Bearing whiteness : a pedagogy of compassion in a time of troubles

Academic lecture--University of Johannesburg@@The Lecture will focus on the trauma of loss and change for white South Africans in the wake of apartheid. It will begin by tracing the roots of “the rage against alterity” among white South African youth and the consequences for post-1994 society, and for black citizens in particular. Conscious of the fact that the weight of writing, popular and scholarly, attend to the white man’s burden, the Memorial Lecture will turn this notion on its head, by talking, so to speak, about the black man’s burden. The Lecture is based on my seven years of experience of working with white students, staff and senior managers of the University of Pretoria during my tenure as the first black Dean of Education. I will spend some time talking about the trails and tribulations of Afrikaner youth in particular, and the stable conceptions of the past as well as the apocalyptic understandings of the present, that lead to catastrophic events such as Waterkloof, Skierlik and Reitz, among others. As I led and loved, taught and learned, in Pretoria during much of this turmoil, I will show how we engaged white students (and staff) through what I call a post-conflict pedagogy in which the lines between victim and perpetrator begin to seriously blur.