Knotted memories of a betrayed sacrifice: Rethinking trauma and hope in South Africa

Abstract

Different groups within South African society express disillusionment with the present through a discourse of betrayal in relation to the liberation movement-cum-governing-party of the African National Congress. This article focuses on a particular articulation of this discourse within two memory communities in the Western Cape (Bonteheuwel and Crossroads) who were embroiled in violence and political struggle during apartheid and continue to suffer conditions of structural violence in the post-apartheid era. It analyses the shared memory narrative of a ‘betrayed sacrifice’ to demonstrate a proposed theoretical concept of ‘knotted memories’ which describes the way in which past and present memories of suffering knot together to produce a lived affective condition of despair. It further considers what these everyday experiences of ‘knotted memories’ mean for re-thinking the nature of trauma and hope in relation to post-apartheid despair.