SITES OF FLAWED MEMORIES - A Melancholic Reflection

Although imagined or invented, nations are nebulous creation of human ingenuity crafted from a variety of institutional imperialism and military prowess. 

Heritage sites that shape national identity and imbue it with meaning are the subject of my artistic inquiry, attempting to address themes of collective loss, inherited trauma and the persistent loss of homes experienced by black people.

Engaging in archival research and the use interdisciplinary artistic practice utilising national symbols and narratives connected to South African nationhood, my work could be said to explore cross-pollinations of nationhoods within the diverse landscape of the southern tip of Africa.

On the backdrop of South Africa celebrating 30 years of democracy, it becomes essential to grapple with how a maturing state shapes its citizens and traditionalises diverse histories and cultural responses to said histories. 

As the bourgeoning state adopts and adapts to colonial Eurocentric and western ideologies and structures inherited from colonial powers; there arises a need for  decolonial revisions of said histories as collectivised through memory.

And considering multifaceted efforts by the Afrikaner community to carve a space for separate development, the “coloured” community retracing “their” roots to the Khoi and San people of antiquity, it has become pivotal to reevaluate cultural impacts of “spaces of collective incidents of trauma”. 

To investigate how these spaces tie historical diverse perspectives and root truths which could be contested at various period of history is one of the empirical objectives of my work with archival materials, to reposition their relevance without taints of race based definitions, but hopefully a holistic view of a collective memories.

***

How can a nation of nations grappling with compartmentalised views of nationhood create a state founded on cohesive and harmonious exchange and engagement? 

Can people who developed their perspectives of “the other” reconcile their vantage point with contemporary landscapes where lives are morphing and intertwined by intricate economic and social misnomers and discrepancies?

Take for instance a street where protesting activists were massacred by colonial forces; would the perpetrator and the victim recall the same space equitably? 

Can the farms located on land disposed from black communities become safe havens for impoverished farm labourers, while owned and supervised by generations of colonisers?

And that small quaint town with magnificent views of pictorial natural landscapes nestled among hills adored by artists of privilege, how are they to become “home” for those who lost vast fortunes with the land of their spiritual roots?

Mothers from one-roomed shacks are cleaning immaculately large houses with glass walls and fathers from garden-less homes are tending gardens and flowers that render “white” spaces heavenly, like dream objects they yearn to possess but could never achieve. 

Upon leaving these spaces, back to the sombre and mediocre environments of scanty camps on the outskirts of these towns, there seems to be an inversion from dreams of bliss to utter disdain for even the people in their lives.

The township peopled by those who resent their lives and those with whom they share their life experiences; that is a schizophrenic space of liminality occupied by black folk.

What about those intermittent days celebrated as holidays, which are said to represent commemorative efforts of appeasing sins and brutalities of the past through reconciliatory mirages?

How could a date associated with the merciless killings of black people be celebrated by another community as a moment of their historical victory to be recalled and venerated annually in clear view of descendants of the deceased victims of slaughters?

Could these sites of flawed memories be windows through which to spy on the past with clearer eyes; to reconstruct the events afresh in minds often exhausted by the flow of time? 

***

Colonialism has extremely long tentacle which are clutching every sinew of the present, and cities, towns, villages and squatter camps have mushroomed on very poisoned soil, built on exploitative social contracts and sustained by a form of collective amnesia.

All blood spilled at various stages of this country’s evolution still wails from beneath the rocks, and generations who draw blood from those deceased are living lives alien to themselves while alienating themselves from their respective communities.

Alienated from the past and present, this is a generation of people of colour attempting to find individual identities fused with reconstructed historical narratives, where our noble past becomes a badge of honour to our dispossession and disenfranchisement.

Rage-filled souls roam the streets, youth with no sense of self beyond narcissistic yearning for grandeur are plotting for a future which is rendered uncertain by the unresolved past.

It seems those proverbial sites of past battles are once again be filled with screams of men dying afresh, by each other’s hand; towns assailed by disgruntled domestic workers and garden boys using shovels as weapons for racial cleansing.

