Challenges of Evaluating the Impact of Memorialization

Hamber, B., Sevcenko, L., & Naidu, E. (2010). Utopian Dreams or Practical Possibilities? The Challenges of Evaluating the Impact of Memorialization in Societies in Transition. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 4(3), 397-420 [Access in the Journal]

Bloodsucking is all the rage

The world seems hooked on vampires – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade the Vampire Executioner, Tom Cruise the Sultry Vampire, and the recent teenage angst-filled vampires in Twilight. I even admit to being slightly addicted to the stylised yet freaky TV series True Blood, which sees humans and vampires attempting to coexist in the deep south, in the US.

But why the obsession?

Firstly, the entire myth of vampires revolves around one thing – blood. Blood is a metaphor for so much about humanity: life, love, kinship, family, health, disease and death. Creating a fantasy creature whose raison d’être is blood is a recipe for human fascination. Throw in struggles between light and darkness, and good and evil, and the scene is set for decades of enthralment.

Secondly, vampires are, generally loners trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead. It is no wonder hapless and pale teenagers wondering bedraggled about town in Gothic black can relate to them. Vampires make being an outsider cool and charming with a hint of danger.

Finally, vampires have a mysterious sexual magnetism. Vampires are tall, dark and handsome, or curvy, well proportioned and buxom. Short, dumpy and pimply vampires are few and far between. For mere mortals, vampires offer the hope of transformation, not only to something menacingly sensuous but, if all else fails, you can turn yourself into a bat and flutter off into the night.

So vampires give us something. They offer an escape from mediocrity, and no matter how disconnected or estranged from the world we feel, vampires offer a road to romantic immortality for a few minutes of neck pain and a pint of blood.

All this highlights what a fickle bunch we humans are, and how hard we are to please. In the words of James Bond, the world is not enough for most people. Instead of making the most of the here and now on earth, many people seem to prefer to escape into the sinister supernatural world.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with a bit of entertaining escapism, but I am concerned that playful fantasy has turned into fixation. Searching the Internet, for example, for ‘vampire’ is scary business. There are people out there who think they are vampires, coming out only at night, drinking blood and filing their teeth into fangs for maximum effect.

At the risk of setting myself up for being mauled by a clan of angry wannabe vampires, this strikes me as decidedly ridiculous. Giving up garlic bread is one thing, but thinking you need to flee into a dark otherworld and be surrounded by haemoglobin-hungry nonhumans is just absurd, particularly when the real bloodsuckers are all around us – junk food peddlers who lure children in with toys made by underpaid workers in China; software companies that bring out new versions of software that do more or less the same thing but are not backwardly compatible, forcing us to buy upgrades; food producers who stuff animals with hormones for profit; psychics who use their so-called talents to make money rather than prevent terrible things from happening; ‘cheap’ airlines that are not cheap and keep inventing new ways to take your money; companies that sell extended warranties for goods already guaranteed; lawyers and consultants who charge by the second; private hospitals that bill for each swab; companies that pillage the environment and claim to be green; and, of course, who can forget bankers who have still not learnt their lesson and continue to get fat payouts? And don’t get me started on politicians’ expenses.

So forget the life of a night crawler – you can have just as much fun during the day and, what is more, you don’t even have to file your teeth into fangs. When it comes to being sucked dry of your cash, any old gnashers will do.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 13 November 2009. as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

My book launch in New York

My book launch in New York on 11 November 2009 went really well in New York. A "conversation" about the book with about 50 people. Also inputs from Graeme Simpson, Ruti Teitel, Alastair Ager. Chaired and organised by Jack Saul (thanks Jack). Great to also see some CSVR people.

New York Launch: Transforming Societies After Political Violence

My new book Transforming Societies After Political Violence will be launched in New York on 11 November 2009 at Columbia University. For details see Download invitation.

Cheating is now prevalent in many spheres of life

I have been thinking a lot about cheating recently – not the extra-marital kind, that is, but rather the act of breaking or bending the rules to have an unfair advantage over others or to beat rivals.

Cheating is everywhere of late.

In Formula One motor racing, the Renault team admitted to instructing one of their drivers to crash so their other driver could be advantaged.

In another startling story, now dubbed Bloodgate, the director of rugby at  Harlequins club, in England, asked one of the team physiotherapists to buy blood capsules from a joke shop and give them to players so they could fake injuries.  A player was caught spurting phoney blood on the field. But cheating, certainly in sport, is not new.

Race fixing in horse racing is as old as the sport itself. Tonya Harding got her ice-skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan, clubbed on the leg just before the American championship in 1994. 

And who can forget cricketer Hansie Cronje’s match-fixing shenanigans? And I have not even started on doping scandals, financial fraudsters and vote riggers, not to mention where cheating is difficult to establish or is ‘normalised’. Soccer players fake injury sometimes dozens of times in a match. Acting skills are now essential to professional footballers.

