by Herman Manson (@marklives) Violence is the failure of empathy, the failure of imagination, says Lauren Beukes, the South African whose novels have garnered international acclaim. Speaking at Design Indaba 2014, Beukes told us how we create stories to protect us from monsters — such as violence — as self-defence mechanisms.
Found voice
She would know. The author’s fascination with killers and victims, which found voice in her novel The Shining Girls, comes from the murder of a friend, Thomokazi Zazayokwe, dead at 23 after being stabbed, having boiling water thrown over her body, and left for five days before medical assistance arrive (the narrative isn’t entirely clear: in her talk to delegates, she describes how neighbours ignored the plight of Zazayokwe for five days before calling the police, finally, callously, having grown tired of her moans, but in a blog post which described the attack and eventual death of Zazayokwe, she writes that Zazayokwe was held hostage for five days until the neighbours were finally alerted to her plight by the terrible smell and her moans).
Zazayokwe would die four months later, having never recovered from the ordeal, in pain, in a hospital waiting room while waiting for followup treatment. The police never bothered to investigate her ordeal; her assault and death never resulted in a conviction; she never had her day in court. The prosecutors threw out the case because there was none — the cops just never bothered building one.
Sheer tenacity
Beukes got the case reopened, through sheer tenacity and, in her own words, because she is a white middle-class woman. Being an internationally acclaimed writer would help. Zazayokwe’s family finally pleaded with her to let the case go — they did not want to relive their pain again — so she did.
As delegates sat in the (fairly) comfortable seats of Cape Town’s International Convention Centre listening to Beukes, the city itself was cleaning up, sighing, breathing out, it felt like, after being brutalised by an ‘illegal’ (they almost inevitably are) protest that turned violent and saw stun grenades and water cannon fired in the city centre, at people brutalised by apartheid policies, or the results thereof. Smoke billowed over the veld that once was District Six, in the heart of the city, a place where thousands had lived and were forcefully removed, and where, in its emptiness, reparation is proven as a concept, rather than a reality.
On stage, Beukes seemed alone, telling a terrible tale which still causes her visible anguish, exorting people to face into the abyss, the darkness, into us. She aks us to confront what we are capable of, and find empathy in spite of it.
Find hope
Find hope, hope in a story. As we left, I felt numb but grateful that our story is still being written. There is hope in that.
— MarkLives is an official Media Supporter of Design Indaba 2014. Sign up for our free newsletter!