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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 Facing History and Ourselves Summer Institute, Gobodo-Madikizela talks about how important it was for victims of apartheid oppression and violence to have validation and affirmation that their stories are true; that crimes were perpetrated against themselves and their loved ones, and that the truth was exposed publicly.
Transcription of video clip:
“Victims need that sense of affirmation, they want to be affirmed, because all of this confusing experience when you think about what happened to you – it’s confusing, it’s so complicated, but you want somebody to say, ‘yes, you are right to feel so confused, you are right to feel so unclear about what happened to you because it is a confusing experience, it is not a natural experience.’ And so victims need that affirmation and this is what the Truth Commission was tapping on.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave victims that space to feel the sense of being validated, that ‘yes, you are right, there is somebody who caused you to feel this way and we can identify them here as the perpetrators.’ And that moment of setting one’s eyes on someone who actually did it gives the trauma a name. It names it, and that is part of the process of integrating your trauma. Now it can be explained. Somebody did it. They were under orders for such and such. So there is that value in this talking and narrative and witnessing of the trauma that is so healing for victims.”
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