The South Africa Trauma Center provided community support during the Truth and Reconciliation process. Staff at the Center worked with individuals who were giving testimony as well as formulating recommendations to the state. It launched a support group for torture survivors the membership of which has now grown to over 3,000. Other initiatives that the Center has planned as part of community reparation efforts include a conference commemorating the TRC process and an initiative to create a museum on the site of the Center which is housed in an old monastery and has a garden of memory.

However, in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation process there has been much disillusionment with the process of individual reparations as the government has been unable to deliver on its commitments. Many individuals who were promised concrete reparations, for example a house as compensation, have received nothing from the government.

The Center has therefore moved its focus to the tactic of collective symbolic healing memory work to deal with trauma. This work is implemented by the Center’s staff and supported by the general violence unit. There are two main ways of implementing the tactic: memory cloth and body mapping.

In the memory cloth tactic, individuals tell their stories by embroidering them on cloth. For example, some people even sewed their identity book on the cloth, highlighting their feelings of displacement. This process allows memory to be preserved for the children as well as for those who experienced these painful memories. This approach is similar to one adopted by Holocaust survivors: to commemorate the horror in order to ensure it never happens again. One such memory cloth created by a group of survivors has already been donated to Robben Island.

The body mapping tactic is also conducted as a group exercise. Once again the basis is story telling but this time the story is captured on the image of a body. This process helps people specifically identify where they were tortured. They also draw a ‘shadow’ behind the body image where they draw and tell the story of their support person or places. The story tellers are referred to trained social workers and psychologists as well as support services such as massage therapy and psychiatry.

The Center has trained 45 professionals from a variety of backgrounds on collective symbolic memory work as a way to treat trauma. These include: rehabilitation center staff; educational, health and social development professionals; prosecutors; police, medical personnel. As a result of the collective healing tactics, there has been growing interest in developing a historical commemoration site on the site of the Center as well as a recommitment to the work of the Center, including efforts to ensure that South Africa ratifies OPCAT.