Applied Linguistics 2020: 1–20

doi:10.1093/applin/amaa010

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Autobiographical Narrative of Traumatic
Experience: Disruption and Resilience in
South African Truth Commission
Testimonies

CHRISTINE ANTHONISSEN
Stellenbosch University
E-mail: ca5@sun.ac.za

Following a suggestion by Crosthwaite (2005) that autobiographical narratives

can be viewed as organizational practices, this article turns attention to events of
recalling and articulating personal histories of trauma produced during and after
the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings of
1996–8. Witness testimonies at the TRC were institutionally framed to fit the
aims of national reconciliation in ways that may have limited the kinds of contri-
bution witnesses unfamiliar with the institutional structure could make.
Discourses recorded at the human rights violations hearings of the TRC give evi-
dence of speakers recalling traumatic events of state violence that disrupted
their lives and displaced them both physically and psychologically. This article
considers how traumatic experience poses challenges to the coherence of auto-
biographical narrative as well as how narrative structures that do not fit institu-
tionally introduced formats can become opaque to the institutional setting. It
will also reflect on how the Truth Commission narrations of trauma carry lin-
guistic and cultural cues that signal not only disruption but also the resilience of
the narrator.

INTRODUCTION
During the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hear-
ings that took place across the country between 1996 and 1998, many who
had suffered gross human rights violations (HRVs) produced a vast store of
autobiographical narratives in which they recalled and articulated memories
of trauma and loss within a fairly regimented institutional context. These nar-
ratives that emerged as significant discourses relatively shortly after the end of
extended civil unrest and violent repression preceding the introduction of
democratic rule in 1994, were recorded and archived. They count as an im-
portant testimony to formerly improper and undisclosed state control. They
are also testimony to personal histories that show how different people were
differently affected, how they came through traumatic events, and how they

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dealt with personal and community lives in the years following the disruptive
experiences.
This article, more than 20 years after the hearings, returns to one specific
event that, to some extent, became a signature case of the TRC process in the
Western Cape, namely the Guguletu Seven case. Particularly, it attends to the
testimony of Notrose Konile, the mother of one of the seven youngsters killed
in a police ambush in 1986. This case received considerable attention in the
media at the time of the incident as well as during the hearings 10 years later
(cf. Villa-Vicencio and Du Toit 2006). In subsequent years, it has been widely
discussed in public media and in academic reflection (Lubbe 2007; Du Plooy
2008). I revisit the case here due to the way in which this history of remem-
bering, of telling and retelling, demonstrates how structured memorialization
only partly satisfies the aim of achieving ‘full disclosure’ that was one of the
institutional motivations for supporting public hearings after state violence
(Krog 1998; Ross 2003). Specifically, Mrs. Konile’s story shows the limitations
of institutional framings of trauma narratives in two ways. First, there are tes-
timonies that do not conform to the expected structure, leaving the recipients
uncertain about what to make of the narrative. Second, the constraints of the
institutional structure do not provide for elaboration on how witnesses find
ways of weaving their traumatic experiences into a larger and ongoing life
story.
I relate to Crosthwaite (2005, 2009) who refers to the traumatic experiences
of women who lost children in military violence where, as in South Africa be-
tween 1960 and 1993, there had been no official declaration of war. I also re-
late to De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2008, 2012) who analyse ‘narrative as
practices’, give a useful distinction between ‘story’ and ‘discourse’, and who
elaborate on how different media and settings encourage or prohibit different
ways of narration. Finally, in turning attention to the TRC narrative of Mrs.
Konile, I shall also refer briefly to work on the autobiographical narrative of
traumatic events (Brewin 2007; Sotgiu and Rusconi 2014) and to post-
colonial reflections on trauma relevant to this TRC discourse, as introduced by
Borzaga (2012). By invoking a post-colonial perspective, it is possible to indi-
cate (i) how the TRC structure allowed limited scope for articulating traumatic
experiences and (ii) how reliance on understandings of trauma and narratives
of trauma developed in non-indigenous contexts can deliver readings (or
assumptions) of disruption akin to pathology where in fact there is resilience.
The article indicates how South African discourses of trauma related to experi-
ences of war-like violence can inform research on different narrative tradi-
tions, showing how different expectations of narrative structure feed into
highlighting certain testimonies and undervaluing or misinterpreting others.
A pertinent feature of the recounts given in testimonies at the TRC is that cer-
tain events become very prominent in ‘collective memory’ while others seem
not to go beyond the few moments they had at the hearings of 23 years ago.
A central aim of the TRC was to develop national reconciliation. Rotberg
(2000: 3) indicates that truth commissions exist because of compromises, as a
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trade-off between truth and justice (due process): enabling victims or the heirs
of victims ‘to elicit as complete an accounting as possible’ can assist in provid-
ing closure, in progressing towards their own healing. Regarding reconcili-
ation, :7) acknowledges that the TRC largely ‘could prepare the new South
Africa to be reconciled’ through some understanding of ‘the inexplicable’, but
that nevertheless, the process was compromised and eventually did not reach
all its aims. This article refers to a case which shows the disjunct between insti-
tutional aims and personal expectations in recalling trauma. The controlled
context of the public TRC testimonies assured the development of a fairly rigid
discursive structure (Ross 2003; Verdoolaege 2006; Bock 2007). In a long and
careful process of preparation, the cases to be heard publicly were selected
based on claims regarding human rights abuses that could be established in
advance. A special research unit had been set up to collect and prepare evi-
dence for each case. Once the hearings started, the structure was directed, so
that a fixed pattern—to be discussed below—soon became conventionalized.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND RELEVANT LITERATURE

Besides reflecting on the broad theme of language and trauma (see e.g.
Mbembe 2010; Crespo and Fernandez-Lansac 2016), this article attends to
‘the way narrative tellings are used within specific social activities’ (De Fina
2018: 44) and how TRC hearings’ structure was insufficiently open to ‘vari-
ability in narrative’ (ibid.). Below, I introduce theoretical concepts and consid-
erations relevant to an analysis of the Guguletu seven hearings and the ways
in which traumatic experiences show up in various kinds of autobiographical
narratives.

