My family used to have a plot there. These were big plots of land. We had animals – cows, horses and stuff like that, and a big garden where we planted all the vegetables we could use. Then the government just came and said, you can’t have any animals there, so we had to get rid of it. These are the things that sit with us. Research participant, Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past Project, March 2016

This digital exhibition is navigable in four parts: The video below provides background to the exhibition using footage from book launches and other meetings and research events. The video features the voices of some of the storytellers, their children, the editors of the book, and students.

The next three sections follow the format of the book: The section, Some of us survived, features stories of an older generation who lived with and through apartheid segregation, forced removals, and land appropriation.

The section, It was sore, we were crying, we were laughing, contains stories of a slightly younger generation who lived through the student protests of the 1970s and the 1980s.

The last section, Some of us have scars, others don’t, contains stories of living in the aftermath of apartheid.

Clicking on a photograph of a storyteller in any one of these sections will take the viewer to photographs of the storytellers, images related to the story, and audio recordings featuring the voice of the storyteller, and readings of the story in three languages: Xhosa, Afrikaans, and English. These are the languages in which the interviews were conducted.

The first audio recording is an excerpt from the original interview in the storyteller’s own voice. The other recordings are readings of the story starting with a reading in the language in which the storyteller conducted the research interview.

In each section, viewers are able to navigate between stories. Viewers can navigate between sections by clicking on the ‘The Things That Sit With Us’ tab at the top of the page.