What do 8 Khulumani Support Group members from Boipatong and 18 Art Therapy students from the United States have in common? Well you would not be blamed if your answer is “Not much!”. But despite this, after a two day workshop the two groups were unselfconsciously linking arms, swaying, and singing old struggle battle hymns together and toyi-toying together. What made this connection so quickly and in some cases quite profound for this very diverse group?
Last weekend Khulumani Support Gorup hosted an “Art and Memory Workshop” for Boipatong members and George Washington University Art Therapy students. With the help and expertise of facilitators Judy Seidman and our own Nomarussia Bonase, this diverse group was able to share a unique experience of disclosing heart-rending stories of living through a massacre using narrative, paper and paints. For several in the group, this was the first time they had felt safe to relive the experiences of the night of June 17, 1992 when some 300 armed residents of a nearby hostel at Vanderbijl Park arrived shortly after 22:00 of that fateful night and broke into three groups to sow mayhem across the Slovo Informal Settlement and Boipationg township.
This easy connection and camaraderie was made through sharing experiences and meals, through guided conversations, through singing, and through using the power of art to break down the barriers that we all use to protect ourselves. Art Narrative therapy, as we saw on that weekend, is a way of expressing things that we find hard to express and understand. It is a medium through which we can gather our feelings and thoughts and present them in an empowering way to an audience ready to receive them.
Art Therapy is of course a subject that was quite familiar to the North American students, but the Boipatong members must be congratulated in being open and ready for this new experience. They were generous in sharing their poignant and painful stories about the Boipatong Massacre of 1992.Though initially shy with paint, and worried they might not be as good an artist as the “professionals”, they got quite involved in using paint, and relaxed and engaged fully in this new way of being expressive. Michael’s expressive paint strokes reflected the chaos and confusion of the fateful night of June 17, 1992; Paul’s use of symbolism painted a picture of an event no young boy should ever see. Others in the group used snap shot imagery, while others used colour to convey depth of meaning.
In a very interesting session, Marjory Jobson, Director of Khulumani presented a PowerPoint on the history of the Boipatong Massacre, taken from an “official” version of the story. It is a complex and contested history, and the discussions around this were most fascinating. As the Americans looked on, the South Africans in the group pieced together what they knew from their own points of view. In many ways, through this process, we were making our own version of this history. After this discussion, Dick, a trained military combatant from Boipatong said “Apartheid was an evil thing. It was a system that set people against other people. White against black, Zulu against other black cultures. I focus my animosity to this system, not to the people that did these terrible things that night”. This insightful statement of forgiveness was humbling to us all.
There was an international flavour to the weekend as well. Jim Keys, a cultural activist from Northern Ireland, explained to the group the situation of Northern Ireland through the medium of film. As a co-producer of Gaslight Films, he showed us a film called “Sunday” about the Bloody Sunday massacre that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland some thirty years ago. There were so many resonances between the experiences of survivors of the Bloody Sunday Massacre and the Boipatong Massacre and the failure of commissions of inquiry to secure justice for victims of the massacres in both situations.
Though it was obvious that everyone was engaged with the process of the weekend, feedback from the participants on the goals of the weekend were well worth recording. Many of the young women from the United States expressed their concern that they had been very ignorant of the history of Apartheid and were interested in learning more about this historical period. Discussions were centred around how meeting our members could affect their professional practices at home. Maia, an Oral History researcher, spoke of the importance of being locally aware of the struggles in one’s own country. One participant from Boipatong shared that she had never interacted with white people before and that she had learnt a lot from the experience. This opened up quiet reflection on the current situation of race relations in South Africa. On a more personal note, one gentleman stated in symbolic terms, “I feel I have gone from a heavyweight to a lightweight”. Another said, with surprise in his voice that it had been a “lightening of feeling” speaking about something that he had been traumatic and that he had never spoken about in so many years. The audience became silent when he finished this statement with the following- “The day after the massacre we had no help at all. No counselling or support. We didn’t know what to do. As a teenager at school we only talked amongst ourselves about what had happened to us. We did not know what to say to each other’.
What are the plans from here for Boipatong community in terms of planning for the commemoration of the 20th anniversary for the Boipatong massacre next year, especially in view of the huge significance of the event in stopping CODESA? It is hoped that the processes may be extended to the larger community of survivors of the massacre in the not too distant future. Stories of survivors were filmed as a starting point for the production of a film.
Thank you to each participant for their full engagement with the process and to the staff of St Peters Place, the school attended by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu where Father Trevor Huddleston and Mr Oliver Tambo were both teachers.
