Dialogues of Healing and Reconciliation

Abstract

The papers draw on recent work from southern Africa in the genres of the novel, autobiography, theatre and song to examine healing and reconciliation in post-1994 South Africa and in Zimbabwe. The papers will argue that the texts they discuss demonstrate in the main a desire to move away from the macro-language and national(istic) thematic to the micro-language of the family and the individual. It is through an intense focus on the small unit, on familial relations, tensions within the family, morality within the family that issues such as healing across the racial divide and healing within the community are explored. Tom Odhiambo's paper will engage primarily with Rayda Jacobs' My Father's Orchids and Fred Khumalo's Bitches Brew and will also refer to Jacobs' Confessions of a Gambler and Khumalo's autobiography, Touch My Blood. In the case of Zimbabwe, while much of the focus in the national and international media has been on confrontations of the processes of healing and reconciliation in present-day South Africa.between national leaders, with Robert Mugabe appearing to speak for an undifferentiated black community, recent autobiographical writing points to the need to address questions of healing and reconciliation within alienated sections of the black community where the wounds of the liberation war have been left to fester. Robert Muponde's paper will focus on the autobiography Against the Grain by the journalist Goffrey Nyarota. He will refer also to other Zimbabwean biographies and autobiographies. The paper by Liz Gunner will focus on the inter-twining of the macro-political with the intensely micro vision as regards healing and reconciliation in two post-1994 plays, Love, Crime and Johannesburg (1999) and Truth in Translation (2006). She will also engage with the question of song in the public sphere, referring to Jacob Zuma's use of the struggle song "Bring me my machine gun", and anti-rape songs by youth choirs to discuss the rescripting the processes of healing and reconciliation in present-day South Africa.