Conceptualizing narrative in relation to TRC testimonies

In analysing literary accounts of war trauma, Crosthwaite (2005, 2009) expli-
citly draws on work in psychology and neurobiology (cf. Janet (1928) in van
der Kolk and van der Hart (1995: 1532)) in referring to verbal reproduction of
memories and how the remembering subject finds ways of associating a trau-
matic happening with other events of his/her life. He defines autobiographical
and literary narratives as organizational practices, of which the narrative
structure enables the listener or reader to follow the represented events as co-
herent and meaningful (Crosthwaite 2005: 1). Then, traumatic experiences
bring considerable challenges to such narrative practices, as often the narrator
does not experience an event as coherent. Rather than giving a historical rep-
ortage, the narrator’s commemorative discourse (Rheindorf and Wodak 2017)
will be disjointed. In retrospect, the narrator might impose coherence by
reconstructing events and retelling them in a way that makes sense to her, al-
though the narrative perhaps still confounds listeners.
De Fina (2009: 234) refers to the central role narrative has come to play in
social sciences research, propagating what she calls a ‘contextualist approach’,
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which highlights the differences between naturally occurring narrative and
other forms of narrative that are co-constructed by differing contexts of pro-
duction and reception. De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2008: 379, 380) refer to
limitations of the ‘conventional paradigm for narrative analysis’ that privileges
particular kinds of narrative structure and underplays others. They point out
how different aspects of a storytelling event, including narrative interactional
dynamics such as those associated with narrator roles, telling rights and audi-
ence responses, gain more or less traction depending on the recognition or not
of structures and narrative contexts that do not fit earlier more rigidly
described systems. Considering narrative as text type across different media,
De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012: 12ff.) draw attention to context-sensitive
approaches to investigating different kinds of narrative data. Within this social
and cultural perspective, De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012: 56) refer to an
‘ethnopoetic quest for narrative organization’ considering how cultural con-
text generates specific discourse structures. These perspectives become useful
in investigating Mrs. Konile’s testimony, finding explanations for her narra-
tive structure and understanding the implications of (e.g.) the metaphors and
chronotopes she selects to carry her story in the context of a TRC hearing.

Post-colonial attention to trauma in African contexts

As a correction to 20th-century work that generalized findings on trauma, its
effects, and related narratives (cf. Caruth 1995/2016), new voices have
emerged in the 21st century taking issue with the unreflective transferral of
‘trauma theory’ to African countries devastated by war and poverty. For ex-
ample, Jobson and O’Kearney (2006: 89) investigated ‘cultural differences in
autobiographical memory of trauma’ between Australian and Asian partici-
pants, finding that the universal applicability of clinical cognitive models of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should be questioned. Beneduce, work-
ing as director and anthropologist at the Frantz Fanon Centre in Turin, and
regarded as an authoritative voice in the field of trauma studies in Africa, finds
that a diagnostic category such as PTSD that recognizes individual trauma,
simultaneously ‘contributes to concealing political, racial, and historic roots of
suffering’ (Beneduce 2016: 261). For him, isolating the experience of a trau-
matic event from a range of other societal conditions effectively becomes a
kind of ‘colonising of suffering’ and he finds that pathologizing trauma insuffi-
ciently recognizes the strengths many have in living with and showing resili-
ence to enduring traumatic circumstances.
Borzaga (2012) articulates a post-colonial perspective in referring to the
complex relationship between trauma, memory and literary narrative in
South Africa. She relates to Bracken (2002) whose work based on traumatic
events in Uganda brings the description and identification of PTSD into ques-
tion for insufficiently recognizing local traditions of healing and support that
are embedded in societal practices, family dynamics, religious discourses, and
so on. Borzaga points out the ways in which even traumatic experiences are
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‘entangled with the way we are grounded and existing in the world’ (2012:
76), which one needs to consider in trying to do justice to the ‘lived reality of
the survivor’. Further, Borzaga (2012: 85) shows how post-colonial theory
encourages a more nuanced perspective on African communities and their
dealing with trauma, largely because what counts as trauma needs to be better
articulated, and because the lives of Africans are often a succession of injusti-
ces which—as with Apartheid—form layers of trauma, ‘a seamless web’ of op-
pression, which can hardly reduce the difficulties people face to a single
traumatic event. Also, and importantly, Borzaga (2012), referring to Bracken,
advocates a perspective that will not obscure the creativity and resilience of
many who do not succumb to devastating circumstances but actually find
ways of vigorously going about their everyday existence. Beneduce (2016:
271) echoes Borzaga when he finds that ‘the trauma these tales talk about
consists of many traumas’. Beneduce (2016: 262, 271ff.) uses the notion of
‘cultural competence’ in propagating the subaltern’s ability to articulate the
past not only historically, but also in using mythological terms that evoke dis-
tant traumatic events. In this context, witnessing also means ‘being entrusted
. . . with the memory of a fact that can no longer be seen’; the resilience of the
witness shows in her ability to assert her own position as a subject, in her
agency when she shares painful and unspeakable memories with ‘an address-
able other’ (Beneduce 2016: 275).

