Launch
of
Traumatic
Stress
in
South
Africa,
by
Debra
Kaminer
and
Gillian


Eagle



21/9/2010



Let
me
begin
with
a
warm
congratulations
to
Debbie
and
Gill
on
producing
this

wonderful
book
–
and
to
thank
them
for
inviting
me
to
contribute
to
its
launch,

which
I
am
honoured
to
do.





And
congratulate
and
thank
the
Book
Lounge.


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐



This
book
opens
with
a
sobering
–
if
not
utterly
alarming
–
reminder
of
the
ubiquity

of
trauma
in
this
country
–
be
it
in
the
form
of
direct
or
indirect
trauma
–
so
much

so,
say
Debbie
and
Gill,
that
the
idea
of
trauma
and
being
traumatized
has
become

part
of
the
contemporary
South
African
common
sense.

Who
would
deny
that
this
is

a
widely
traumatized
society?

It’s
widely
acknowledged
and
spoken
about
–
the

stuff
of
dinner
conversations,
talk
shows
and
journalistic
investigations
as
much
as

it
is
the
subject
of
serious
scholarly
and
professional
inquiry.


Trauma
is
a
festering

sore
in
the
social
body
of
our
new
democracy
–
and
the
bodily
metaphor
is
itself

widely
insinuated
into
our
collective
consciousness,
as
we
know,
from
the
TRC
and

its
discourse
of
healing

(which
I
say
more
about
in
a
moment).





But
in
fact
the
bodily
metaphor
is
only
partly
useful,
because
festering
sores
heal

more
readily,
with
appropriate
medication,
than
the
experience
of
trauma.

As

Debbie
and
Gill
emphasise
in
their
text,
there
is
no
quick
fix,
no
psychological

antibiotic,
that
will
rapidly
erase
the
effects
of
traumatic
experiences.






All
of
which
makes
their
book
so
important,
as
much
in
professional
and
academic

circles
as
within
an
intelligent
lay
readership:

firstly
in
helping
to
frame
an

intelligent
and
well‐informed
discussion
about
the
manifestations
and
effects
of

trauma,
and
secondly,
in
presenting
robust
yet
sensitive
pointers
to
those
who

devote
their
lives
to
trying
to
deal
with
trauma,
or
those
who
are
trying
to
survive

amidst
the
aftershocks
of
trauma
in
their
own
lives.




I’m
here
as
a
bit
of
an
outsider
to
the
gathering:

I’m
not
a
practitioner,
nor
do
I
work

within
the
discipline
of
psychology
–
but
Debbie
assures
me
that’s
exactly
why
I
was

invited
to
speak
at
their
launch.



I
am
a
social
researcher
(working
at
the
interfaces

of
sociology,
history
and
cultural
studies)
and
they
have
asked
me
to
speak
briefly
in

ways
that
give
that
sort
of
perspective
on
the
issue
of
trauma.






Which
is,
in
fact,
how
they
frame
the
issue
at
the
outset
of
their
book.

In
SA,
the

growing
interest
in
trauma
during
the
apartheid
years
was
driven
by
a
political
and

moral
activism,
among
people
alarmed
and
outraged
by
accelerating
levels
of

political
violence
during
the
1980s
and
early
1990s
–
along
with
mounting
concern

and
anger
in
feminist
organizations,
such
as
POWA,
about
rates
of
rape
and
sexual

violence.


This
is
one
of
the
profound
strengths
of
the
book
and
their
approach:

while
writing
as
psychologists,
with
therapeutic
interests,
they
are
always
mindful

of
the
social
and
political
genesis
of
the
problems
they
dissect.






The
idea
of
trauma
is
indeed,
in
key
respects,
a
social
and
political
invention
–
which

is
not
to
say
that
it’s
a
myth,
rather
it
is
to
point
to
a
very
particular
global
history

which
has
constituted
trauma
as
a
category
of
knowledge
and
experience.

So
let
me

start
my
remarks
there,
with
the
global
context
into
which
particular
South
African

experiences
of
trauma
are
inserted.





