South African Psychiatry - November 2018

REPORT
wish during the TRC). Yet it is Levi’s 1986 terrible and
tragic but truthful realisation that must be retained
in consciousness: “It happened, therefore it can
happen again … and it can happen everywhere”.
2. Colombo, F. (1987, 14 April). Elie Wiesel: Con
l’incubo che tutto sia accaduto invano. La
Stampa. Translated by E. Mecco. Retrieved from:
http://www.archiviolastampa.it/component/
option,com_lastampa/task,search/
mod,libera/action,viewer/Itemid,3/page,3/
articleid,0972_01_1987_0087_0003_13356602/.
3. Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre;
About, n.d.. Retrieved from http://jhbholocaust.
co.za/about-us/.
4. Laing, B. (2018, 11 August). When the scream
becomes a word: The maternal function in the
Life Esidimeni Arbitration. Paper presented at
the conference: Deadly Medicine: The Mark of
the Life Esidimeni Decanting, Johannesburg.
5. Levi, P. (1987) [1958]. If This is a Man, translated
by S. Woolf, London, Abacus.
Primo Levi quote on a wall in the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre’s
foyer. (Photographer: Michael Benn)
Metabolising the trauma of the Marathon Project,
and slowly and painfully translating its horror into the
symbolic realm, is a crucial start to individual and
societal recovery. However, the symbolised memory
of LE must then become the prelude to continued
action in addressing the manifold substantive
issues which pervasively and perversely continue
to threaten basic human rights and dignity (e.g.
the freezing of critical health posts; the proposed
National Health Insurance (NHI)). As Trotter wrote
in her closing address at the conference: “We
cannot gain the high ground of a truth insulated
from violence and unreason, destruction and selfdestructiveness,
madness and sin. … Psychoanalysis
at its best is thoughtful and anarchic in that it aims
to deconstruct rather than collude with normative
paradigms [and] this demands not remaining silent
in the face of inhumanity and abuse”. 4
AS WE SOAK IN THE LINGERING HORROR.
WE WONDER, WORRY, WIGGLE AND ASK:
IN WHOM SHALL WE TRUST THIS COUNTRY,
WHERE HOPE LANDS THEN CRASHES,
AND ITS SHARDS RUIN EVERYTHING
AROUND IT,
AND THE PRESENT TASTES LIKE THE PAST?
Extract from the poem “Alive” by Makhosazana Xaba
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Appreciative thanks for collaborative and helpful
suggestions, insights, and edits from Coralie Trotter,
Lis Jones, Anne-Marie Lydall, Elisa Mecco, and the “LE
Deadly Medicine” Whatsapp group community.
REFERENCES
1. Angier, C. (2002, 9 March). The secret life of Primo
Levi. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://
www.theguardian.com/books/2002/mar/09/
biography.artsandhumanities.
6. Levi, P. (1989) [1986]. The Drowned and the
Saved, translated by R. Rosenthal, New York,
Vintage.
7. Rahlaga, M. (2017, n.m.). Moseneke: moving
of Esidimeni patients a murderous project. Eye
Witness News (EWN). Retrieved from https://
ewn.co.za/2017/11/24/moseneke-moving-ofesidimeni-patients-a-murderous-project.
8. Trotter, C. (2018b, 11 August). Deadly medicine:
another brick in the wall. Paper presented at the
conference: Deadly Medicine: The Mark of the
Life Esidimeni Decanting, Johannesburg.
9. Swartz, L. (2018, 10 August). Who counts
as a person? Disability and the violence
of concealment. Paper presented at the
conference: Deadly Medicine: The Mark of the
Life Esidimeni Decanting, Johannesburg.
10. Trotter, C. (2018a). The Feminine: The Role of the
‘Brick Mother’ and Maternal Function in the Life
Esidimeni Catastrophe and Arbitration, South
Africa. Proposal for the IPA Congress, London,
2019.
11. Van der Walt, C. (2018, 11 August). The
metonymic spectacle versus emotionally
informed law: some comparative notes on the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the
Esidimeni proceedings. Paper presented at the
conference: Deadly Medicine: The Mark of the
Life Esidimeni Decanting, Johannesburg.
Megan Jones has a Master of Science in Clinical
Psychology from the University of Johannesburg and a
PhD in Zoology and a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied
Ethics from the University of the Witwatersrand. She works
for the Gauteng Department of Health in the Eating
Disorders and Adolescent Units at Tara Hospital. She
runs a small part-time private practice, primarily seeing
children for play therapy or psychological assessment.
Megan is a member of GRASP as well as the IPCP (Institute
for Psychodynamic Child Psychotherapy). Megan has
published and presented at international conferences
on the effects of early experience on brain development,
emotions, and behaviour in animals which she now
applies to her clinical thinking and work. Correspondence:
megan.jones@icon.co.za
SOUTH AFRICAN PSYCHIATRY ISSUE 17 2018 * 33