Overcoming social suffering : strategies in New South Africa

Abstract

This thesis examines a strategy for overcoming social suffering employed by a grass root organisation, Kwa Zulu Natal Programme for Survivors of Violence, in Durban. I analyse PSV as a local alternative to the national TRC strategy for remaking a New South Africa. These two strategies are attempts to transform a society that has experienced institutional suppression and political violence. TRC employed human rights terminology to address the past through public testimonies of victims and perpetrators. PSV aims to combine mental health issues with community development. Their strategy is to transform the disadvantaged individual from victim to survivor based on a Five-stage Trauma Counselling Model. In order to achieve this PSV arranges a number of activities like Stress and Trauma Workshops, where young people go through a transformation process. I show that this transformation maps well with a rite de passage process. Various activities are used as devices to transform the individual from victim to survivor in the workshop. There are activities that work on the individual level as well as on the group level. I argue that when addressing social suffering there is a need for an approach that combines societal issues with the individual's needs. This I call a comprehensive approach. I identify four characteristics that form its basis. These four characteristics may be seen as an appeal for a strategy that addresses human suffering on both individual and societal levels and make it possible to relate the national to the local model in transforming South Africa.