Signalling trauma in discourse

Scholarly work on the ways in which trauma is marked in discourse has
referred not only to the content of trauma narratives but also to the style and
mode to which speakers voluntarily, consciously and also unconsciously re-
vert. Many who have been through traumatic experiences physically lose
their voice, others lose the ability (or refuse) to speak about the traumatic
event (see e.g. Anthonissen 2009). Yet others can speak only in terms that are
not transparent to the outsider (Beneduce 2016: 274). Janet already found
that patients who presented seemingly pathological responses to trauma could
be prompted to revisit the unassimilated event and in narrating the memory,
integrate it into the regular flow of life—seeing it no longer as disorderly and
disorienting, but as ordered and coherent.
In talking about trauma, many find their vocabulary limited. This is exacer-
bated when a person gives the narrative in a second language (L2), even with
the support of interpreting services (Hunt and Swartz 2017). Typically, a nar-
rative of pain is a rephrasing, retelling of an event or sequence of events in
more bearable terms (see e.g. Crespo and Fernandez-Lansac 2016). The narra-
tor who realizes that her audience cannot hear or understand her may find
the effort futile and will therefore withdraw. Narratives that cannot give the
chronology of events, cannot distinguish cause and effect, are marked by repe-
titions, stammering, incomplete and incoherent sentences, are interpreted as
signalling effects of trauma and a need for clinical intervention. As will be
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indicated below, rather than recognizing ‘variability in narrative’, some
explanations of Konile’s TRC testimony referred either to the effects of trauma
or simply to ‘cultural difference’ that the TRC structure could barely
accommodate.

THE TRC AS SITE OF TRAUMA NARRATIVES

Instituting the South African TRC and structuring the
testimonies as a genre
For more clarity on the context, this section selectively discusses the state-ini-
tiated TRC process introduced shortly after the 1994 transition to democracy
in South Africa. It was instituted to assist people in coming to terms with a
particularly brutal violent past in a way that could bring societal divisions to
an end. Coopan (2012) succinctly names another aim of the TRC as ‘seeking
to effect healing through narrative’. During the civil unrest of the late 1980s
in South Africa, government repression was excessive not only in the violent
behaviour of security forces but also in the silencing of related public dis-
courses. At that time, powerful state institutions simply denied the brutality
they sanctioned and perpetrated overtly as well as covertly. Three pertinent
social variables here, refer to the oppositions of gender (male vs. female), loca-
tion (urban vs. rural) and socio-economic status (wealth vs. poverty).
When the TRC hearings on gross HRVs started in 1996, the first cases they
handled were ones which had, in spite of strict media censorship, come to
public attention due to the prominence of the people involved, as, for ex-
ample, the Cradock Four (cf. Bock et al. 2006) and the Mxenge-murders (cf.
www.sahistory.org.za), or to security force activity so outrageous that journal-
ists subversively found ways around media restrictions and published news on
the events, as, for example, the Trojan Horse incident (cf. Anthonissen 2006),
or the Guguletu Seven (cf. Lubbe 2007; Du Plooy 2008).
Investigators selected prominent and newsworthy cases from thousands of
reported abuses for special attention in the public TRC hearings. The public
hearings were conducted by appointed commissioners who heard representa-
tions from people who had either suffered HRVs (identified as ‘victims’) or
had been part of inflicting such violations (identified as ‘perpetrators’). The
former group brought appeals for recognition of their experiences and losses
and could claim some form of restitution. The latter group could apply for am-
nesty in exchange for full disclosure of their participation in events of human
rights abuse. The audience at the hearings was always a panel of commis-
sioners, the interpreters, witness supporters, media representatives, and local
community members, many of whom had a special interest in a particular
case. One pertinent feature of the hearings was the predominant use of
English, even though most HRV victims had first languages (L1s) other than
English.
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Notably, when HRV cases were heard, there was particular concern about
possible re-traumatizing of witnesses. Such concern extended to the enduring
effects of the loss witnesses possibly had in recalling and relating traumatizing
events while claiming restitution. For many, finding the right words in which
to retell personal, emotional experience in an L2, would be either impossible
or extremely difficult. Thus, to narrate trauma in L2-English could be inhibit-
ing in a number of ways. Considering this, and general difficulties in articulat-
ing trauma, the TRC put extensive effort into providing interpreting and
translation services both from and into the other ten official languages of the
country. Witnesses were encouraged to testify in the language of their choice,
which made interpreter-mediated discourse a particularly germane feature to
the hearings. Speakers were video-recorded and audio-recorded; at the same
time, simultaneous interpreters were available, more or less visibly positioned.
Either way, the interpreting services were relatively intrusive. For example, a
person testifying in isiXhosa would be given earphones so that questions or
comments from the commissioners that were posed in English, could be con-
veyed to them in their L1. For many, the technology and the process were
new and overwhelming. The South African Broadcasting Corporation, sub-
contracted to do the recording and archiving of all testimonies, provided tran-
scripts of most recordings in English only (relying on the interpreters’ English
renderings, even if the conversation had been in isiXhosa). Even with the
offer to testify in their L1, some participants preferred to use English as they
found the interpreting to be distancing and disruptive. In a number of cases
speakers who chose to use their L1 were proficient enough in English to fol-
low the interpreters—even at times correcting the interpreted version.
What was less evident than which language would be used, was that the
TRC hearings were geared towards a particular narrative style and structure,
namely one which aligned itself to evidence giving and testing in courts.
Many witnesses had been socialized into narrating, and particularly narrating
trauma, in a style different to legal hearings; they did not calculate the rele-
vance of evidence, the exact chronology of events, confirming or contradicting
details, as essential elements. Their narrative form would not convey credibil-
ity in a mode familiar to trained court officials. The interpreters had been
briefed to give renderings according to advanced conference interpreting regu-
lations, that is, as directly as possible without adjusting the style to fit the occa-
sion or adding an explanatory comment. Even the sympathetic commissioners
had not anticipated the ways events would unfold, nor the focus and narrative
style or structure each participant would choose. They did not explicitly visu-
alize different contexts (e.g. rural vs. urban), familiarity or not with court tes-
tifying procedures, and different speakers’ or hearers’ expectations requiring
structural adaptation.
The event in question in this article had taken place in 1986. Thus, the pas-
sage of time that affects memory and has an impact on what is foregrounded
and backgrounded in the recall has to be considered. The TRC witnesses were
prepared for what to expect, what would be required of them, and how
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proceedings would be ordered. In view of the overarching aims of the TRC,
the witness narratives were all framed in the form of recounting memories
with a view to articulating a particular event that constituted an illegal and
harmful activity, a HRV.
The hearings evolved into a discourse type with particular characterizing
features: in every HRV hearing, basic information on the case was made avail-
able to the panel of commissioners in advance. A commissioner appointed to
lead victims’ testimonies as a facilitator in a given case welcomed witnesses
and those supporting them. Below, in the following section, I describe the dis-
course type in more detail. Although the setting reminded of court-room pro-
cedures, witnesses were given considerable time to relate e.g. the loss of a
loved one. Some brought written testimonies which they would read out;
most, however, simply told their story from memory. Soon a pattern emerged
in which later witnesses used generic styles and structures they had either
observed in earlier testimonies or had been briefed to follow in their narrative.
The facilitator would interrupt a witness only for clarification, or in adding
relevant information the person had omitted, but that through prior research
was known to the commissioners. Before closing the hearing, the chairperson
allowed members of the panel to ask questions—at times asking the witness
more details, at times asking about the material or emotional effects of events.

