Katorus Stories

"We need to tell our stories, here in Katlehong.

We need people to remember our pain, to know that we have paid for our democracy."


Produced by SAHA and the Khulumani Support Group, Katorus Stories presents the results of art and memory workshops held by the Khulumani Support Group in Katorus on the East Rand, in February and March 2007. 

The workshop process used art-making to explore Khulumani members' memories relating to repression and violence on the East Rand, particularly in the early 1990s, and to record and interpret these memories.

The art produced and voices captured in the course of these 2007 workshops underlined the gaping rift at the time between the rhetoric of the country's political leadership and the realities on the ground, a rift that seems no closer to being closed today.

Images from Katorus Stories

SAHA has subsequently supplied copies of Katorus Stories to the East Rand Khulumani Support Group to bring the book, along with an exhibition of the workshop process, to schools and other community venues throughout the Katorus area.

Materials produced in the course of this workshop process have now been archived at SAHA.

Extracts from the art / memory process were also incorporated, with the permission of Khulumani, in the SAHA exhibition and related catalogue entitled "The battle against forgetting: human rights and the unfinished business of the TRC"


Download Katorus Stories (free registration required to download)

Bacause the publication contains many images and is therefore a large digital file, it has been divided into 9 smaller parts, described below.

Part 1 (3.5mb)

Introduction - our stories have not been told - contested terrain - experience, proof and rumour - living with the past - Francina Mthimkhulu's story (Katlehong) - remember reconcile redress - from the beginning - Judth Mavuso's story (Phola Park)

Part 2 (5.1mb)

you must know where you come from - what happened here - rape and gender violence as political acts

Part 3 (3.7mb)

Timeline: 1990 - a participant's words - Julia N's story (Vosloorus) - Timeline: 1991

Part 4 (5.4mb)

Michael Phama's story (Phola Park)

Part 5 (4.7mb)

Democracy must grow from this -  Timeline: 1992 - Themba Dube's story (Katlehong)

Part 6 (2.8mb)

Dora Thango's story - Timeline: 1993

Part 7 (5mb)

Remember our people in Kathelong - Catherine M's story - NomaRussia remembers - unidentified bodies, mass graves, discarded people

Part 8 (2.9mb)

Timeline: 1994 - Moffat Mahlangu's story (Vosloorus) - at the end of a rainbow

Part 9 (3.5mb)

living happily ever after - ten month's pregnant with a child called unfinished business - remember us - respect us - redress - reconciliation - reparation - peace, security and comfort for all

 

 "The unfinished business of the TRC must be finished. Give reparations to those who have suffered.

Soon we will be saying we have 20 years of democracy and we are still the same as all those years ago"

 

"We, we are still
victims and survivors,
because noone has redressed those wounds
in our homes and our hearts and our families"

 

"They tell you what happened to you is a rumour - you are in pain, still digging at that wound"


"My heart is black, and bleeding and getting smaller; for no one remembers my pain here, or cares about it"

 

"People are traumatised - if they see the police, white people, they say they are still agents of apartheid; these are still the same. They still have the same corruption they had before. If you are raped, they laugh at you. They call other ones, [saying], 'See, this one comes with a story of rape, of someone who was shot'"