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 Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a psychologist and author from South Africa. In 1996, South African President Nelson Mandela appointed Gobodo-Madikizela to the Human Rights Violations Committee of the TRC, on which she served until the Commission completed its inquiry in 1998. In this video clip from a talk she gave for Facing History and Ourselves educators and community members, Gobodo-Madikizela talks about the many challenges in a society undergoing transformation.
Transcription of video clip:
“There are new problems in South Africa: Poverty that you talk about, the crime rate, the crisis of AIDS; all of these problems are new challenges that force the government to be creative about the way they choose to address them. In a way, some of the problems, particularly the problem of poverty, unemployment, is a legacy of Apartheid. Many black people moving from rural areas into the city centers looking for this hope that the present government had promised, failing to find jobs because they were never properly trained and prepared for this moment--this global moment--where people have to have skills.
These are new challenges and they do not take away what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission achieved. They are problems that come with the process of transformation. The issue of economic justice has not been adequately addressed because it is so complex. The Anti-Apartheid Struggle is not over in that sense of ‘that’s it, we are done,’ there is a new challenge, there are new challenges that invite people who are involved in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle to engage with the process in a different way.
I’ve read in this country some newspaper reports that claim that people are nostalgic about the past. There is no black person that can be nostalgic about an oppressive system such as Apartheid, but people of course are longing to experience this change, to know what it means, to get a sense of what it means to be in a transformed society and it is happening very, very slowly and for many people it has not happened.”
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