The Guguletu Seven case and focus on Mrs. Konile

The Guguletu Seven case was heard over the course of a couple of days, first
in April 1996, in a follow-up in November 1996, and after further investiga-
tion again in February 1997. The hearings featured the testimonies of the
mothers whose sons, aged between 16 and 23 years, had moved to Cape Town
from the Eastern Cape in the hope of gaining lucrative employment, and in
1986 were killed in a police ambush. Additionally, there were testimonies of
journalists who had witnessed the aftermath and written about the event, as
well as testimonies of erstwhile military and intelligence officers of the state
(who had in most cases been subpoenaed to appear). This was one of a few
cases in which formerly suppressed information was exposed during the
course of the hearings. Critically important material that emerged on the
event, had been held and concealed in the police station where the incident
had first been investigated. The evidence journalists stumbled upon incrimi-
nated the security forces, contributed to confirming the gross abuses in the as-
sault on the Guguletu Seven, and also served a specific TRC aim, namely to
disclose concealed facts that would otherwise not have come to public con-
sciousness: the youngsters had deceptively been enlisted as underground acti-
vists by an undercover agent who approached them and, preying on their
vulnerability, had lured them into the ambush for blatant propaganda pur-
poses. It is not possible to give full details of the event in question here—it is
however well recorded in Lindi Wilson’s documentary film.1
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Two things have, to my mind, contributed to the public prominence the
Guguletu Seven hearings gained: First, the TRC process, in this case, disclosed
a particularly offensive practice which entailed undercover state agents posing
as ANC-representatives, who recruited unsuspecting youngsters, drew them
into subversive activity, and then pretended that alert security services had
caught them in the act. It proved to be purely an act of governmental propa-
ganda, undertaken as a means also of justifying the overreach of police action
in the black townships. Wilson’s (2000) award-winning film, on which this
article relies for details of the event, documented the hearings and associated
events elaborately. Second, the poignance of mothers recalling the loss of their
sons in patently distressing and inhumane circumstances did strike a chord
and generated considerable public compassion. Even 10 years after the inci-
dent, there were moments when a mother would break down, obliging a
pause for her to collect herself before she could continue. At the time of the
hearings, only four of the seven families were represented, while only three
testified more than once. During and directly after the November 1996 hear-
ings, two of the three testifying women’s narratives were recognized as coher-
ent and meaningful. The account of Notrose Konile, the third woman, was
received with bewilderment and even slight embarrassment (Krog et al. 2009).
Her various narratives, at the hearings and in interviews that followed, show
the complexity of the concept ‘reconciliation’ as it was instantiated by the
TRC. Her story illustrates an opposition between psychological vs. material
reconciliation, and between individuals reconciling vs. a national process of
reconciliation among former warring groups.
A considerable time after Konile’s testimony it became part of a linguistic
analysis by isiXhosa-L1 speakers (see Bock et al. 2006), who were investigating
the TRC translations, comparing recordings to transcripts, and thus recogniz-
ing features in the narrative that were telling, but had not been noted as sig-
nificant during the hearings (see Bock and Mpolweni-Zantsi 2006).
Translations and transcripts of hearings were quite hastily done, and therefore
are incomplete, sometimes grammatically inaccurate and poorly edited.
Mpolweni-Zantsi, an isiXhosa L1 linguist, recognized translation errors in the
TRC transcripts of Konile’s testimony. Having grown up in an Eastern Cape
rural village, she could rely on insider’s knowledge of narrative style, the au-
thority of dreams, and of a goat appearing in a dream, to point out the signifi-
cance of narrative elements that had formerly passed unrecognized. Krog (in
Krog et al. 2009), recalled Notrose Konile’s contribution as one that had
touched and worried her (cf. Krog 1998) during the 1996 hearings she had
attended as a radio journalist. Having met with Konile on numerous occasions
after 2006, Krog et al. (2009) collected an elaborate amount of data that be-
came a book dedicated to this single witness. The three-year collaboration be-
tween Krog, Mpolweni-Zantsi and Ratele—a South African social
psychologist—entailed various interviews with Konile and her remaining fam-
ily members. Their 2009 book centred on the recounting of her dream at the
TRC hearings, as well as on her life over an extended period after the events of
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losing her son and testifying at the TRC. Considering the exhaustive amount
of information given in the book, this article relies on it extensively.
Referring to pertinent generic features this hearing illustrates, I shall (i) re-
flect on how traumatic events (learning about a son’s loss) are reported in in-
stitutional context, (ii) illustrate how speakers with different linguistic
resources can follow different narrative traditions, so that the preferred struc-
ture of witness testimonies appears to be challenged, and (iii) point out how a
challenge to the suggested narrative structure of the TRC witnesses, also in
terms of style and register, could be misunderstood and even dismissed as
being neither credible nor suitable to the occasion. I refer specifically to the
seemingly disordered and therefore, at first glance, also hardly intelligible nar-
rative of Notrose Nobomvu Konile—the mother of Zabonke.