Hating the face one sees in the mirror as a metaphor for “black on black” violence is not a simplification of some deep seated disorders and self-destructive tendencies among black people. 

Violence against self and others seems to fuel an insurrectional reaction against personalised false hopes and sedative tales told to keep the downtrodden hopeful; masking a grotesque truths that bear witness to traumas experienced and therefore experimented on those closest to us.

But how did Africans become separated from the truth of their actual contributions to history due to it being “white-washed”, erasure and censorship of records of historical significance?

 

How did Africans become convinced that tribalist segregation is final and just as a solution for their poverty and social plight; will this self-alienation be another collective disorder that continues to hinder collaborative redress of historical ills and mistruths?

***

To answer these questions one is compelled to study works of numerous renowned psycho-analysts and historians, who have carved alternate lenses through which to address traumas of unresolved pasts concerning people of colour.

One must device methodologies of self-analysis, to decode wounds of “the past as a space where persons and communities were shattered”, reassembling broken bits into a coherent yet transformative identity that would best survive the scourges of contemporary inequality. 

This new identity that is achieved through self-analysis should not be nebulous, formless ego that can be externally manipulated, but an identity with agency and accountability to the past as well as the present.

And how does one begin to fashion this new-self in the face of a present steeped in monuments of traumatic pasts, still glorified and revered by certain communities while being despised by others?

Should personal and social metamorphosis solely rely on destruction of such monuments and sites of massacres, in a form of collectively sanctioned erasure of unpalatable episodes of history based on sentiments of betrayal and disgust as felt by the majority of black people?

***

Many have been puzzled by the observable spiritual depravity of gangs and gruesome waves criminality experienced in the Cape and other coastal cities which historically were the entry points of vast populations of colonisers? 

Why are communities in these regions prone to internalised self-loathing and inferiority complexes that are disguised as machismo, which explode in bouts of ultra-violent that sees no value in lives? 

And these places are inundated with memorabilia, churches with ancient bells, monuments and museums filled with artefacts and deceptions from the colonisers’ past, exalting their “achievements” gained through usurping native lands and properties.

What about the mining towns were men were exploited and their bodies vandalised for profit; and those town along the Voortrekker route that seem never to awaken from a slumber and stupor of beauty as veneer over the wickedly affluent livelihoods of the colonisers?

The homelands are centred around self-destructive violence and revenge killings meted against vulnerable generations paying debts of the past.

Townships are labour camps for unemployed and self-deprecating beings intoxicated by failure and drink.

And all these places are in clear view of the coloniser, often built inches from their comfort zones, shanty town mushrooming near suburbs and gated estates meant for excluding the poor and their envious gaze.

***

Analysing multiple systems in operation within traumatised psyches takes significant and frequent reflection on both the past as was and the past as viewed  or perceived from the present. 

Relationships between past events and their recollections in the present are fraught with illusory metaphors and hints of covet subconscious concealments. These barriers need be dismantled prior to finding the chaotic persona that is the result of trauma and other experiences.

A distanced objectivity is often required, a voyeurism synonymous with scientific enquiries; therefore the decolonisation of how the past and its present manifestation affect the black mind is crucial first as a personal project followed as an undertaking for the benefit of the collective.

Confronting souls that have been through inter-generational trauma transmitted through birth and genes can in fact be described as living in catastrophe, a continuous crimson flood that threatens to swallow and drown their innocences.

But once a new-self has been fashioned, a degree of asynchronous observation of personal and collective disasters seems possible.

That blurred line between neurosis and psychosis is shifting with each engagement with the past, be it when looking an old photograph of a seemingly happy servant family on a farm once dispossessed from people of colour. 

The irony of affiliating one’s deceased relatives with the same land they toil as lowly servants of colonisers, is strong even when the same descendants are forbidden to visit the graves of those who dies on those colonised farmlands.

