Around 5 pm on Thursday, April 18, 2024, Hebrew University professor and internationally renowned feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested by Israeli police at her home in the Old City of Jerusalem on the charge of incitement to violence.
Take action today for Prof Nadera Shalhoub Kervokian’s immediate release!
Use the hashtag #FreeNadera and tag @HebrewU on all social media platforms.
The Institute for Social and Health Sciences, and Prof Zethu Nkosi, Executive Dean: College of Human Sciences, Unisa, cordially invite you to public lectures by:
Ashla’a: Body Bags, Body Parts/Remnants and the Genocide in Gaza
by Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian – Queen Mary University of London
AND
Resisting Settler Solidarities and the Colonial Cult of Death: Palestinian Grief and the Perseverance of Beauty
by Prof Devin Atallah – University of Massachusetts Boston
Attached invitation for further information.
Suntosh R. Pillay
The growth of the KwaZulu-Natal Mental Health Advocacy Walk is best captured by the infamous African saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but you if want to go far, go together”.
Now in our seventh year, when we began this event in 2016 we had modest expectations for a cause that isn’t perceived as ‘sexy’ or ‘newsworthy enough’ for the media. However, in three short years, the mainstream media did start paying increasing attention to us, and in 2019 we were on the evening news on SABC TV. Despite a two-year Covid-induced hiatus (where we experimented with virtual walks but had lukewarm results) we returned in full force on Sunday, for our first post-pandemic, in-person walk. Over 700 people registered!
The event is hosted by the KZN Mental Health Advocacy Group, an informal civil society network that my colleague Professor Suvira Ramlall and I started a few years ago. We also use the platform to host the annual Durban Mental Health Symposium, and since 2018 we evolved into the first satellite branch of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) outside of Johannesburg.
The walk is our flagship affair – but it’s more than a mere walk. It builds social capital in the province, makes it easier for people to ask for help when they are in distress or suicidal, and promotes healthy living, through Zumba, yoga, aerobics, dance, and meditation lessons. Ultimately, this walk is about allyship, solidarity and visibility – the beating heart of all activism.
As my friend and co-conspirator Prof Ramlall said at the walk: “What’s really inspiring is that we’re creating momentum, advocacy and activism from the bottom up, so that this event is community-driven. As a psychiatrist with thirty years of experience in public health, she knows mental health activism from every vantage point. I agree – lasting change, that goes further, rather than simply faster, must come from community collaborations. For this reason, we have no major corporate sponsor taking the lead in organizing this event. Quite frankly, we start our planning every year with zero budget. But somehow, always, people reach out, offer to buy, to sponsor, to donate, to volunteer, to carry, to drive, to do something. It is this spirit of togetherness, of collective ownership, that has kept this event strong, consistent, energetic, and fun. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.
Blanche Moila, my former colleague, a retired nurse, is an 18-time Comrades runner. She joined the walk because despite her long career in psychiatry she said she still sees stigma against mental illness even though “it can effect anyone, whether you’re a professional, a labourer, whether you’re rich or you’re poor.”
I spotted Dr Sandile Kubheka at the walk, once the youngest doctor to qualify from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He said the walk was a reminder that “taking care of ourselves is crucially important… we have to always make sure our mental health is in a good place.” As healthcare workers emerging from devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic, we must heed the good doctor’s prescription! Evidence shows that a simple walk has tangible psychological and emotional benefits.
Finally, as we commemorate October 10, World Mental Health Day, there will be many ‘big’ important-sounding conversations, such as Lancet commission launches, lofty sounding webinars, and rhetoric-infused editorials. #WMHD2022 often pivots the ‘global’ – but let’s do more to focus on the local. We must step up and be able to change our local conditions, first and foremost.
Suntosh R. Pillay is a clinical psychologist in Durban.
HOPE CAMPAIGN 2022:
The 10th of September 2022 has been declared World Suicide Prevention Day, by the International Association for Suicide Prevention in conjunction with the World Health Organization. On this day, attention is focused on reducing stigma and raising awareness of suicide prevention among organisations and within the public sphere to inspire creating hope through action.
PsySSA is joining in this international initiative through releasing our Hope Campaign. The Hope Campaign comprises of a series of videos which will be released throughout the day on our social media channels. We encourage our community of PsySSA members to help spread these releases through sharing them on your own social media pages.
A special thank you to all the contributors of the project:
Nicky Newman Photography (https://www.nickynewmanphotography.com), Alice den Hollander Photography (insta:alice_den_hollander), Nonhlanhla Maubane, Gavaza Shingange, and the SASCP and the PiPS divisions
PsySSA will being posting media throughout the day.
Watch our social media to see this campaign, lead by Executive Member, Daniel den Hollander, develop!
#Hope #WorldSuicidePreventionDay #CreatingHope #ThroughAction
Where have the heady memories of the very first General Election called for 27 April 1994, through negotiated settlement, gone? Long, colourful, winding queues of almost 20 million generally overjoyed South Africans of all hues, beliefs and position waited patiently to cast their vote. Elections were extended to 29 April to cater for the more than 90% of first-time expectant voters. On 9 May 1994, the newly-constituted democratic Parliament unanimously elected Nelson Mandela as our founding President.
On 28 March, the IFP marched on the ANC Johannesburg headquarters protesting against the elections that they were boycotting. Nineteen protesters were killed, which the Nugent Commission found was unwarranted. Amidst a national and international sigh of relief, the IFP agreed a few days before 27 April to participate. As the ballots had already been printed, IFP stickers were hurriedly added to the already printed ballot papers. The elections were peaceful, although subsequent elections have had the spectre of terrible violence, with deadly contestation before and after the results.
These details reflect some of the anticipation and excitement when PsySSA was inaugurated in January 1994, after protracted negotiations began in 1991 between the white-dominated PASA and the black-dominated Psychologists Against Apartheid, with participation of the Professional Board for Psychology, the Organisation for Alternate Social Services and the Black Psychology Forum. PsySSA was the first national non-racial professional society to be formed in South Africa, in advance of the advent of democracy.
Those shaping PsySSA’s Constitution acknowledged up front “psychology’s historical complicity in supporting and perpetuating colonialism and the apartheid system” and committed us to, inter alia:
While all around us there is the shattered landscape of devastation, desperation and destitution – occasioned by official malfeasance, COVID-19 impacts, natural disasters that could have been mitigated, and declining education, health and professional training – we should pay tribute to those who truly gave their all so that we enjoy the fruits of democracy. As we should to those who led PsySSA – from its shaky beginnings, it’s fraught breakaways and strident diversions – and who grew the successive leadership, including many of psychology’s outstanding minds. While the late Rachel Prinsloo and Lionel Nicholas were inaugurating PsySSA three months before democracy, let us not overlook the students Sumaya Laher, Garth Stevens and Shahnaaz Suffla who went on to lead us! Their and our combined challenge is to ensure that psychology is more demographically representative, is seized with crafting policy and interventions that repair the fractured psyche that confronts us, and ensure that psychology plays its rightful role, becoming “more publicly accessible and expanding its role in SA society.” Together we should set “the tone for a psychology that reflects social concerns, transcends personal interest and group prejudice” and truly serves all of humanity.