As
Didier
Fassin
and
Richard
Rechtman
point
out,
in
their
recent
book
The
Empire
of

Trauma:
An
Inquiry
into
the
Condition
of
Victimhood,
‘trauma
has
become
a
major

signifier
of
our
age’
–
in
ways
that
help
to
differentiate
our
age
from
previous
ones.

If
we
now
accept
that
trauma
is
a
fact
of
life
and
major
circuit
of
psychic
and
social

experience,
it
wasn’t
always
that
way
–
not
because
terrible
things
didn’t
happen
to

people,
but
rather
because
the
category
hadn’t
been
brought
into
visibility
with
such

frequency
and
acuity.





In
the
professional
and
scholarly
circles
of
psychiatry
and
psychology,

they
argue,

trauma
was
a
late
nineteenth
century
idea
–
drawing
powerfully
on
the
work
of

Freud.


But,
in
the
last
25
years,
we
have
seen
a
sea
change
in
the
way
trauma
has

been
understood
and
popularized
–
the
beginnings
of
what
we
take
for
granted
now

–
that
is,
the
idea
of
trauma
as
part
of
our
collective
common
sense.






This
journey
in
the
life
of
the
idea,
they
say,
was
shaped
by
a
series
of
critical

moments

in
our
global
history
–
World
War
1,
World
War
2
and
especially
the

Holocaust,

Vietnam,
the
rise
of
the
women’s
movement.
Each
of
these,
in
one
or

other
way,
confirmed
and
extended
a
concept
of
trauma
as
debilitating
the
psyche,

with
powerful,
sometimes
indelible,
traces
in
an
individual’s
personal
and
social
life.


But
it
is
in
the
last
25
years
that
there
has
been
popular
embrace
of
the
idea
that

societies
can
be,
and
have
been,
collectively
traumatized
–
and
therefore
that

psychiatrists,
therapists
and
others
in
counseling
professions
are
now
key
players
in

the
management
of
collective
crises.





Their
book
opens
with
the
aftermath
of
9/11
attacks
in
the
USA:

‘in
the
days
following
the
attacks
on
the
World
Trade
Centre
in
New
York,
an

estimated
9000
mental
health
specialists,
including
700
psychiatrists,
intervened
to

offer
psychological
support
to
survivors,
witnesses
and
local
residents.’


A
far
cry
from
the
perceived
collective
impact
of
episodes
of
calamity
in
previous

times
–
when,
if
anything,
the
families
of
the
war
dead
–
for
example
‐
were
enjoined

to
be
strong
and
calm,
and
the
ex‐combatants
were
expected
to
adapt
and
get
on

with
life
with
as
little
fuss
as
possible.





So
there
is
a
new
conceptual,
moral
and
political
universe
associated
with
the
idea

of
trauma
that
has
made
its
mark
globally,
albeit
in
somewhat
different
ways
in

particular
places
and
times.





The
‘new’
South
Africa
is
no
stranger
to
this
new
paradigm
of
trauma
–
in
fact,
it

played
an
absolutely
fundamental
role
in
the
ways
in
which
we
made
sense
of
the

transition
from
an
apartheid
to
a
post‐apartheid
society.

And
I
here
I
want
to
return

briefly
to
the
TRC.






On
one
level,
the
TRC
was
about
the
accumulation
of
knowledge,
the
truth
about
the

past,
for
the
sake
of
national
reconciliation.


But
this
process
was
in
turn

understood
in
profoundly
psychological
terms:
truth‐telling
was
rendered
as
a

personal
and
collective
catharsis,
of
the
sort
that
could
heal
the
wounds
of
the
past.



In
Tutus
words,

‘
we
are
a
wounded
people,
all
of
us’;

apartheid
had
created
a
sick

society,
the
healing
of
which
would
require
a
confession
of
the
ugly
secrets
of
the

past,
that
had
festered,
as
sites
of
moral,
psychological
and
national
infection
or

contamination.