Thoughts ignited by memory beyond the brutal treatment of the white farmer do not even deter many from associating themselves with those enclaves of white monopoly, swathes of infinite space upon which they lounge and thrive owning herds stolen on their behalf.

But can minds, specifically black minds, be viewed as sites of flawed memories, recollections of past events tainted with terrors and anguish, pretences of joy and indefinite exploitation that eventually is accepted as divine fate?

Are literal and metaphorical flows of social power between black and white communities always going to exist as bridges built on landmines of the minds of the wretched of this earth?

***

“Heredity nothing, environment everything.” Maru, Bessie Head

The statement has become canonical among by psychologists who are concerned with how the environment affects the mind, the mind as product of community and social interactions.

Imagine a scenario where nn elderly silicotic mine worker approaches his supervisor complaining of migraines; but he also alludes to the belief that the migraines are a result of witchcraft emanating from interacting with the son of another sorcerous man, who is now deployed in the same section of the mine shaft.

The supervisor is young and bemused by superstitious belief, but the adamant man is neurotically demanding the expulsion of the young descendant of his enemy, without considering that he might be suffering and organic disease.

And for those who can suffer more in their imaginations that in their reality, what could be the remedy for their unburied demons?

Of Motherhood And Melancholia, is a seminal book written by renowned Psycho-ethnographer, Lou-Marie Kruger, who traces various strains of trauma to conditions that mothers and mothers to be suffer prior to beginning.a journey of the child’s development.

The Valley, as a space for hostile social conditions and a stage for the “violence of poverty”, is a microcosm of a vast dilemma.

Genealogical traits inherited from parents also have psychological imprints on their offspring, traits which also evolve over time as the child grows and matures to adulthood.

The plausibility of such an outcome in psychological terms is undeniable to the extend that what ever traumatic experiences the mother underwent during pregnancy can be passed on the newborn’s inner mind which is yet to mature with scars inherited from the mother.

This newborn does invariably exhibit trans-generational affiliations with trauma, influenced by experiences from both his parents and those cultivated as an individual maturing with a communal setting. 

Abbreviated versions of past trauma that show up in adulthood are unique in that they are personal, even though drawing from a wide array of psych-social forces.

Previously unseen sketches of internalised pain, fear, inferiority can therefore be unrolled through violent spats and burst, that both merge the old inherited traumas with the personally cultivated traumas.

Another reading of Professor Kruger’s well-researched work, highlight how violence becomes infused with behavioural make up of communities that have normalised violence as a tool for surviving the ravages of poverty and powerlessness. 

Men feeling emasculated by their coloniser and employer tends to reclaim is lost power by subjugating and brutalising those nearest to his circle of influence; the wife, the child and immediate family.

The echoes of sobs from a mother slapped by a masculine voice of “the father” after she slaved under the lusty gaze of “the master” who is disgusted with his wife, which the unborn inevitably hears, will forever be recalled and normalised as part of sounds of an environment into which they will be ushered.

Madala Stokkies - Makotoko Sekhoahla

But here I sit, a weary old man,  

On this porch that leans into the wind,  

And I wonder, as the sun sinks low,  

Casting long shadows over this broken land,  

If the answers will ever come,  

Or if we’re destined to remain in this place,  

Forever yearning for the paradise  

That was promised, but never found.

I see my neighbors, faces lined with the same questions,  

Hands calloused from work that never ends,  

And I feel the weight of generations on my shoulders,  

The dreams of those who came before,  

Now buried beneath the dust of forgotten times.  

Is this all there is, this endless struggle,  

This fight for survival in a world so rich,  

Yet so stingy with its blessings?

And what of the children, those wide-eyed souls,  

Who look to us for guidance, for hope?  

What do we tell them, as they lie down to sleep,  

Hungry not just for food, but for a future,  

That seems as distant as the stars?  

Do we speak of God, of His mysterious ways,  

Or do we tell them the truth,  

That we are lost, as lost as they are,  

In a world that’s forgotten its way?

