PsySSA Plenary Programme: 3rd Siphiwe Ngcobo Memorial Lecture
PsySSA is pleased to announce that Justice Edwin Cameron will deliver the 3rd Siphiwe Ngcobo Memorial Lecture that marks the start of the 24th Annual Psychology Congress at Emperors Palace, 11-14 September.
The Siphiwe Ngcobo Memorial Lecture is held at the start of our national congress in honour of our Past President Professor Siphiwe Ngcobo who was brutally murdered during March 2014. In a tragic irony Professor Ngcobo had, just weeks earlier, sent a letter of concern to President Jacob Zuma offering PsySSA’s assistance regarding the level of violence in our country.
Justice Edwin Cameron embodies Professor Ngcobo’s legacy through his firm stance on matters of human rights and social justice on behalf of the people of our country and especially those who have been marginalised. Nelson Mandela appointed Edwin Cameron a judge in 1994. He has been a Justice of its highest court, the Constitutional Court, since January 2009. He has written two prize-winning memoirs, Witness to AIDS (2005) and Justice: A Personal Account (2014).
Justice and psychology: conjunction at a time of peril
Justice Cameron will explore the conjunction between the discipline of psychology and the practice of law. He will highlight the importance of PsySSA's intervention in the Qwelane hate speech case in 2016, in which the Association obtained a significant judgment from the Constitutional Court that helped bring the case to a head. Why was it right and good and appropriate for PsySSA to intervene? How is our commitment to justice and to realising constitutional values strengthened by understanding the inner lives and emotions of those subject to the Constitution? Is there a conjunction between the constitutional project of healing and reconciliation and the psychologist’s task? And what part can the law and psychology play, together, in addressing the internalisation of homophobia, AIDS stigma and racial shame?