TRC DISCOURSES AS NARRATIVES OF TRAUMA: LANGUAGE

AND CONTROLLED RECALL
The conventionalized structure of the testimonies overall is already illustrated
in the opening statements of various commissioners presiding at the hearings.
Each witness was introduced and welcomed by the chairman and then asked
to take an oath. The commissioner leading the particular testimony would
mention a few biographical details, and then very quickly come to the point of
what had brought her to the Commission. In welcoming witnesses, there was
specific reference to the hardships they had endured, and to the difficulty of
revisiting experiences of loss and grief. The participants would be commended
for their ‘courage and spirit and commitment’ (TRC transcript, April 1996).
Typically, the chairperson would express ‘solidarity and respect for those who
have come to testify about their pain and suffering’ (TRC transcript,
November 1996), and there would be an appeal for all to be ‘tolerant’, while
explicating the aims of contributing to ‘the process of healing in our land’, of
‘listening to stories, searching for the truth’, all in service of the primary aim
of achieving reconciliation (TRC transcript, February 1997). Commissioner
Ntzebeza emphasized that every precaution had been taken to explain the aim
of coming to the truth through the proceedings.
In the Guguletu Seven case, family members of the seven were thus con-
structed as ‘survivors’. The mothers were addressed as people carrying grief,
pain, and suffering. Mrs. Konile, as the other mothers, received thanks for
attending, for showing courage and personal strength. In their openings, the
chairpersons did not explicitly create space for expressions of anger and defi-
ance, nor did they refer to people’s resilience in just forging ahead to carve out
a difficult living with little expectation of state support. This could have been a
way of directing witnesses away from possible frustration, towards better
alignment with the TRC goals of reconciliation.
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Following the conventionalized structure
As mentioned above, witness testimonies had the explicit intention of allow-
ing voices formerly muted to be properly heard. The ‘privileged’ narrative
structure and style of the hearings was not necessarily the ‘preferred’ one
from the perspective of those testifying. The testimony Mrs. Konile gave at
the first hearing in April 1996 was exceptional in content, structure and style.
She gave detail that seemed irrelevant to those not familiar with her narrative
style and appeared to cause embarrassment to many due to her awkward em-
bodiment of the content. Even some who recognized her style, found it artless
as it signalled the rural and unsophisticated background of the speaker (cf.
Krog et al. 2009). Her narrative started out with an introduction (1c) similar to
those of most other participants (1a, 1 b). Like all others who came to testify,
Konile had been briefed beforehand on procedures and how she was expected
to contribute. The hearing, to some extent, was a rehearsed event, in which
witnesses repeated their names, stated where they came from, how many chil-
dren they had, and specified which child they had lost in the particular event.
(1a)I am Mrs. Ngewu [. . .] Where I come from, is Alice [. . .] I have
four children,
the fourth one is the one who was shot by the boers. . .
(1b)I am Eunice Thembiso Mia, I have five children, the fifth one is
Jabulani,
he is the one who passed away on 3 March 1986. I am from
Bloemfontein. . .
(1c)I am Mrs. Konele [sic!] from [indistinct] I have three children
the fourth one who was shot,
they are all daughters, they are all married. The one I was living
with was my son, because I
didn’t have a husband, he was the one who left us, he passed away
quite early. I was living
with my son, just the two of us.
(All excerpted from TRC transcript, April 19962)
The briefing included that witnesses were to tell what had happened, to ar-
ticulate how it had affected them and changed their lives, and to mention
what their expectations were, what they would ask the Commission to do
with the information they brought to them. Often, even before particular
details had been asked, the witness would start with the narrative she knew
would be of interest to the Commission. Thus, Konile wanted to impress on
the Commission the nature of her loss; she wanted them to hear that not only
had she lost a son in 1986, but before that she had lost her husband, and after-
wards, she lost the possibility of home ownership as the latter was only pos-
sible via male relatives. Although she briefly followed the pattern in
introducing herself, she moved very quickly into an unusual narrative style,
detailing and dramatizing events in a way that most in the direct audience
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found strange and alienating (see excerpt 2c below). In using a narrative for-
mat and genre which did not fit that of TRC testimonies, Konile also failed to
meet hearer-expectations.