***

There exists a variety of afflictions scaled against black masculinity that have long been perpetuated by the oppressor who deemed and deduced these prowess as menial and bestial.

This demonising doctrine that eventually emasculated black men came in various guises, from forced removals from the rootedness of familial unions to labour reservations erected to house black bodies for exploitation by colonial profiteers.

Chasing a dreamworld constructed beyond his reach the black male finally became alienated from his kin and his self-alienated soul began to feel alone in a world of that was pent on erasing his identity.

A criminal mind brewed in these self-torture chambers of the mind also creates venues for committing heinous crimes in the name of liberating oneself from internalised shackles of an inferiority complex long constructed and sustained by religion and academia.  

***

Townships, locations and villages are sites of such racial and economic repression, spaces populated by alienated people, who themselves alienate others and eventually become alien to their communities as Na'im Akbar explains in his 1991 paper “Mental Disorder Among African Americans.” 

Adopting this theory to a South African situation, one realises that there is a link between various psychologies of people of colour across the globe, many being entwined through ancestrally linked trauma and others incubated through adaption to cultures of violence and poverty.

Unemployment has created a promiscuous youth copulating to quench the thirst for companionship and quick wealth when their past traumas threaten to destroy their romantic unions. 

A skewed education system is only producing a work-force seeking quick access to dreams of affluence through inconspicuous consumption.

Moving haphazardly through their labyrinths of childhood trauma, adolescent traumas, traumas of motherhood, traumas of exploitation for menial labour are social codes that become imprints left between the individual and societal systems.

But are coincidental reoccurrences and repetitions of behavioural patterns inherited from past trauma evidence of psychosis?

The disdain for “home” as expressed by many young men who live with their grandmothers, sister with three children from different hard-handed “lovers with benefits”, has seen substance abuse become the only reason behind toxic camaraderie of gang relations that is now sprouting in townships and villages.

Masculinity pitted against a vulnerable and traumatised femininity in squatter camp cages across the country is thus breeding illegitimate children who will have absent yet existing fathers, and enraged mothers loathing masculinity for all its transgressions.

 

This growing generation will of course embrace other traumas throughout life, nurturing alienated personalities and enforcing violent dispositions. 

A sense of abandon will characterise their “living for the moment”, cancelling all past memory through historic amnesia, feeding a self-destructive hedonism which is near suicidal but merely an outcry for acknowledgement and empathy.

Listening to young women raised by single mothers, who learn to loathe crudely mannered and violent young men nursed by overprotective single mothers, embracing those who perform acts of misogyny reminiscent of their fathers, one sees a proportionate distribution of interracial cruelty brewing.

***  

Colonialism and white supremacist policies of colonialism and the apartheid regime meant that many people of colour had to live hidden, traumatised and exploited lives, behind masks of their making and those created by systems of power. 

White society constantly levels trenchant attacks on the dignities of a group of people through their community policing forums, burning bodies of women and lynching children suspected of stealing fruit. 

These victims constitute the racial demographic of consensual servants keeping white households intact, farm-workers and undesirables of society. 

It therefore appears that between a traumatic past and the impending future lies a constantly shifting society and fragile interpersonal connections shaped by endless painful memories, altering the way people form relationships with others in their patriarchal and racially segregated environment. 

The birth, transformation, and disappearance of trauma is something near impossible, but as this generation morphs into illusive devices of violence, psychological or otherwise, new ways of hiding, of dying are also devised. 

***

There are protracted ways of dying, methods of killing oneself without the purgatorial dread of suicide and its hellish consequences canonised by religion. These types of deaths constitute self-destructive ways of shortening lifespans, concerted efforts at causing ill health and disease. 

Contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, excessive consumption of alcohol, drugs and cancer- causing foods, the disregard for preservation of “the body”, are all symptoms of greater self-destructive tendencies at play in many black communities.

These postponed ways of ceasing life are common among black communities where the death of the environment always precedes the death of communities and the individual. 

Junk food lovers would rather discard wrappings of their burgers in the township rather than the city where they purchased those disposable, non-biodegradable packages. 

