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| Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela |
We don't often read or hear
Good News in South Africa these days. So the conference I attended at the University of the Free State (UFS) in early December made a welcome dent in the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism.
Engaging the Other: Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition - the third of the post-TRC conferences organized by Professor of Psychology,
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela since 2006 - brought together stories of transcending violent histories from all over the world. It was at the first of these conferences that many of us were deeply moved by the presentation from the German psychoanalysts of
PAKH who are the second-generation offspring of survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. It was also then that
David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew, performed his extraordinary autobiographical play about "Making Peace with Gaddafi".
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| Jonathan Jansen |
Six years later, Pumla has moved to Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein) as have quite a few Cape Town academics drawn by the charisma and
transformational energy of Jonathan Jansen, the Rector, who was appointed when UFS was rocked by a
racist scandal in 2008. Three stories from South Africa impressed me.
The University of the Free State
The first undoubtedly was the story of UFS itself and what Jansen has been able to create in 3 years.