Contextualizing and re-contextualizing

Konile’s testimony, compared to those of the other witnesses, demonstrates
an urban-rural divide in life experience; the institutional context of the TRC
hearings was more easily appropriated by those familiar with adjusting to
urban heterogeneity. The testimonies of the two who had been living a while
in Cape Town, who quickly adjusted to the TRC template, contrast markedly
with the testimony of Konile, who had spent her whole life in rural Eastern
Cape.
Cynthia Ngewu and Eunice Miya had both been living in Guguletu in 1986.
Mrs. Ngewu got a forewarning of the news in the form of an enquiry from
some youngsters, ‘comrades’, who came to say there had been a shooting inci-
dent in Marais Street. Mrs. Miya was watching the news on TV and was con-
fronted with horrifying images of her son—no withholding of names and
images until the family had been informed, as is customary in regular news
reporting. Mrs. Konile, however, was 1000 km away in a rural town, on her
way to the post office to collect her pension, when her son-in-law, Pheza,
arrived to deliver the news.
Excerpts from the transcribed interpreter-translation of how the news of
their children’s deaths had been brought to them, and then of how it had
affected them, as given below as (2a) to (2c), give an impression of the estab-
lished structure (2a, 2 b) and how Konile’s (2c) followed a different narrative
format:
(2a)Ngewu: [. . .] In 1986, on 3 March—it was a Monday if I am not
mistaken. The comrades were asking about Christopher Piet, who
is my son. They told me that some children had been shot at
Marais. [. . .] I remember the funeral on 15 March. [. . .] Didn’t
these boers have any feelings at all? Why did they just kill everyone,
absolutely everyone? Not leaving even one to give witness? Now
nobody knows the real-real story.
(2b)Miya: [. . .] The music started for the news. Then in the news I
was told that these seven children were killed . . . “No it can’t be
him. I just saw him this morning, it can’t be him. I can—I can still
remember what he wore this morning” [. . .] “Oh Lord [. . .] I wish, I
wish this news could just rewind [. . .] why is it just him?” What
makes me cry now, is that these policemen, they were treating peo-
ple like animals, that’s what makes me cry right now.
(2c)Konile: [. . .] Peza [sic!] arrived [in Indwe], we were on our way
to get pensions . . . I said oh! I had a very—a very scary period, there
was this—this was this goat looking up, this one next to me said
oh! having a dream like that with a goat looking up is a very bad
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dream.” [. . .] Peza came in, I was very scared when I saw Peza and I
said Peza, what is it that you have to tell me. Say to me now [. . .] I
asked what happened, he told me that my son has been shot. He
said let’s go now, I am here to fetch you. (All excerpted from TRC tran-
script, April 1996)
Ngewu’s recall of receiving the news comes in the form of factual statements,
ending with questions about the heartlessness of the perpetrators. Miya’s re-
call is in slightly more emotive terms, referring to the music before the news,
and her disbelief—‘it can’t be him . . . why is it just him?’
Konile’s recall starts by narrating the unexpected arrival of Pheza and a bad
dream she had had on the day before she received the news, which a friend
immediately interpreted as a bad premonition. Konile does not contextualize
or give explicit links between one part of her story and the next. The moment
of final realization is given in her reference to visiting the morgue where the
cold air of the room in which the body was kept hit her like a ‘cold breeze’
and she fainted, but after being restored still insisted she had to see her son.
She relates also the indifference of the doctors who saw her when she was
suffering post-traumatic effects and sent her away feeling humiliated, ‘I am
no-one. I am nothing’. She gave her testimony quite autonomously, ordering
information with little regard for chronology, following an oral tradition of
mentioning first what she found to be most important and elaborating on,
e.g., the bad omen she had in the form of a dream prior to receiving the news
of her son’s death, and describing her experience of being ‘knocked down by a
rock’ (TRC transcript, April 1996). Krog et al. (2009) refer to the baffled audi-
ence who could not relate this narrative to the hearings’ aims of precise factual
recalling. In terms opaque to the TRC audience, she referred to events using
metaphors to articulate the pain and disruption she had experienced. It was
only in the later improved translation and interpretation of the testimony
(Bock and Mpolweni-Zantsi 2006; Krog et al. 2009) that Mrs. Konile’s narra-
tive was reconstructed as coherent, meaningful and significant.