They would rather litter through windows of vehicles in places of their despised residence, where they find other despondent individuals kicking filth lining streets and leaving plastic bags strung on tree branches, sewage seeping from blocked drains, as well as stray dogs defecating where children play hopscotch. 

There is therefore a lack of endurance of life-affirming, contingent, intertwined and inseparable sociality under duress of colonial and post-colonial violence in communities struggling with various forms of trauma.

Of all the deaths, marriage is yet another perceived form of dying; any union that bind man to woman is viewed as shackling oneself to an uncertain future, even though uncertainty is the fabric of all time.

Living in the midst of a decaying environment, embodying the human failing ambition to conquer nature, increasingly reshaped minds towards a morbidity that is activated through this psycho-social toxic interaction.

When toddlers scavenge through garbage piles with leprous pets, when young children play in sewage ponds and learn vulgar language from mothers to solicit attention from strangers, when young boys and girls are lethargic and somnambulist through school yards and tavern hallways; there is certainly a state of stupor enshrouding black communities.

This degraded environment becomes a reflection, a mirror of the deranged lives involved in the grand spectacle of repression of people. 

And one is left to ask if psychotic behaviour is an inextricable part of the history of the township as a concentration camp of demeaned and demeaning souls?

***

 

Untitled

what could be happening here

at this confusion of voices and souls in dialogue with the unseen,

the unknown rhythms of life pulsating in the blink of lights

where image and language coalesce?

what is this gathering, 

this communion of poets and mystics, 

where corporeal frequencies of dreamt realities, 

evoke the melancholy and absurd? 

Birds Of A Feather - An Appreciation

At times there are small filmic miracles that chronicle some corner of creative realities experienced by some ladies in some country in Africa, and Lesotho is the mountain kingdom from which eagles, phoenixes rise from the jagged cliffs that home a myriad souls.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER is one such glance into the spirituality of sonic manifestations, that evolve in many young musician and creatives who are steeped in translating their cultural experiences through a multifloras lens.

Matlali Matabane is such an experimentalist, who once serendipity had chosen her an instrument, explored some inner personal transformations and turmoils as well as joys through chords and voice, serenading antiquated hills of the mountains of kingdom.

The sound emanating from the instrument wails of the traumas of a pst that still haunts our people and this documentary film is a record of the artist’s efforts to preserve heritage, told through astute eyes of incredibly unhinged cinematography, experimentalist and bordering on the avant-garde.

The documentary film, directed by  the enigmatic Tsepiso Mahase, this cinematic journey is guided by womanhood who bears witness of travails of gender biases, hence the music, nearing hymnal renditions that required for religion but expressing a spirituality that unites all being like mycelium.

Having been recently screened at The Merafong Documentary Film Festival, the film resonated with audiences, as musicians, poets and social activists could relate to the efforts undertaken by the protagonist towards preservation of Basotho Musical Heritage.

The musical process documented through this film deploys spoken word poetry in imagery that account to experiences of Matlali, exquisitely globalising her experiences through a cinematic vocabulary that speaks to other people of the world who creatively strife for sonic inter-connected.

And there is indeed that power bestowed film which transcends space and time, where connections are woven efficiently between viewers and the creators of the visual experience itself, a sort of synergy of spirits which was expressed by well-enthused audiences captivated by the film’s vocality and expression beyond borders.

Matlali, as a sound scholar and artist living in Lesotho and South Africa, who is currently studying Music at Rhodes University, and through her explorative research and creative work she continues to excavate more synergies between electronic music and indigenous instrumentation fused with spoken word and performance art.

Interestingly, the Lesiba and other Basotho traditional sounds have haunted much of the Southern African landscape since time immemorial, but in the self-taught hands of artist Matlali Matabane, it has become an emancipatory tool essential for telling and breathing contemporary stories into unpredictable futures.

