A human rights violation during the South African transition: documenting narratives of the 1993 Highgate attack in a support group context

• Main Author: Keggie, Stephen David
• Other Authors: Solms, Mark
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2015
• Subjects: Psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15551

Includes bibliographical references === A support group was formed in November 2006 for survivors and family members of victims of the 1993 attack on the Highgate Hotel in East London, South Africa. The purpose of the support group was to help group members come to terms with new information that had emerged concerning the identity of the perpetrators of the Highgate attack. Since the attack itself, and during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, at which some of the survivors gave their testimonies, it was assumed that the attack had been planned and carried out by the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress; however, the new information indicated that the attack had been perpetrated by the security forces of the apartheid government. The present study investigates the impact of the new information about the attack on the life stories of group members in the support group context. This study employs theoretical concepts drawn from interdisciplinary studies of trauma and testimony after gross violations of human rights to examine how group members' narratives were shaped by their experiences in the support group. Qualitative research in psychology provides the guiding epistemological framework for this study. Two sets of individual interviews were conducted with group members; and these were then analysed using a narrative method. Narratives drawn from the interviews were presented in the form of narrative case studies, while the interviews were further analysed using thematic analysis and dialogic analysis as analytical tools to examine the relationship between the narratives and the support group context, as well as the continuities and variations across the two sets of interviews. These analyses were then discussed in relation to the literature on trauma and testimony, highlighting the significant role of the group in group members' healing processes.