Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela is a professor and South African National Research Foundation’s Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma and the Director of the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University. Her insights into the mechanisms of trauma and forgiveness in post-apartheid South Africa have created a globally-recognized model for social healing in the aftermath of conflict, a model she calls “the reparative quest.”

She was an influential member of the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that aimed to address the injustices of apartheid. Her award-winning 2003 book A Human Being Died That Night recounts her conversations with the former commander of state-sanctioned death squads, Eugene de Kock, and argues for the possibility of remorse, forgiveness, and reconciliation.