As an instrument synonymous with the solitude of herders and their personal contemplations, it is now shown in light of being a place of gender contestations and liberation, and this new evolution in the hands of femininity is proving richly endowed with winds of change capable of taking each feathered expression beyond the confines of borders, gender, race and social background.

The film is therefore a document of resilient craft nurtured in the most hostile space for creative output, where funding for film is virtually non-existent. It shows how young Basotho filmmakers are collaborating with their peers to create memorable and experimental works that bring new modes of social engagement.

The filmmaker Tsepiso Mahase

His Master's Voice

“African humanism recognises the Vital Force or the Supreme Being at the centre of, and integrating, human, animal and plant life and the inanimate elements of the universe. It is a simple faith, free tyranny of theological and intellectual argument. This is the measure of the imaginations invested in the power of oral expression.”

Eskia Mphahlele 

Could a people who possess an unshakable belief in a god who orchestrates all human fate and laws of nature be not considered to be suffering a type of collective psychotic experience? 

Is there a psycho-chemical mixture brewing in human brains that is breeding staunch faiths in mythological gods such as of the Greeks or Romans, spawning fanatical subservience to recent gods of collective imaginations engineered at the Vatican or Mecca?

Does the “worship instinct” in humanity qualify as a psychological disorder wired into our brains, that eventually engendered chosen races and their imperialist thought systems and their subsequent colonial exploitation and the “Othering” of people of colour? 

And from what sinister roots does the contemporary gullibility expressed by masses congregating in mega-churches mean of the Black Mind? 

What is this obsessed embrace of pseudo-prophets and the continued derogation of our ancestral spirituality for the promise of paradise in heaven?

How does religion work in the constant suppression projects orchestrated by the coloniser, and how is it that black folk continue to embrace a religion that has demonised them and deemed them inferior to other races?

The Colonial Gaze - A Video Poem

The Colonial Gaze

In order for our collective colonial traumas to find closure in this hauntingly landless present, can the annals of history reveal hidden truths, and all treasures of innocences lost in unjust psychological wars?

This video poem is an attempt to rehistoricizes and repoliticizes the idea psychological trauma experienced under colonialism and other forms of oppression. 

It questions all shackle of the collective psyche, rooted in the belittling gaze of the oppressor and the internalised untruths to which many have have surrendered.

The First Chapter 

How does hearing multiple voices translate to the contemporary black mind which has been obscured by white analysts? Does the voice of the one assailed by voices transcend the collective schizophrenia of heeding many echoes that want to subvert our inner selves?

The Second Chapter

Civility and barbarity, when juxtaposed against the colonial onslaught that saw white settlers mission to civilise the native, beckons us to question to what extremes of animality does the western mind yearn to see in the African mind succumb?

The Third Chapter

How did western standards of beauty infiltrate the self-respect identified in garments of black femininity? What did the new woman become after giving into the thirst of western voyeuristic masculinity that intoxicated and demonised black masculinity? 

Trauma Of An Ongoing Past.

Land remembers, events, those who populated it and it is intwined with our perceptions and memories. Through its beauty and horrors, it influences our worldview and trauma carried through that window by those who were exploited and deemed. 

These traumas, especially those experienced by black people are like tattoos, and this film attempts to explore traces of unrealized and forgotten utopias of deserved respect and human dignity. 

The denial of these dreamscapes of liberation from past traumas from an ongoing past need an exorcism of sorts and often we look to psycho-analysts and therapist fro healing tool. 

Sadly, western psychological theory seems devoid of possibilities for such healing, expoing the pitfalls and shortcomings crafted from colonial and imperialism psyches.

To date black folks grapple with the memories, emotions, and associations we attribute to places of our incarceration, exploitative labour and education systems geared towards creating consensual slaves, and must end.

But how?

It appears that “self-analysis as collective” plays a crucial role in remembering and understanding the past while also managing periods of transition, an aspect deeply connected to the current works of Professor Kopano Ratele.

As a community centred psycho-therapist, he constantly explores methodologies that can be employed by black people to re-evaluate sources of their personal and collective trauma, crafting culturally oriented ways of collective healing that is not dependent on tools from western theory.

