Introduction

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of apartheid, stories of family and home and other intimate forms of memory came to flood the public sphere. This was perhaps most dramatically evident in the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 1996–2002), an institution set up to help construct a democratic society through the documentation of gross human rights violations and the public acknowledgment of victims. The testimony of Nombuyiselo Mhlawuli provides a harrowing example. After describing the experience and ongoing effects on her family of having her husband, the activist Sicelo Mhlawuli, kidnapped and murdered by apartheid agents, she requested to be given back his missing hand. This was said to have been cut off by the police and kept in a bottle.¹ While extreme in its depiction of actually severed limbs, Mhlawuli’s tale is common in its depiction of a family dismembered—and I use this harsh word deliberately—by the acute or structural violence of apartheid. These stories spilled beyond the TRC hearings to be echoed and expanded on television and radio, at political rallies and community meetings, in novels and memoirs, in museums and art galleries, and in street corners, taxi cabs, and living rooms.