Money now calls the shots, and getting ahead is increasingly competitive. This explains why a young driver would deliberately crash a car, risking his and other people’s lives, or a rugby player would gush ‘blood’ on request. Both knew their careers could be advanced if they cheated and, seemingly, the potential risk of being caught was dwarfed either by ambition or feeling they had no other way to advance themselves.

Some studies have found that 95% of students claim to have cheated at some point in their school career.  In researching this article, I discovered dozens of websites dedicated to help-ing you cheat at school, including handy videos to demonstrate cheating techniques.

In a 2001 article by Donald L McCabe and others, entitled ‘Cheating in Academic Institutions’, the authors showed that cheating had increased in the previous 30 years at universities. They argued that students’ perceptions of their peers’ behaviour was the most powerful influence when it came to cheating. If lots of people are cheating, it becomes acceptable. If peers are perceived as cheats, others feel at a disadvantage and tend to eventually end up cheating themselves.

In other words, a permissive environment encourages cheating, which most of us know. The stock response to this is that there should be zero tolerance for cheats. But there is another way.

If McCade and his fellow researchers are correct, it is not merely context that matters but your peers’ behaviour and attitude that profoundly influence a decision to cheat. In the North American college system, this led to an honour code where integrity is valued in the faculty and among students. Research shows the system has fairly high levels of success.

The honour system does not solve all problems, but the principle is interesting. Creating an environment where people obey the rules because they think it is the right thing to do, not simply because they fear being punished, shifts the focus of responsibility from enforcement of rules to taking personal responsibility to act with integrity. The more people act with integrity around you, the less likely you are to cheat.

All this is a bit of pie in the sky, but it does mean change starts with each of us. Spending time thinking about your own integrity, the holes in it, and how to plug them, seems to me to be a lot more productive than shouting self-righteously at the TV when it looks like another sportsperson or politician has bent the rules. 

Have you ever paid less tax than you should have? Have you ever massaged your CV to get a dream job? Have you ever inflated an insurance claim? Of course not.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 9 October 2009. as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Give the gift of dignity, not column inches

One of the sad realities of the world is that, once a newspaper story breaks, it is impossible to stop its spread. The story of 18-year-old South African athlete Caster Semenya is a case in point.

As everyone on the planet now knows, Semenya is at the centre of a global row about whether she is, theoretically, a man or a woman. The controversy followed the revelation by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) that it was carrying out tests on Semenya shortly before the women’s 800 m race at the recent World Athletics Championships. Semenya’s dramatic winning margin, coupled with the announcement, created a media frenzy. If you type ‘Caster Semenya’ into Google, you now get over 700 000 references.

Caster Semenya, London 2012
Credit: Tab59 from Düsseldorf, Allemagne / CC BY-SA 

But the situation has been disgraceful. The IAAF, presumably for a range of good reasons, made confidential information public, breaching numerous ethical standards. The world responded by feeling it appropriate to discuss Semenya’s physical characteristics causally and in public. Even those claiming to support Semenya often made their case by referring to how she looked or acted. The more this happened, the more she became objectified.

The result is that it seems everyone has now lost perspective and the debate continues unabated, when the priority should be to try to give Semenya back her privacy – not to heighten public interest.

The real issue in this case is how, and why, the case was made public and how this has been sustained – not whether Semenya is technically a man or a woman.

It is reasonable to ask: Why did the IAAF publicly announce that it was testing someone before full results were known? We can only speculate. Was it to combat a leak? A mistake? In a BBC report, it was claimed that preliminary test results became public because a fax was sent to the wrong person. And has the IAAF done everything to protect Semenya’s privacy since the announcement and offered adequate support?

I do not think that the primary issue, at least at this stage, is the nature of the IAAF’s rules and tests of what qualifies someone as a man or a women, and what this means for participation in different races. If one participates in a sport, and it has rules of this kind, no matter how obscure or unfathomable they are, one agrees tacitly to accept them and to be judged by them.

If one thinks the rules are wrong, that is a different fight.

Gender tests of this kind have been carried out in the past. Athletes from India, Poland and Austria, besides others, have been banned from competition after being ‘found to be men’. I wonder how many people around the globe can name these athletes? Most of us cannot because, generally, it is only after a ruling has been made that any public announcement (if any) is made about an athlete’s future. Until then, the person’s private life is kept out of the public eye. Semenya herself was apparently tested in South Africa in 2007 – this never hit the headlines.

The IAAF has launched an internal inquiry into the handling of the issue. Pressure should be put on the IAAF to ensure this is not a whitewash. An understanding of how this mess happened and who was responsible, and strategies to minimise its continuing impact on Semenya are needed. The emotional damage to her by the IAAF’s actions and how this can be rectified should also be considered.

Wider than this, constant public discussion and political grandstanding should cease. I feel guilty of this myself by even writing this piece. Seems we are all perpetuating the story.

Specifically, what is needed is an immediate moratorium on speculation and discussion about the outcome of the gender tests. We should all try to give Semenya back her dignity by keeping our opinionated mouths shut about this and let her deal with the ramifications in private.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 11 September 2009. as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.