Interpreting and re-interpreting, framing and reframing, tran-

scribing, translating and re-translating
Although the TRC was technically well-equipped to provide interpreting serv-
ices, the process presented exceptional challenges (cf. Anthonissen 2008). The
primary language, the lingua franca of the proceedings, was English. Yet, the
Guguletu Seven mothers took the option of testifying in their L1s, i.e. in
isiXhosa. Simultaneous interpreters mediated the witness contributions to the
commissioners, even if some (such as commissioner Goboda-Madikizela) were
themselves fluent in isiXhosa and thus had access to both the witnesses’ con-
tributions as well as to the interpreted rendering. As the official transcriptions
are all in English only, to check them against the exact words a speaker used is
only possible if one has access to a sound or video recording.
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Mrs. Konile’s testimony at the time was orally interpreted for those immedi-
ately present. Next, the interpreters’ English renditions were hastily tran-
scribed. Each step carried the possibility of errors slipping in. Interpreting in
the particular circumstances was precarious on various levels: translating dir-
ect words does not necessarily convey the speaker’s intention, nor does it dis-
tinguish between what was meant literally and what metaphorically. For
example, when Konile mentions ‘the one who left us’ in (1c) above, it is not
immediately clear whether the reference is to her husband or her deceased
son. Also, when she (possibly unconsciously) re-enacted the confusion she
had experienced on receiving news of Zabonke’s death it became difficult to
grasp whether her words were meant literally or metaphorically. She invoked
references (e.g. dreaming of a goat) that have special meaning in rural Xhosa
context, familiar to many Xhosa L1 speakers, but completely opaque to the
commissioners and wider audience at the hearings—as in (2c). The connec-
tion of the dream to the arrival of Pheza, who had travelled all the way from
Cape Town to bring her the news, only became clear through insider
explanation.
The official transcripts, in all cases, give access to a version twice removed
from the original: first, many are no longer in the language the speakers had
used; second, the verbal English has become typewritten. Thus, references to
the goat, to being hit by a rock (or a piece of coal), and later to a dream of
being thirsty and drinking urine, even in retranslation could be taken as a dis-
rupted narrative coming from a person devastated by the loss of her son
10 years before.
However, 10 years after the TRC hearings, Bock et al. (2006) and Bock and
Mpolweni-Zantsi (2006: 103ff.) compared interpreters’ translations given in
the transcripts to a number of the sound-recordings, bringing to light that im-
portant information had been ‘lost’ in translation and transcription. Further,
in following up on the life story of Notrose Konile, Krog et al. (2009) gave a
different perspective on her narrative. First, her testimony was revisited by
isiXhosa-L1 speakers who were familiar with the oral narrative style typically
used in spoken discourses of the Eastern Cape. Their work disclosed the order
of what had, taken at face value, seemed to be a disorderly discourse. Here, De
Fina’s (2009) distinction between naturally occurring narrative and the insti-
tutionally structured narrative is helpful: Konile used a naturally occurring
narrative style, the only one she knew, in an institutional context that appar-
ently required a more institutionally conventionalized style. The ‘cultural con-
text’ (De Fina and Georgakopoulou 2012), elaborated in Krog et al. (2009)
assisted in giving a better understanding of the 1996 recordings of the narra-
tive produced in the TRC testimony context.
The analysts and interpreters of 2006 and later showed Mrs. Konile not to
be a confused witness whose life had been permanently disoriented. They
indicated that she had taken ownership of her own testimony; told the story
in terms that chronotopically linked a dream, culturally significant symbols,
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and real-life losses within narrative practices she was accustomed to and that
a rural Xhosa audience could understand.

Integrating trauma, testifying to resilience

After re-interpreting and re-contextualizing Mrs. Konile’s testimony (Bock
and Mpolweni-Zantsi 2006; Bock et al. 2006; Krog et al. 2009) it became clear
that for her the single event of losing her son in a senseless, politically choreo-
graphed incident, had become only one in a series of life traumas. She pre-
sented the commission with the precarity of her life showing up a web of the
structural violence of the apartheid system, the associated poverty, the desper-
ation that drove her daughter, son-in-law and son to Cape Town, bringing the
loss of supportive family. However, she was also exhibiting an ability to sur-
vive. In her dramatizing of events, rather than presenting a list of ‘horrors’,
Konile framed her narrative using a textual structure significant to her home
community. In the 10 years since her son’s death, she had moved from being
a victim to being an agent so that in testifying at the TRC she dwelled less on
her emotional devastation at his death, preferring to emphasize the material
devastation of having lost the one male relative who could (according to cus-
tomary law) assure her housing security. The established format of testimonies
at this time did not anticipate the format Konile’s narrative took on, nor did it
equip the audience to align such a narrative structure with the various aims of
the TRC. What seemed a disjointed testimony which ‘trauma theory’ may
have constructed as manifestation after the affliction of a single overwhelming
event, is disclosed as a meaningful story representative of having integrated
the event along with an entanglement of others in her life.
Considered over a period of 20 years, Mrs. Konile’s recall of losing her only
son in the HRV event of 1986, gave evidence of the ability of a person over-
whelmed, but not irreversibly overcome, to rebuild after devastation and dis-
appointment, over and over again. This was a woman who had in many ways
‘come to terms’ without the TRC’s offer to support, and who expected little
regarding meeting and reconciling with those responsible for her son’s death.
Bevernage (2012: 171) cites Derrida on ‘the frailty of the present’ in explain-
ing how past experiences such as the death of a child, of a young man like
Zabonke, remain in the present, while at the same time the survivor deals
with what is given right now. By 1996, and even more so by 2009, Mrs.
Konile had more pressing concerns than to prioritize reflection on state atroc-
ities leading to her son’s death so many years before. The TRC was not struc-
tured to recognize, accommodate and even acclaim such a narrative style.

