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Mirroring the past: At times, the actors in Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept step out of their roles entirely, debating the material they are performing, questioning its meaning or even its validity. It’s here that the play’s meta-theatrical dimension comes into focus. Photo: Thandile Zwebanzi

What does it mean to forgive? A play asks, 30 years after the TRC

Drawing from archives and lived experience, the international production probes the emotional and political complexities of reconciliation in a fractured world

Layered: Lebo Mazibuko’s novel Fabrics of Love came out in August. Photo: Thandukwazi Lungelo Gcabashe

Exploring the fabric of family and identity in Lebo Mazibuko’s Fabrics of Love

Lebo Mazibuko’s second novel, Fabrics of Love, looks at themes of family trauma, black womanhood, absent fathers and heritage

Zionism blends Jewish trauma with settler-colonial power, creating a narcissistic identity that justifies supremacy and erases Palestinian existence

Zionism, trauma and the psychology of supremacy

Zionism blends Jewish trauma with settler-colonial power, creating a narcissistic identity that justifies supremacy and erases Palestinian existence.

South Africa has normalised heavy drinking and policy alone won’t change that – it has to be a cultural shift. Photo: File

Stop ignoring the heavy drinking red flags

It will take more than policy to change South Africans’ excessive use of alcohol; we all need to take part in the Sober Curious movement

Between the lines: What South African stories reveal about men’s mental health

What happens when men can’t ask for help? These South African books offer raw, revealing answers

Children in areas such as Lavender Hill on Cape Town are exposed to gang violence and poverty. Photo: David Harrison/M&G

Trauma is hampering the education of South Africa’s children

Teachers, especially those in schools where violence, drugs and gangsterism are a daily reality, need to become ‘trauma informed’

Passages of mind: Lesedi Molefi’s memoir Patient 12A explores his battle with mental illness.
Photo: Thabiso Molatlhwa/Richart Productions

Lesedi Molefi’s Patient 12A is a whirlpool of consciousness

Lesedi Molefi’s memoir Patient 12A explores his battle with mental illness.

A view of wreckage of buildings after Israeli airstrike hit residential areas in the southern parts in Beirut, Lebanon. (Photo by Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Israeli jets traumatise African migrant workers

Many of Lebanon’s domestic migrant workers are haunted by memories of the Beirut port explosion four years ago

Heart of stone: Dumisani Mbebe plays Don Bhengu in season two of the TV series Savage Beauty. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

Savage Beauty back with a vengeance

The second season of the series offers an expanded cast and more corporate dark deeds

(John McCann/M&G)
Audio

Disentangle ourselves from our trauma

‘We can deny our experience but our body remembers,’ Jeanne McElvaney wrote in her book, ‘Spirit Unbroken: Abby’s Story’

Epitome of ethics: Author and cultural critic bell hooks insisted that care, love and spirituality were the core of black feminist practice and freedom. Photo: Karjean Levine/Getty Images

A spirit guide to ethical black feminist thinking and praxis

bell hooks’s refusal to ‘get in formation’ foregrounded healing as the foundation to a communal liberatory agenda

Not enough: It seems that the regular salary is not enough for young South Africans. Many turn to side hustles to make ends meet.

Mind the toxic workplace

While people are taking mental health more seriously, the commodification of workers can turn a job into a toxic space that depletes more than it uplifts

there are no flowers in the streets where children play and the area has experienced four cases of child suicide in recent months. Photo: David Harrison

‘The children cannot cope any more’: Suicide in Calvinia highlights lack of support for young

How Covid-19 has intensified the physical and emotional burdens placed on children’s shoulders.

Foundational steps: Joe Slovo, Nelson Mandela, Jacob Zuma, Alfred Nzo and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela during a rally for Mandela. Slovo said in 1990 that the party’s leaders must ‘turn the snowfall of talks into an avalanche of transformation’. Photo: Louise Gubb/Corbis Saba/Getty Images

Traumatised societies need ethical leaders

The past cannot be erased, but leaders can choose how to respond to it and how to forge a better future

Curious about complexity: Prof Gobodo-Madikizela remembers herself as an inquisitive child, and that as an adult she is still asking uncomfortable questions, specifically about trauma
and the TRC

Q&A Sessions: Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela: ‘How do we repair this brokenness?’

Author and academic Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela spoke to Nicolene de Wee about the government’s failure to heal a broken country

Why doctors dread the days the country celebrates

‘Big’ days in sport — or even just weekends — almost always spell an increase in trauma and gender violence. One doctor remembers a day she had to put her compassion aside

Embroidery by a woman who lived through traumas of apartheid. (Puleng Segalo)

How embroidery broke the silence around women’s apartheid trauma

By making embroideries, women move beyond and challenge categories and labels of “being vulnerable” or being perceived as “marginalised”

Childhood trauma: An image from Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo’s Slaghuis II exhibition, which can be viewed online (Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo)

The Portfolio: Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo

Photographer Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo’s latest project, Slaghuis, is a recounting of the trauma he experienced growing up in his family’s tavern business

There are many opportunistic leaders who understand — and exploit — the broken nature of communities for self-enrichment.

Traumatised societies need honest, self-aware leaders

Politicians must desist from blaming the actions of the former oppressor for their own decisions

The people of areas such as Langa on the Cape Flats have not had the liberation that the end of apartheid was supposed
to have brought. (David Harrison)

Betrayal adds to apartheid trauma

People sacrificed to achieve liberation but they continue to suffer from poverty and exclusion