The
healing
process
would
require
an
individual
and
collective

unburdening
–
a
recognition
of
the
enormity
of
the
damage
inflicted,
so
as
to

promote
us
to
recognize
our
shared
humanity,
in
our
collective
frailty
as
a
wounded

nation.





The
language
is
very
much
the
language
of
trauma
–
indeed,
the
TRC
represented

apartheid
as
a
collective
trauma
–
so
that
the
transition
from
apartheid
would

require
a
series
of
post‐traumatic
interventions
to
promote
our
psychic
and

collective
well‐being.




At
the
time,
many
of
us
who
wrote
about
the
TRC
were
skeptical
about
this
language

of
collective
healing
–
can
nations
heal?
–
and
were
doubtful
of
the
possibilities
of

dealing
with
the
damage
of
the
apartheid
past
in
these
kinds
of
ways.




To
some
extent,
I
think
such
doubts
were
well‐founded.

But
now,
in
retrospect,
and

speaking
personally,
I
think
I
under‐estimated
the
traction
that
the
trope
of

traumatic
damage
and
healing
would
gain,
within
the
collective
imagination
of
post‐
apartheid
society.



Unexpectedly
perhaps,
a
notion
of
the
democratic
citizen
as
a
victim
of
trauma
with

the
freedom
to
heal,
seeped
into
the
newly
forming
social
order,
across
a
range
of

sites
of
discourse
and
debate.





There
are
many
such
examples;
I
only
have
time
to
speak
briefly
about
one
of
them:


an
period
of
increasingly
vociferous
and
angry
public
concern
about
rape,
and
more

specifically
baby
rape
(which
I
have
researched
and
written
about
–
see
eg
my

chapter
on
rape
in
Walker
and
Reid
(eds),
Men
Behaving
Differently).



We
know
that
unacceptably
high
rates
of
sexual
violence
have
a
long
history
in
this

country,
even
if
it
is
difficult
to
produce
robust
and
reliable
measures
thereof.

We

know
too,
that
it
took
a
long
time
for
sexual
violence
to
be
something
that
excited

public
debate,
let
alone
popular
mobilization.


As
if
sexual
violence
was
an

unfortunate
but
ultimately
marginal
feature
of
political
and
social
life.





That
had
started
to
change
in
the
late
1990s;
by
2001,
we
were
suddenly
a
nation

confronting
a
crisis
of
sexual
violence
that
challenged
the
very
meaning
of
our

newfound
democracy.


You
may
recall
that
it
was
in
October
2001
that
baby

Tshepang,
a
nine‐month
old
baby
girl
in
Louisvale,
in
Northern
Cape,
was
raped.



Initial
reports
suggested
(falsely
as
it
turned
out)
that
the
baby
was
gang‐raped.

Suddenly,

rapes
dominated
the
headlines

and
various
fora
of
political
and
social

debate.


We
read
of
many
more
baby
and
child
rapes,
country‐wide;

as
peoples’

attention
and
horror
intensified,
we
found
ourselves
in
the
midst
of
a
moral
panic,

holding
a
mirror
to
the
new
nation
that
evoked
shock,
insecurity
and
massive

anxiety.

Talk
shows,
parliamentary
hearings,
newspaper
articles,
television
debates,

as
much
as
private
dinner
parties,
found
people
grappling
with
the
question:

how

do
we
make
sense
of
this?


It
quickly
became
a
public
debate
about
who
we
were,
as

citizens
of
the
‘new’
South
Africa.


One
journalist
asked:
‘who
are
we
that
we
can
do

such
things
to
our
children’.


Men
in
particular
came
in
for
harsh
and
unflinching

moral
scrutiny:


‘Men
of
South
Africa,
why
do
we
allow
lust
and
greed
to
turn
us
into
beasts
without

emotions?’



Then
deputy
president
Jacob
Zuma
played
a
leading
role,
inaugurating
the
Moral

Regeneration
Movement

with
direct
reference
to
the
rape
of
Baby
Tsephang:

‘there

is
a
consensus
that
something
is
seriously
wrong
in
our
society.