CONCLUSION
Returning now to the TRC aim of structuring memorialization in the service
of national reconciliation, and the inability of the hearings’ structure to
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anticipate autobiographical narratives that answer to an unexpected model,
the following can be concluded:
• The testimony structure that was established early on in the hearings, be-
came constructive of what was given and what would be muted, if not
silenced. In spite of well-equipped interpreting services, the existence of dif-
ferent narrative traditions was not explicitly considered, so that the rigid
court-like structure of public hearings either suppressed authentic alterna-
tive traditions or made it difficult to give suitable responses.
• Often, in the opening sequence of a testimony, the witness would be
reminded, thus also primed, as to what the aims of the TRC were.
References to pain and suffering due to HRVs were accompanied by social
and political goals of reconciliation and national unity. Commissioners lead-
ing the testimony or questioning witnesses would rephrase narrative contri-
butions in terms that fit the setlist of themes to be dealt with. Witnesses
were offered limited space, also due to time restrictions, to elaborate on
what seemed to be irrelevant or to order their narrative according to a struc-
ture more familiar to them.
• The different languages of the commissioners, witnesses, interpreters and
transcribers were relevant not only in basic intelligibility terms. The different
ways in which speech communities articulate memories, particularly memo-
ries of grief and mourning, were not easily captured in the moment of trans-
lation and interpretation.
• Although recordings have captured the precise language witnesses used in
testimony, the transcripts are in English only. Analyses after the events have
shown many errors, some merely of grammar or spelling (also of witnesses’
names), but many also of exact wording and misinterpretation. In a case
such as Mrs. Konile’s, where much of the translation is accurate on a literal
level, there was no assistance in ‘translating’ the significance of her alterna-
tive narrative order. What seemed to be incoherent and disordered, eventu-
ally was shown to be perfectly ordered—she had been marching to the tune
she knew best.
• Even with care not to retraumatize, for many, the testimony inevitably did re-
open wounds. For some, however, the loss of a loved one had, after 10 years,
blended into a series of losses and efforts to keep their lives intact, so that their
recall of the one event in which the TRC was interested, shows shifts in what
had been more or less prominent. For Mrs. Konile, e.g., the memory she pre-
ferred to articulate referred only partially to the details of the event, and more
to the shock and disruption receiving the message had brought her, also
regarding future prospects and the troubles she would have in claiming own-
ership rights to a home, in assuring care for herself in old age.
The Guguletu Seven mothers who testified, mostly showed an ability to adapt
quickly to the expected narrative structure. Of those who eventually testified,
two gave their memories in terms that were easy for a well-prepared,
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urbanized and literate audience to follow. The third, Mrs. Konile, in not fitting
this pattern, highlighted the institutional structure’s inability to accommodate
survivors taking ownership of their own life stories and giving them in other
terms than finding closure and working towards national reconciliation. The
work of various scholars, starting as far back as Janet (1928), but continuing
into very recent reflections on trauma memory and trauma narrative frag-
mentation, such as Crespo and Fernandez-Lansac (2016) who show that
trauma narratives encode perceptual memory more than systematic histories,
are informative in trying to make sense of the ways in which witnesses articu-
lated loss 10 years after the event. Various researchers have referred to the
fact that representations of responses to trauma differ within different contexts
and according to different social traditions (Mbembe 2010; Borzaga 2012;
Beneduce 2016). Being asked to relate past traumatic events, participants’
narrated memory can show the structural variation that does not fit the insti-
tutional setting’s expressed aims. For this reason, Mrs. Konile’s testimony was
confounding to those who had imagined witnesses with intentions that either
already matched or could be brought to match the national reconciliation
discourse.

NOTES
them in referring to the testimonies,
1 Accessible online through WorldCat li-
while interpreting is done with the
brary catalogue.
later research of Bock and Mpolweni-
2 As the hearings’ transcriptions are
Zantsi (2006), Bock et al. (2006) and
posted online as an open source on
Krog et al. (2009) to supplement.
the TRC website, this article cites from

Conflict of interest statement. The author declares that she has no affiliation with
any institution or organization that will profit from conclusions, implications
or opinions put forward in this work; no other relationship, bias or ethical
conflict exists that would unduly compromise me or any third party.

WEB-REFERENCES TO TRANSCRIPTS OF HEARINGS

(ACCESSED ON 20 MARCH 2019):
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/ct_victim.htm
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans%5Cheide/ct00100.htm
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/polls/opening.htm (Nov 1996
Opening.)
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/polls/ct00108.htm (Nov hearing
Konile, mother of Zabonke.)
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/polls/ct00818.htm (Nov hearing
Miya, mother of Jabulani.)
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/polls/ct00100.htm (Nov hearing
Ngewu, mother of Christopher Piet.)
18 C. ANTHONISSEN
http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/gug/opening.htm
Ntsebeza.)
http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/trc-hearing-death-griffith-mxenge
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20 C. ANTHONISSEN

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR
Christine Anthonissen is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of General Linguistics,
Stellenbosch University. Her research focuses mainly on Discourse Studies and Critical
Discourse Analysis, recently covering social aspects of bilingualism and multilingual-
ism. Relevant work relates to discourses of coming to terms with a traumatic past,
related to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Address for
Correspondence: Christine Anthonissen, Department General Linguistics, Stellenbosch
University, Stellenbosch, South Africa. <ca5@sun.ac.za>