From Victim to Survivor to Victor: A Testimony from South Africa

by Michael Lapsley

In around 1987 the government of Zimbabwe, where I was living, informed me that I was on a South African government hit list—that I could be the target of the South African death squads. From then on I lived with armed guards for several years. I reflected on what I was living for, if in fact a government might wish to kill me for it. I had long come to the conclusion that there was no road to freedom except via the route of self-sacrifice. Thus I had a conceptual framework which helped me make sense of the possibility of death, but certainly not of permanent major disability.

Three months after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, at the end of April, 1990, I received a letter bomb hidden inside the pages of two religious magazines that had been posted from South Africa to Harare. In the bomb blast I lost both hands, one eye, and had shattered ear drums and various other injuries.

Nevertheless I experienced the presence of God with me in the bombing.

For the first three months I was as helpless as a newborn baby. I received excellent medical treatment, first in Zimbabwe and then in Australia. I was the recipient of the prayers and love and support of countless Zimbabweans and South Africans, together with many other people around the world. My story was acknowledged, reverenced, and recognized, and it was given a moral content. God enabled me to make my bombing redemptive—to bring the life out of the death, the good out of the evil.

I was able to walk a journey from being victim to survivor to victor.

If we have something done to us, we are victims. If we physically survive, we are survivors. Sadly, many never travel any further. They remain prisoners of moments in history—psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. To become a victor is to move from being an object of history to becoming a subject once more.

In 1992, I returned to live in South Africa after an absence of sixteen years. I was very struck by the innumerable ways that the people of South Africa had been damaged by the journey we had traveled, by what we had done, by what had been done to us, by what we had failed to do. We all had a story to tell about the apartheid years—no matter what the color of our skin or on what side we had placed ourselves during the conflict.

Unlike what happened to me, for countless South Africans, no one has acknowledged, reverenced, and listened to their story.

For five years I was chaplain to what was then called The Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture. It taught me some important lessons. Yes, we were all damaged by our past, but we were not all pathological—we did not all need long-term therapy. Undoubtedly there are a small minority who do need long-term expert intervention on their road to healing. However, although not in need of expert intervention, there are very many people who still have unfinished business from the past.

As part of the chaplaincy project of the Trauma Centre, together with the general religious response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we developed a "healing of memories" model as a parallel process to the Truth Commission.

Essentially, each Healing of Memories workshop is an individual and collective journey of exploring the effects of South Africa's past, and especially the apartheid years. The emphasis is on dealing with these issues at an emotional, psychological, and spiritual level, rather than an intellectual one.

The workshops provide a unique opportunity to experience and relate our individual journeys, while sharing others' journeys with them, in the course of working in small groups. There is also some reflection on the common themes that come up in such a journey—such as anger, hope, hatred, joy, isolation, endurance—and discovery of the depths of common humanity we share. The workshop reaches its climax in the creation of a liturgy/celebration (including readings, poetry, dance, song, prayers, etc.) which provides a sense of completion to the workshop.

These workshops are just one step, although often an important one, in the journey toward healing and wholeness. The workshops are an attempt to assist victims to be victors, and help all of us on the road to new life.

When we have experienced something life-threatening, it will either cause us to diminish or to grow, but certainly not to remain the same. Chief Luthuli once said that those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimizers of others. People often give themselves permission to do terrible things to others because of what has been done to them. In many conflicts, both sides see themselves as the victims. This can be true of the journey of individuals, communities, and nations.

How do we break the cycle that turns victims into victimizers? A fundamental part has to do with the social, political, and economic context. But of equal importance is the psychological, emotional, and spiritual. Only when we have the space to look at the poison within us, and have the opportunity to begin to let it go, can we move away from victimhood. People often stay with their victimhood because it is all they have.

One of the characteristics of societies in transition is that after some kind of negotiated settlement, political violence comes to an end. At the same time, family, sexual, domestic, and criminal violence rapidly increase. While not enough research has been done on the connection between political violence and what happens inside the bedroom, I have no doubt that there is a profound relationship.

A great number of people came to the Trauma Centre in those first years not because of their psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs, but rather because of their physical needs for work, for food, for shelter. What we had to offer was often not what people were asking for. Nearly ten years after the coming of democracy to South Africa, many who sacrificed the most to free South Africa have not yet tasted much of its fruit, including the former combatants of the liberation movements and their families.

Last year the Institute for Healing of Memories started its Ndabikum Project. Ndabikum means "It's my business" or "It's up to me." The challenge that Ndabikum has made to ex-combatant clients is that they should take responsibility for making a change in their own lives. The aim of Ndabikum is that the participants in their program should be committed to striving to become independent by restoring in them a sense of self-worth and the ability to act in the world.

Ndabikum helps ex-combatants by providing a holistic, integrated program combining personal support and skills training, with the intention of alleviating the effects of long-term unemployment and displacement. And in Healing of Memories workshops, ex-combatants are given an opportunity to explore in a safe space how the South African past has affected them psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

The program has evolved by combining the experience of two approaches to working with displaced and traumatized people. On the one hand, providing trauma counseling and emotional support has limited benefit when people are struggling to survive. On the other hand, providing skills training alone is not enough to equip people to support themselves financially when they have emotional problems.

An evaluation was held after the first six months. The combination of personal support and skills training was found to be effective in meeting the needs of program participants and the aims of Ndabikum.

One of the good and bad things about our Truth Commission was that people tended to be described as victims or perpetrators. At one level it was good because it acknowledged the suffering of individuals no matter what side they were on or what role they had played. This also helped the nation in recreating the moral order. It established that torture was wrong whether carried out by freedom fighters or by racists.

As South Africans, we were often told that the night was the darkest in the hours before the dawn. I pray that a new dawn will come soon for all those still struggling for freedom. 

Fr. Michael Lapsley, SSM is director of the Institute for Healing of Memories in Capetown, South Africa (http://www.healingofmemories.co.za/). This article is taken from an address he delivered in August, 2003 to the Civil Society and Justice in Zimbabwe Symposium.