Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Reflecting on Ten Years of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, University of Cape Town, 23-27 November 2006 (CONFERENCE REPORT‪)‬

1. Two motivating engines propelled the Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness conference in Cape Town: one aimed to assemble an interdisciplinary group of scholars from over 40 countries to reflect upon the achievements of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (henceforth TRC); the other attempted to recommit the nation to a psychotherapeutic process of reconciliation, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu as an exemplar, mentor, and guide. These concomitant motivations overrode but could not dispel dissonant voices within South Africa, those of political activists, critical theorists, and, in particular, disaffected township youth--second generation apartheid survivors who had no role in the TRC but now live with its unfulfilled legacies, whose everyday lives are marked by poverty, unemployment, drugs, violent crime, HIV-AIDs, and bleak futures. The conference inevitably exposed the underlying tensions between these diverse groups, which include those committed to psychodynamic healing processes, those taking up a renewed interest in political activism, and/or those pursuing reconciliation through cross-cultural negotiations across axes of difference within the heterogeneous nation. 2. The conference promoted a particular and globally dominant discourse on reconciliation, shaped by a psychologically-driven, faith-based approach to forgiveness. This approach had many advocates. It was promulgated in numerous platforms including the opening keynote address on "Trauma, Mourning, Memorials and Forgiveness" by Prof. Vamik Volkan, a Noble prize nominee and leading practitioner in the field of peace and psychology, and several plenary sessions, one of which staged a public conversation between Archbishop Tutu and four victims of violence, including two mothers of the Mamelodi 10 [1], three of which closed the conference with reference to post-Holocaust testimony and were addressed by Holocaust survivor Eva Moses Kor, several second generation Holocaust survivors, and Cape Town Holocaust Museum curator, Richard Freedman. These closing plenaries were intended to "carr[y] the torch of forgiveness and reconciliation forward" [program]. Throughout the five days, conferees reflected on the theory and practice of forgiveness in relation to documentary films, dramatic performances, public "reconciliation labyrinth" landscape installations, and conference presentations that detailed processes of peace and reconciliation not only in regard to South Africa but also in relation to post-Holocaust Germany, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, and other traumatized nations on the African continent, including Rwanda, Ghana, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. Convened by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, TRC facilitator, Harvard trained psychologist, and author of A Human Being Died that Night, the five-day event appeared to be weighted in favour of psychoanalytical frameworks and processes entailing interpersonal dialogue in pursuit of peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness.