Speaking thirty years after the first public hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Gobodo-Madikizela situated her reflections within the enduring afterlives of apartheid, colonialism, slavery, and contemporary violence. Drawing on psychoanalysis, philosophy, political theology, and lived testimony, she posed a central ethical question, namely “how do human beings continue living together after profound rupture?”. At the heart of the lecture stood the unforgettable testimony of Nomonde Calata, whose husband was murdered by apartheid security forces in 1985. Her piercing scream became one of the defining sounds of post-apartheid South Africa: Gobodo-Madikizela recalled Archbishop Desmond Tutu describing it as “the defining sound of that political moment”. Yet that scream, she argued, became part of what she described as “a broader genealogy of Black suffering and resistance across time and geography”, an echo linking slavery, colonial violence, apartheid, and contemporary atrocities. In one of the lecture’s most striking formulations, Gobodo-Madikizela suggested that such cries are “not confined to the past, but resound transgenerationally,” demanding that we confront what she called “the scream of history”.

The lecture also touched upon the themes of relationships and ethical encounter, culminated in a powerful reflection on Ubuntu, the African ethical philosophy which Gobodo-Madikizela presented as the recognition that personhood itself is constituted through ethical relation with others. The lecture’s closing reflections turned toward forgiveness, hope, and the possibility of imagining futures beyond violence. In this sense, Gobodo-Madikizela described what she called radical hope: the fragile possibility that new forms of relational life can emerge even amidst histories of devastation. The evening concluded with a haunting audio excerpt from Rewind, a composition by South African composer Philip Miller based on testimonies from the TRC.

In bringing together psychoanalysis, ethics, theology, philosophy, and political history, Gobodo-Madikizela’s lecture exemplified the kind of interdisciplinary engagement that continues to define the intellectual mission of the Von Hügel Institute. The lecture was an invitation to consider the moral demands of our own historical moment, how we listen to the echoes of suffering, how we remain open to the humanity of others, and whether solidarity might still emerge amidst the fractures of our world.

The following day, these questions were carried forward in a multidisciplinary roundtable discussion that expanded the conversation, exploring what it means to bear witness amid contemporary violence and ongoing historical rupture. Gobodo-Madikizela reflected on the historical evolution of witnessing itself: the conditions of bearing witness have shifted dramatically in modern times, with violence being increasingly denied or reframed, while the language of perpetrators often becomes normalized within public discourse.

Professor Ralf Wüstenberg reflected on Germany’s experience following reunification and the attempts to confront the legacy of dictatorship after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Drawing parallels with South Africa’s TRC, he emphasised the importance of testimony, public acknowledgement, and the symbolic recognition in processes of reconciliation: reconciliation, he stated, “does not begin with closure, but with listening”. From the Palestinian context, Dr Zeina Barakat explored witnessing as an act of acknowledgement, accountability, and resistance against erasure. Witnessing, in this sense, becomes both ethical and political, a refusal of silence, forgetting, and historical denial.

Finally, Dr Akuch Kuol Anyieth turned to Sudan and South Sudan, examining the relationship between violence, visibility, and global indifference. Drawing on Judith Butler’s notion of grievability, she argued that “when violence becomes narratively ordinary, African bodies become politically ungrievable”: witnessing, she concluded “should demand more than observation. It should require political response”.

Professor Alain Tschudin was delighted by the fruitful synergy between St Edmund’s Cambridge (through the VHI and UNESCO Chair), Flensburg (through the Wasatia Centre) and Stellenbosch (through AVReǪ and the UNESCO Chair), and commented “the goal to reflect on how communities and organisations might better come to bear witness to peace and solidarity in times of violence and discord. It bears testament to the growth of REDS to have practitioners, academics, students and those with a policy inclination in the room”.

Across the two days, the conversations returned to the meaning of witnessing suffering, while remaining ethically open to it, and the continuing importance of testimony, dialogue, and interdisciplinary engagement in resisting indifference. Bearing witness is ultimately not only about remembering the past but creating the conditions under which new forms of relational life, however fragile, might still emerge.

The recording of the Von Hügel Lecture is available on YouTube

[Photos: Nick Saffell]