, they try to “come to terms” with Konile’s testimony. The book unveils the major problem of the “incomprehensible” testimony all along: it had nothing to do with the testimony itself, and the person who provided it, but with those who took the challenge to translate it. When translating, one should be aware not only of the linguistics peculiarities, but the culture (and what it represents) that’s being translated. Each society has its own identity, although sometimes it might not be clear. Cross-cultural communication can be very challenging when one does not make the effort to take aside her position of privilege (as an outsider). This all made me reflect on the social contingency of language, and how problematic it can be when people are not aware of this crucial aspect of language when “making sense” of testimonies.
Questions:
1) What can be made of restorative justice in the context of this book?
2) Is there an equivalent or better alternative to testimonies? How can we get rid of them? Can we?
Why do others listen to testimonies? What are they supposed to gain from the losses of others? It is hard to bear witness and it is hard to give testimony so what are the motives for doing so?
“There are witness stones along all roads” – from the Book Launch of 100 Days
Everywhere we live and walk others have been before us. The spatiality of memory is a really important.
Where we stand affects what we see.
Where we have been affects how we see.
Where we are affects why we look.
Reading about Mrs. Konile really made me question the effectiveness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It presents itself as a vehicle for many, saying come one, come all, but it was not prepared for who came. Some of who came were unintelligible within the space the TRC created. They assume a lot about what people bring to the ending they are creating.
She is disconnected from Cape Town the site of national reconciliation. They are not “her” public and are therefore, not prepared for what she had to say. So the question really is why did she say it? The claiming of words and being claiming by them.