KEYNOTE LECTURE by PT Mellet: Annual Jaap Durant Memorial Lecture 2025 (1 December 2925) at the University of the Western Cape hosted by the Jaap Durant Chair on a Just, Participatory and Sustainable Society.

“Restorative Memory in Crafting Restorative Justice contextual to Indigeneity and Slavery”

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Presentation to University of Cape Town – DECOLONIAL SUMMERSCHOOL 6th – 10th January 2025

SUMMERSCHOOL THEME – Decoloniality: Mothofatso, Land and Health as IMPILO in the context of Globalist Agendas

Lecture by P T Mellet – COLONIALITY IN THE FRAMING AND LANGUAGE OF HISTORY – Two historical pillars of colonial South Africa: Violent expropriation of LAND and LABOUR without compensation

THIS PRESENTATION IS DOWNLOADABLE HERE:

The messages of the books – THE LIE OF 1652: A decolonised history of land and THE TRUTH ABOUT CAPE SLAVERY: The foundations of colonial South Africa are examined in this presentation.

SYNOPSIS

Between the violent expropriation of land and the violent expropriation of labour through the successive slavery, indentured labour, and migrant labour systems our forebears were robbed of life, health and happiness and reduced to mere existence and a state of perpetual alienation from their land – an assault on IMPILO, qualitative life and health.

Without Restorative Memory and a challenge to the Colonial Framing of our past it is impossible to craft Restorative Justice and then it would also be inevitable that Neo-Colonialism will succeed Colonialism.

A careful look at history shows that these two factors underpin the worst of our health, mental health and social welfare challenges where these can be traced back in time to genocide and wars of land dispossession, and to the brutal inhumane conditions under the Slavery, Indentured Labour and Migrant Labour systems, all of which has involved generationally transmitted trauma and epigenetic-impacts that alter the way genes work, and involve modification through chemical marks that attach to DNA, without changing the DNA sequence.

This presentation looks at the main two themes of the books – THE LIE OF 1652 and THE TRUTH ABOUT CAPE SLAVERY and elaborates Colonialism, Coloniality, Neo-Colonialism and the foundations of Racism, and further highlights that the violence and brutality of Imperialism and Colonialism has left a legacy of impacts arising from transgenerational trauma – or generationally transmitted trauma that underpins many of our social problems today.