Gathering of young scholars confronts the echoes of historical trauma

Stellenbosch University (SU) recently hosted a two-day postgraduate colloquium themed "Post'-Violence Subjectivities in the Global South", bringing together students and researchers from four institutions - SU, the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).

Organised by postgraduate scholars of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ), the event created a vibrant platform for emerging academics to examine the ways violence, memory and trauma continue to shape identities and communities across generations.

In her opening address, Lesedi Mashego, a research fellow at AVReQ and Master's student, set the tone for two days of critical reflection. "This year's theme invites us into a space of reflection and dialogue about how we live with, respond to, and think through the afterlives of violence," she noted. Mashego reminded participants that the notion of "post-violence" is deliberately provocative, urging them to question whether societies are ever truly "after" violence. Drawing attention to ongoing global conflicts and particularly in the Global South.

The challenge, she suggested, was to confront these continuities while also imagining new subjectivities and futures.

Prof Gqola on irresolution, memory and art

The keynote address, delivered by Prof Pumla Dineo Gqola of Nelson Mandela University, stood as the intellectual centrepiece of the colloquium. In a wide-ranging lecture, she examined how art, narrative and archives enable a deeper engagement with the afterlives of violence. "What I want to present today is a set of questions that I'm working through," she began, framing her keynote as an invitation to collective thinking rather than definitive answers.

Gqola reflected on the Apartheid Archive Project, which has collected more than 5 000 narratives of everyday life under apartheid. She argued that its value lies not only in preserving testimony but in revealing "the small moments" that show how violence seeped into ordinary encounters. These fragments, she suggested, push scholars to rethink both narrative and context.

Gqola highlighted the importance of art as a space not for answers but for questions. "It's much more productive to think about the questions that art asks, rather than to settle on finding the answer," she said. By doing so, she argued, art helps scholars move beyond disciplinary silos and confront violence's ongoing afterlives through imagination, narrative and performance.

Participants reflect on anger, memory and community

For several young academics the colloquium was a transformative experience. Leza Soldaat, a PhD candidate in sociology at SU, highlighted how the event validated both emotion and embodiment as legitimate sites of knowledge. She was struck by Li'Tsoanelo Zwane's paper, which reframed anger as a necessary force for change. Zwane's call to embrace "feminine ancestral rage" revealed how suppressed emotions can be reclaimed as powerful tools of resistance and creation, Soldaat said.

She also resonated with Lauren Grootboom's emphasis on memory as matriarchal, sustained across generations through communal care networks, storytelling and embodied resistance. "These themes provide a roadmap for future work that is not only intellectually rigorous but also emotionally and spiritually sustainable," she said, noting how the colloquium reaffirmed her own doctoral journey.

Benita Petersen, a PhD candidate and associate lecturer at UWC, observed how the panels revealed the inescapable presence of history. "The lingering effects of colonialism, apartheid, and other forms of structural violence continue to shape everyday experiences," she said. For her, the event brought forward the importance of situating research within community-driven knowledge and local histories, reminding her that scholarship should support change, not only describe problems.

For Yaadein Padiachy, a Master's research fellow at AVReQ, the most profound takeaway was the sense of collective purpose. "We gathered as young academics, not only to share our research, but to weave together new relationships, exchange ideas previously unimagined, and uplift one another," she observed. To her, the colloquium embodied what she called "an ethic of care and love", a reminder that research is not just about knowledge production but also about community building, restitution and wellness.

A space of questioning and repair

The colloquium's panels ranged widely - from racialised subjectivities and generational trauma to queer memory, land politics and the ontologies of the "living dead". Yet across disciplines and topics, the same themes recurred: that violence is not past but present, that memory is both burden and resource, and that scholarship in the Global South must grapple with the lived continuities of trauma.

Li'Tsoanelo Zwane, a lecturer and PhD candidate within the Department of Religion and Theology at UWC noted how "safe, seen and held" she felt at the colloquium. "As a black woman doing work on ancestral rage, it felt good to have people so willingly hold that rage with me - even momentarily. In fact, we held each other's ancestral rage from a place of deep care."

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