Meandering through our bonds means building bridges between pains and our desired joys, but these bridges are often built on landmines. New theoretical reflections are becoming necessary, where we abandon myths of the past, traditions we held dear but that kept us in the caves of antiquity from whence we we damaged.

Trauma is no longer a static reality that keeps fathers flocking to killer mining shafts stained with blood and sweat, where many are incapable of reeling against their collective catastrophes. It is a vantage point from which to envision a new reality of healing that does not require tools from our oppressors tools, a disavowal of curses hurled against us some supposed inferior being.

This time we have people who are approaching therapy from a multidisciplinary perspective, exposing earthbound histories and spiritual resonates with an entire continent of the wretched of this earth.

And despite all transhistorical cruelties of the imperialists, anxieties of those wanting free of mental shackles and a spiritual renewal, screams beyond schizophrenia and depression and violent tendencies that demonise black communities.

Perchance there is new lens to view the damaged souls we hold with us as a content living with perpetual ravages of wars. Maybe that grammar of the past haunting the present can be shattered as a myth that has kept the entire globe in psychological warfares with itself.

Black Trauma And Shortcomings Of Psychology 

Inter-generational trauma is a phrase that often describes the transmission of a memory of a traumatic events and the instinctual responses for personal preservation that one individual transmit throughout the rest of those to be born with their genetic code. 

That is my layman understanding of the idea, but what I can attest to is the validity of such traumas and their continued impact on black communities throughout the world.

Colonial trauma, characterised by oppression and inferiority complexes that evolved from the absorption of derogatory stigmas still plays out in contemporary social dynamics where people of colour are still deemed as inferior mental, cognitively and even creatively.

One thing I can also not deny if the fact that whatever effects of contemporary psychological trauma experienced by black pope in their communities is adding onto a heap unresolved and abnormal psychologies, many of which are associated with witchcraft.

This supposed abnormality in the psyche of Africa Mind is a rather mystical phenomenon that is both spiritually valued and yet needs to be elucidated in terms of contemporary understanding of phenomena, psychic or otherwise. 

To understand the origins of some unbeknown fear consuming a person who is assailed by auditory hallucinations means being able to dispel the idea of sorcery inducing said psychosis in the person concerned, as well as those interacting with the “abnormality” in this familiar person.

This can turn into uncomfortable feats of depressing family duels where others misunderstand situations, allowing for reactions to accumulate further traumatic occurrences through squabbles, slurs and curses hurled during moments of psychic breakdowns.

Families have been torn by such often misunderstood phenomena among black communities, and to understand the abnormal psychology that drives my people, I had draw from my own person experience of dealing with a mentally disabled kin.

There is an incident in my early adulthood when I encountered someone who suffered what we later discovered was termed “auditory hallucinations” by psychologists and psychiatrists, after a protracted struggle that saw families consulting Sangomas, Prophets and other diviners in an attempt to “heal” or at least understand the condition manifested by our kin.

Although the phenomenon began gradually, there was incredible concentration and a meditative attentiveness that suddenly grew into an obsession, and claims of “hearing insulting remarks from people” and sudden burst of laughter as though the patient were eavesdropping on people’s thoughts.

There came a point where “the patient” convinced their minds that they were exhibiting telepathic powers, but absurdly the remarks “heard” were nothing close tho the thoughts in the accused minds.

A compulsion to act out violent and injurious commands later evolved with the intensity of the auditory hallucinations, and this eventually rendered everyone mute to avoid being “mis-heard”.

Yet, this did not deter the patient from repeated attempts of self-harm, suicidal tendencies and a variety of anti-social behaviour.

And when finally the intervention of a western psychologist diagnosed her condition as An Acute Auditory Hallucinations caused by certain abnormal neural activity in the frontal lobe of the patient’s brain. 

The explanation confounded more than made sense of the situation, because even when mystics were discerning that the patient “has calling to become diviner”, the conundrum became why the wrong messages received during these telepathic seances between minds.