We
are
still
haunted

by
the
news
of
6
adult
men
having
raped
a
nine‐month
old
baby,
and
there
are
many

other
cases
that
display
barbarism
and
moral
decay
of
the
worst
kind’.



In
short,
within
a
new,
intensely
anxious
and
angry
public
outcry
about
sexual

violence,
with
many
people
struggling
to
make
sense
of
the
rape
of
a
9month
old,
the

language
of
trauma
rapidly
provided
an
apparatus
within
which
to
name
and

confront
the
problem.


We
were
a
traumatized
nation,
so
much
so
that
we
were

wondering
who
we
were,
and
how
to
come
to
terms
with
our
collective
damage.





And
this
facilitated
one
of
the
most
sustained
and
open
engagements
with
the

problem
of
sexual
violence
that
the
country
has
experienced.


The
Sowetan
called
it

a
‘national
emergency’;
parliamentary
hearings
were
immediately
convened;
protest

marches
and
public
vigils
were
held;
various
NGOs
heeded
the
call
for
social

activism
with
a
new
emphasis
on
sexual
victimization,
including
fledgling
men’s

groups
that
protested
against
the
scandal
of
their
manhood.

(The
outcry
was
one
of

the
reasons
for
Mbeki’s
denialism
about
rape:

‘hysterical
estimates’,
as
he
put
it,
So

along
with
the
heightened
awareness
and
outrage,
was
a
counter
politics
of
secrecy

and
denial).

Still,
the
point
I
want
to
make
here
is
how
a
language
of
trauma

completely
infused,
and
in
fact
enabled,
an
episode
of
intense
political
mobilization

and
public
argument
–
well
beyond
the
parameters
of
the
individual
pysche.




But
with
what
effects,
you
might
ask?


You
know
well
enough
that
sexual
violence

remains
an
inordinately
enormous
problem;
that
the
intense
public
flurry
of
anxiety

soon
receded,
and
life
returned
largely
to
our
pathological
norm.



Solving
the
problems
is
a
lot
more
complex;
our
attention
spans
too
limited;
our

anxieties
too
fickle.





As
if
to
underline
this,
all
too
poignantly,
you
probably
don’t
know
–
because
it

didn’t
hit
any
headlines
nor
provoke
much
anxiety
or
outrage
–
that
on
12
April
this

year,
a
3
month
old
baby
girl
was
raped
in
the
Eastern
Cape.

I
happened
to
be
sick

with
flu,
watching
TV
news
during
the
day,
and
stumbled
upon
a
brief
report
on
a

young
mother
who
was
cooking
in
another
room
of
her
house
while
a
man
was

raping
her
daughter.

She
then
walked
into
the
room
and
caught
him
in
the
act.

She

screamed
for
help,
alerting
others
in
the
area.

A
mob
soon
assembled
and
the
man

was
beaten
to
death.

Nothing
was
said
about
who
the
man
was
or
how
he
got
into

the
house;
nor
was
any
judgement
passed
on
the
actions
of
the
mob.

The
incident

made
one
news
cast,
then
faded
away,
with
no
lasting
public
imprint
whatsoever.





The
mirror
that
was
held
up
to
the
scourge
of
rape
in
2001
has
clouded
over.





So
that
leaves
us,
I
think,
with
a
renewed
sense
of
the
importance
of
the
sorts
of

questions
that
Debbie
and
Gill
are
raising
in
their
book:

as
they
say
in
their

introductory
chapter,



‘
 ‘just
because
trauma
is
common,
does
this
normalize
it?

Do
South
Africans

who
live
with
daily
violence
construct
traumatized
identities
or
subjectivities

for
themselves,
in
the
absence
of
trauma‐free
norms
against
which
to

measure
their
experience?’


The
brief
discussion
of
baby
rape
suggests
that
there
isn’t
go
to
be
a
single
or
simple

answer
to
these
questions
–
which
in
turn
underlines
the
importance
of
this
book,
as

a
powerful
and
provocative
survey
of
the
field
of
trauma
studies,

and
its
resonances

in
a
country
such
as
ours.