Abstract
When I was first approached to provide my recollections of the launch of Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA) at the University of the Western Cape in 1994, I immediately knew that this seemingly simple request was likely to exact greater demands on me than what was immediately perceptible. Not only was I being asked to recall events of some 25 years ago, but as a memory studies scholar in part (see, for example, Stevens, Duncan, & Hook, 2013), I was also acutely aware that writing a reflective account of a historical event that draws on personal memory is always a tricky enterprise, most notably because memory is a fickle friend of truth. Under these circumstances, memory is patchy, unreliable, interspersed with confabulations, and runs the risk of oblique idealization or perspectival deprecation because it is being crafted, constructed, and knitted together through the lens of the present. Attempting to re-create and re-inhabit such a moment invariably incorporates both objective and factually corroborated information, alongside personal reconstructed memories, but the instant that one places the “the private on display, the clear distinction between honesty, dishonesty, revelation and dissimulation, dissolves” (Cohen, in Manganyi, 2016, p. xv).
So with that caveat in mind, I started to collect and cohere my memories of the moment. I was immediately reminded of a colleague’s observation that in this year of publication, I was an embodied exemplar of a person who had lived half of his life under apartheid and the other half of his life in a democratic South Africa—with 1994 being the watershed year that signified the proverbial mid-point. For me, 1994 was quintessentially both a moment of promise and a moment of precarity; an instant in which something new and innovative was on the event horizon of the future, but where the chance of catastrophic historical repetition was also always a possibility. In many ways, these elements in my personal journey as a Black South African overlapped with much of what was occurring in the social formation at the time and was also echoed in the formation of PsySSA—poised for promise, but also potentially on the precipice of precarity.
PsySSA was officially launched at the Psychology and Societal Transformation Conference that was held at the University of the Western Cape in January 1994. These were heady times. Most people today think on 1994 with a sense of idealized sentimentality, or even nostalgia, but in truth, this was a much more fraught period of our history than many care to remember. It was filled with both anticipation and anxiety. The Groote Schuur Minute and the Pretoria Minute of 1990 set the stage for a negotiated settlement in South Africa—a settlement process that was seen as the only alternative by many, but a perversion of the liberation struggle by others. The Whites-only referendum also saw a resounding affirmation of the process of a negotiated settlement among White South Africans, and this eventually opened up the way for CODESA and the multi-party negotiations of 1993. But we also saw the Boipatong massacre in 1992 that resulted in the withdrawal of the liberation movement from CODESA; the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993 that threatened to re-ignite armed conflict; and the storming of the multi-party negotiations in 1993 by right-wing conservative political formations which again endangered the fledgling social formation and threatened to derail the political processes underway. This was the backdrop against which the formation of PsySSA occurred, and the canvass on which its future was to be painted.
As a student, an activist, a trainee psychologist who was completing my thesis, and a young sessional staff member working in the University of the Western Cape’s Psychology Department, I was both witness to and minor participant in this event.
The three key role-players at the Psychology and Societal Transformation Conference represented different political currents within South African psychology at the time—the Psychological Association of South Africa (PASA), the Organization for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa (OASSSA), and the Psychology and Apartheid Committee. While PASA represented the historically White legacy of organized professional psychology in South Africa, it had also been subject to internal and external political pressures to dissolve in favor of a more representative structure. OASSSA, on the other hand, had made many progressive inroads into the provision of appropriate mental health services, and there were significant political resistances to apartheid from within its structures. However, both of these assemblages remained relatively racialized in terms of their composition, reflecting the racial polarization of the time, and so were predominantly White (Suffla, Stevens, & Seedat, 2001). They were nevertheless characterized by a range of ideological currents, from a more “verligte” Afrikaner politics, to White liberalism, and forms of radicalism. The Psychology and Apartheid Committee comprised predominantly Black psychologists who drew on traditions of African Nationalism, Black Consciousness, and other forms of radicalism as well. Prior to the conference, representatives from these groupings had been negotiating around core principles that would guide the development of a constitution for a newly formed professional psychological body. These stakeholders were clearly evident at the conference itself, with tense side meetings and ongoing caucuses and negotiations continuing right up until the very launch of PsySSA. While this was a momentous occasion for organized professional psychology in South Africa, it was also clear that a political trust deficit existed within the terrain, and that a complex architecture for the future of South African psychology was being negotiated. Not only were questions of leadership, core principles and values, and the constitutional content of the organization being negotiated, but the very understanding of a democratic post-apartheid society, the nature and content of psychology as a discipline and practice, the role of psychology in relation to its social relevance, curriculum transformation, and guild interests versus the public good were all fundamentally at stake in these negotiations, discussions, and debates.
Having the conference hosted at the University of the Western Cape was also by no means insignificant. From its original designation as an “apartheid bush college,” it had emerged as a sight of radical politics and resistance to apartheid, eventually symbolizing the “home of the left.” It also housed a Psychology Department with one of the largest cohorts of Black psychologists at the time and had significant political valence on the South African psychological landscape. Being hosted at the University of the Western Cape was more than a geographic decision—it was also a recognition of the range of ideological strands at play, from the right to the left, and in some senses began to generate a “radical normalcy” as opposed to a “prohibited subversion” (Ndebele, 2016) within South African psychology.
Of course, the presidential leadership race was itself also hotly contested at the time. Each of the constituencies had preferred candidates that they wanted to advance, but ultimately none of these prevailed, and PsySSA’s first president was Black and female—Rachel Prinsloo. This too was also not insignificant, given the manner in which White men, not only in South Africa, but also across the world, had dominated psychology historically. It was perhaps then also a prescient moment, as it ushered in a period in which women in South African psychology were much more central to intellectual and academic leadership, research, administration, policy, and praxis in several domains.
But, as with the compromises and negotiations on the political front within South Africa, the negotiated outcomes associated with the launch of PsySSA in January 1994 did not produce outright winners. There were partial gains made by all constituencies, and ultimately the political currents on the left and right were drawn to a more centrist orientation publicly (even though these diverse political standpoints continued to prevail in the background of the organization). The politics of compromise are sometimes a tactical choice, but they invariably fail to generate absolute consensus because of the vast terrains of difference that they have to navigate. In the case of PsySSA, what was perhaps not possible at the time, was a deep set of reflections and acknowledgements of the historical complicity of psychology with systems of oppression and the future directions that it should take (Suffla et al., 2001).
Twenty-five on, PsySSA enjoys the support of large sections of South African psychology. It has continued to advance the social justice principles associated with those early days of its formation, even though these sometimes remain contested. While it continues to grow as an organization, both in actual membership and in its national and international footprint, it is by no means the only organizational vehicle for South African psychology. But this is the nature of plural democracies. We have to allow for multiple organizational forms that may in some instances be collaborative, and in other instance may appear inimical and adversarial. As a learned professional society, it must encourage robust intellectual and political debate about the discipline, profession, and practice of psychology. It should not shy away from difficult and entangled engagements about social justice, race, class, gender, and other forms of disparity in South Africa and within the organization. Organized professional psychology must be open to continuing to address the unfinished business of its inequitable past, embrace new iterations of its potential futures, be open to critique and change, and appreciate that its strength as a living and evolving entity is premised precisely on a reflective stance to both its continued promise and its potential precarity.