In short, the experience had its effects on myself as one who directly had to sift through options, and perchance in the process of attempting to understand another’s psychic dysfunction, I could have developed my own.

And considering that most of western psycho-analytical theories seem solely constructed from observations of people of western origin, I would like to posit an argument that western psycho-analysis remains baffled by the complex psychological and mental conditions that assail most people of colour. 

Psychology in general, lacks a vocabulary to analyse black trauma, and thus requires a new pair of eyes to delve in to what WEB Du Bois called the ‘Souls Of Black Folk” or what Franz Fanon termed “The Mind Of The Oppressed”.

There are a billion souls residing in each individual, that is belief that is held by many spiritualists who also subscribe to notions of memory being stored in genes.

As a filmmaker, I am immensely drawn to such ideas of multi-dimensionalities of being, therefore this inquiry into schools psychology and their analyses of black psychologies is also an expedition into my very mind, to listen to those many gorgons residing in my soul, the unexorcised demons who I must embrace.

***

There surely are indecipherable codes to spheres of black psychological constructs, mental reception and transmission of everyday events in relation to what could, in Carl Jung’s terms be called, a “collective unconsciousness” of black people.

But how does an individual spontaneously arrive a divergence from ‘normal functioning of the mind “ in societal terms? 

Is this spontaneity similar to the revolutionary spontaneity that psycho-analyst Franz Fanon alluded to when he analysed psychological effects of wars for liberation on revolutionaries who themselves came to revolutionary situations through spontaneous means?

Are there specific inter-generational traumas that linger and are later triggered in individuals, taking forms of spontaneous psychosis that eventually grow to become fully fledged mental divergences?

What processes and ongoing turbulent dynamics assist to create a constant state of mind that veers between euphoria and rage, chaos and seeming 

These and other question are the driving impetus for this enquiry in the form a documentary with contemporary psychoanalysts who deal predominantly with problems within black communities, their diagnosis of populations who have otherwise been overlooked by western psycho-analysis.

It is not a methodological investigation that aims to determine what differentiates inter-continental perspectives on the effects of generational trauma, but understand what simply makes madnesses different from culture to culture, if there is such a clear difference.

I recall the vivid nightmares depicted by Ben Okri in The Famished road, where the Magic Child Azaro traverses spiritual realms and dimensions that overlap with his present incarnation among mortals. 

That other worldliness of the depictions through the authors literary genius invokes “memories” of actual beings, some similar to those experienced by people hallucinating , those living on the threshold between two conditions.

Concepts of persons being born to linger for a short while among the living, the idea of post-mortal journeys that have begun even before one in born to die… these concepts speak to the black psychological experiences that many live and interact with on a constant basis.

I have encountered children prone to scratching themselves incessantly because they are convinced warts are infesting their pores and lice are crawling all overs their skin, and others who compulsively drag some invisible web from their eyes.

These behavioural abnormalities are often attributed to witchcraft among black communities, for instance the invisible webs that string about one’s lashes being construed as obstacles by witches to obscure ones inner vision and render them incapable of “planning for their futures”.

Religion and other lingering effects of missionary activities within our societies has profound effects on our collective psyche hence it was essential to follow Professor Ratele to find and weave a counter-narratives to prevalent representations of black trauma and collective healing.

This ongoing investigation of suppressed memories, psychic remnants of traumas and the organic evolution of these components into future generations, poses questions about tendencies that seem inherited, especially around black kin.

Through an analysis of actual patients, persons deemed mad or otherwise purporting to be diviners and sorcerers, this exhaustive survey of cases that I have heard and experienced will potentially assist me to reconstruct the mosaic of broken inner worlds.

Contemplating the fate of individuals who are in close relation to those affected by mental breakdowns, and also finding ways of detecting triggers and propensities for psychological breakdown among black people of varying ages groups. 

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Images And Text By: Paul Khahliso Matela Zisiwe 

https://herri.org.za/10/