PART II: UNEQUAL, TRANSITIONAL CONTEXT
2. Introduction: ‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts’
2.5 Existing multiple conceptions and definitions of Peacebuilding
2.5.2 Peacebuilding and Silence
There are many silences in peacebuilding discourse (what Galtung, 1996: viii refers to as causes and effects that are rendered invisible as ‘externalities’). These silences centre mainly on the exclusion of the voices of ordinary people who have suffered the
intergenerational effects of structural, direct and symbolic violence in its masked forms on the one hand, and the continuity of pervasive inequality on the other hand. Curle &
Dugan (1982) referred to ‘emotional, social, or educational deprivation’ as ‘unpeaceful’
61 and suggested that ‘social injustice, economic deprivation and political impotence tend to lead to physical violence’ (p.19). They refer to the ‘death-wielding impact of systemic, non-physical violence’ and cited apartheid South Africa as an example by arguing that:
[I]t is not only that the freedom of the black population is curtailed in a myriad of ways ranging from limited access to education and income from the forced separation of families, but that their actual physical lives are limited in just as real a way as planned execution. […] These early deaths are the result of a systematic discriminatory distribution of social goods (medical care, sanitary conditions, subsistence, incomes, etc.) that contribute to longevity. (Curle & Dugan, 1982:20).
Another linked but unacknowledged consequence that accompanies colonialism and oppression, is historical trauma (Brave Heart, et al 2011:283) and the near total silence about how it intersects and interacts with inequality and its effects in the present. It begs the question with regard to who sets the agenda about what is included and what is excluded from the conception and definition of peacebuilding and why for example, racial reconciliation is higher on the agenda of civil society peacebuilders in a country where the most visible cause of the quest for that reconciliation - nested inequality - is growing. The programmes that are offered by most NGOs favour talk therapy and dialogue; alternatively, workshops, conferences and publications about distributive justice, but not structural action to deal with individual and collective ‘still present pasts’
(Liem, 2007:170). In proposing a ‘multi-layered model of the silencing of historical memories’ which takes ‘political, social, and psychological mechanisms’ that operate at state, community, family, and individual levels, Liem (2007:153-154) draws attention to the intersectional nature of conspiracies of silence. This thesis argues that the
intersections of silence in South Africa, constitute a ‘conspiracy of silence’ and a ‘culture of denial’ as discussed throughout the thesis.
Manifestations of historical trauma and how to recognise and deal with it and its
consequences; is the most neglected part of state level conceptions of peacebuilding and indeed of civil society peacebuilding in general. Brave Heart et al (2011:283) define historical trauma as ‘cumulative emotional and psychological wounding across
generations, including the lifespan, which emanates from massive group trauma’. It has also been suggested that ‘there is significant variation in how people experience, emplot and intergenerationally transmit trauma experiences’ (Denham, 2008:391). Sotera’s
62 (2006:99) conceptual model of historical trauma consists of the following elements: ‘(1) overwhelming physical and psychological violence, (2) segregation and/or displacement, (3) economic deprivation, and (4) cultural dispossession.’ As Sotera argues:
Though overt legitimization of subjugation may be rescinded over time, its legacy remains in the form of racism, discrimination and social and
economic disadvantage […] Second and subsequent generations are affected by the original trauma through various means. Extreme trauma may lead to subsequent impairments in the capacity for parenting. Physical and
emotional trauma can impair genetic function and expression, which may in turn affect offspring genetically, through in utero biological adaptations, or environmentally. Evidence suggests that disorders such as mental illness depression and PTSD can be genetically transmitted to secondary and subsequent generations. (Sotera, 2006:99).
This suggests that the effects of intergenerational and lifespan discrimination, dispossession and oppression are compounded and if shrouded in silence and denial, direct violence in the form of crime/social harm can and has been individualised. The implication of this argument is that even those individuals who ‘act out’ in the form of crime/social harm, are also unaware of the determinants and triggers of their actions. As Volkan, (2006, 6-7) contends, when people become a deliberate target of the aggression of ‘others’, the victimized group have to cope with ‘five interrelated psychological phenomena and others related to them’. These are:
a shared sense of shame, humiliation, dehumanization and guilt;
a shared inability to be assertive;
a shared identification with the oppressor;
a shared difficulty or even inability to mourn losses;
a shared transgenerational transmission of trauma.
He argues that these psychological phenomena ‘attach themselves to real-world issues in the affected societies, such as continuing poverty, inexperience in the democratic way of life, corruption in the new political system, and international manipulations’(p.6). I interpret this to mean that a two way relationship is implied here. Firstly, where the traumatised person is re-traumatised by the continuities of the traumatising event, and secondly, where traumatised people become the perpetrators of similar or other offences.
Either way, a parasitic relationship is implied here by the use of the word ‘attach’.
63 According to Volkan ‘even when political and legal systems change and traumatizing elements within the society are removed, individual and societal responses to the
previously existing and devastating political system do not disappear overnight.’ This is an important aspect to take into account in assessing how long-term peacebuilding is conceptualised since he argues that ‘[d]epending on the severity of the traumatizing events and how long they lasted, the influence of the shared trauma on the victimised group and their descendants may continue for decades’ (p.6). In chapter four, this thesis traces the continuity of shared trauma in South Africa from the colonial period starting in the 1600s, the 48 years of apartheid and 18 years of market democracy to provide context for this research.
It has been suggested that historical trauma can also be understood from the standpoint of victims as:
[T]emporal immobility or the impossibility of passing through […] in trauma theory, the traumatized person experiences the traumatic event as if it had a spectral quality of a continuous appearance after it had come to pass. Trauma complicates the relation between past and future in which what seems to belong to the realms of the past carries ontological weight in the present. (Zolkos, 2009:270-271).
This suggests that historical trauma is not an event, but a series of lived and relived events over time – a process that requires systemic rather than only individual intervention. By focusing on the work of Celan (1920-1970), a Jewish-Romanian- German poet and Holocaust survivor, Zolkos (2009:269) presents her argument as an intervention in ‘the project of theorizing the politics of reconciliation and transitional justice’. She argues that (a) more attention must be given to ‘subjective experiences and discursive sensitivities affected/shaped by the trauma of historical violence and injustice’, and that (b) the ‘constitutive as well as potentially subversive working of these
experiences and sensitivities’ must be recognized.
I argue that individual and collective historical trauma and the ways in which it manifests in the present, are largely ignored in conceptions and definitions of peacebuilding.
Because of the masked ways in which it manifests, and the discrete responses to these manifestations (which includes positive resilience), peacebuilders do not ordinarily view historical trauma, nor lifespan trauma as part of their sphere of activity. The result is that
64 many crimes/social harms obscure the contributing role that historical and lifespan
trauma plays in its production, and the state’s response to it is through an individualised, largely criminal justice approach. The introduction of restorative justice into the criminal justice system seems to suggest otherwise and thus an examination of restorative justice processing, through the lens of long-term peacebuilding, as conducted in this study, is justified.