Special Hearings — Mental Health Workshop — 1997-11-20

UNKNOWN: I think Irwin is probably going to talk about that later when he looks as progressive attempts.  There are pockets of activity,these are really marginal voices that continue to try in addition to their full time jobs on the side kind of, as an appendix to their regular jobs, to carry for the activity and I think what that needs, that kind of activity needs to be centralised, instead of kept (indistinct) and the Commission would do well to work through institutions such as the CSD, the HSRC - all of the major research bodies, or the bodies that fund research need to be encouraged and need to have the appropriate political endorsement, to centralise activity that is going to enable the democratisation of knowledge as well as the production of relevant our bodies of knowledge.  So it is really essentially working through the institutions that support research.

GLENDA WILDSCHUT: It is Glenda Wildschut again.  Looking at the collaborative study that was done sort of World Mental Health activities, and looking through that report, it became very clear to me that very little work has been done in examining the relationship between structural violence and interpersonal violence.
 Rather a lot of work has been done in looking at the causes and the nature and extend of interpersonal violence at different levels, whether it be political and so on.  And it seems to be that that is an endeavour.  That is something that is very important for this country that we have come through a long period of structural, institutionalised  violence through legislation, etc, etc and what impact that has on interpersonal violence, and every time one looks at the report in the newspaper, people individualise almost the escalating violence that we have and attribute all kinds of reasons to that.
 It seems to be this lack of understanding between structural apartheid and structural - if you can comment on that.  ... personal story in that the issue around rioting or (indistinct) observations that one has made and so on, and try to make sense of that, is also an issue of confidence and that if one is not in an academic environment, it is very difficult to actually write because one doesn't have that kind of support and confidence in actually writing that and I think as you mentioned it is a good idea to in a sense, create a milieu where people who are in a non-academic environment can actually begin to develop that confidence and to be able to write down what kind of observations people are making.
 It is interesting to note that in your review, the more relevant writing and research is being done by alternative organisations such as OASSA and other non-academic institutions.  It is often to those works, that one has to look in order to make sense of some of the things I have mentioned about the relationship between structural violence and interpersonal violence.

UNKNOWN: If you read the written submission, you will see that historically most of the writing emerged from white English speaking or white Afrikaans speaking universities, and even up to now, academics associated with the historically black institutions, hardly ever write for a whole host of reasons, but there is definitely the issue of confidence, the issue of being over-awed by the idea of writing and the research continues to be mystified and couched in esoteric terms and the attempts by black academics to engage with research, is discouraged for obvious reasons, but it is always presented as something that is a preserve of geniuses.
 That it is not ordinary human beings who can research and write and unfortunately the only geniuses you get in this country, happen to be white.  That is a major problem.  At that level, it is quite important to be looking at these institutions and encouraging and developing these think tanks and these writing forums where people are encouraged and enabled to write and create a space for writing.
 If you look at the student numbers for instance between UCT and Western Cape, you understand why people in the Western Cape don't have the time for that.  At organisational level, the demands differ.
 As far as coming back to your first issue of violence, I want to say that those who have the power to define the problem, also have the power to define the solutions.  Historically violence in this country has taken on various definitions.  
 In the former years of institutionalised apartheid, it was defined as a black on black problem, blacks killing blacks.  Inkatha/ANC problem.  It is now being rapidly being redefined as a criminal phenomena that if you lock everybody up that is violent, we will have peace in this country.
 One wonders why these selective definitions of violence continue to pervade the media, public and political discourse and it again comes back to the point I was making, we need to look at how for instance, research violence, what kind of questions we are asking about it.
 And why do we only ask certain questions and not others.  Why do we continually define it as primarily an individual phenomena when we look at interpersonal political violence, but we ignore the fact that State machinery continues to justify violence in various forms. Internationally that is the case.  If you turn on the television set, adults and kids immediately learn that it is okay to be violent.
 The message is conveyed that it is okay.  It may not lead to violence, it may not be the course, but it conveys a message.  So we have to look at, I agree we have to look at the interface between the structural and the personal.
 Small studies conducted by various people  are beginning to show that people who are likely to engage in political violence, that is not ideologically based, are also likely to be violent in the interpersonal relationships.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

UNKNOWN: Just a brief comment.  I should think you really don't need to answer this, because you had spoken to it. When I was going through your submission, my problem was that it is like in this country, unlike other countries, surviving from human rights' violation of whatever nature be it oppression or dictatorship, usually people have an opportunity in some instances even their capacity, to articulate their experiences and to develop the whole culture of human rights' around their profession.
 In this instance, I mean here, you said something somewhere about the politics of knowledge production.  I was just thinking that we are trapped.  Most people who have the capacity, who will be even reviewing, let's say the work of the Commission, are people who are also part of the leaders.
 They can only be critical of the past to a certain degree and so that for me is a problem.  If you look at how for instance the Jewish community has taken up the holocaust experience, they have done a lot of work in terms of research and everything, uncompromisingly so, but as you have said here, that most people who are really survivors of the apartheid experience, I know you are one of those people who have been trying to get people to write, to contribute even what you referred to as alternative models of knowledge production, but I don't know what are we going to recommend.
 I thought your submission - it raises critical questions but in our context, I just see the process being reviewed by people who really be trapped in their own problems related to the past, and it is likely to be a compromise.