Original Research

Ubuntu and the journey of listening to the Rwandan genocide story

Anna-Marie de Beer
Verbum et Ecclesia | Vol 36, No 2 | a1436 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/ve.v36i2.1436 | © 2015 Anna-Marie de Beer | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 22 February 2015 | Published: 26 June 2015

About the author(s)

Anna-Marie de Beer, Department of Modern European Languages, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

In the face of collective trauma such as genocide, apartheid, mass killings and xenophobia,ubuntu requires of us to show solidarity with our fellow human beings. To my mind, one of the highest forms of doing so is to open up spaces of authentic listening to the stories of those who have experienced these atrocities. In the genocide narratives of the commemorative project Rwanda: Écrire par devoir de mémoire (Rwanda: Writing as a duty to memory), travelling and writing become a mode of listening and transformation. However, this theme is articulated very differently in the many texts which form part of the project. This article concentrates on one such representation of the transformative voyage that the writers propose, namely the highly symbolic work of Koulsy Lamko.

Keywords

genocide; Rwanda; Koulsy Lamko, duty of memory, trauma, witness, representation

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Crossref Citations

1. ‘That is when justice becomes complete.’ Exemplars’ perspectives on forgiveness as a civic virtue in post-genocide Rwanda
Jonathan M. Tirrell, Erin I. Kelly, John Gasasira Gasana, Elizabeth M. Dowling, Julia Dennis, Katelyn Malvese, Elise Rollman, Emmanuel Namurinda, Richard M. Lerner, Alistair T. R. Sim
Journal of Moral Education  vol: 52  issue: 1  first page: 67  year: 2023  
doi: 10.1080/03057240.2022.2094903