Modiegi ?Mafalo and Ella Hodge, both 23, are master's fellows at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ). For their MA degree, they each also have a supervisor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
AVReQ is an interdisciplinary research hub founded and directed by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. A clinical psychologist by training, Gobodo-Madikizela served on the Human Rights Violations Committee of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the late 1990s. She now holds the South African Research Ch?air (SARChI) in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma at SU.
At AVReQ, she has created a collaborative space where academics from various backgrounds (historians, sociologists, psychologists, literary scholars, among others) investigate the “afterlife" of violence – the ways its legacies are carried across generations – and the “reparative quest" to imagine and enact repair. It is a setting where Mafalo and Hodge regularly trade readings, share notes and debate interpretations.
Perceptions of policing in Alex
Mafalo's research focuses on governance and community-state relations in post-apartheid South Africa, with a close-up on Alexandra township in the east of Johannesburg. She grew up in neighbouring Marlboro, where she and her younger sister were raised by their mother.
Her study begins with a violent incident at the Alexandra Police Station in 2024: a man, seeking help, allegedly seized a firearm inside the station after a long wait and began shooting, injuring two officers before being shot dead. Many residents expressed sympathy for him, seeing not a perpetrator but a victim of institutional failure.
“Johnny Steinberg writes that for policing to be effective, the public must consent to being policed," Mafalo says. “I'm interested in whether that consent really exists in Alex – and if not, why not?"
Drawing on trauma theory and Frantz Fanon's theory of revolutionary violence, she examines how historical memories of apartheid-era policing and lived experiences of contemporary brutality shape attitudes toward law enforcement.
Her methods combine in-depth interviews, oral histories, participant observation and critical discourse analysis. The aim, she says, is not just to describe distrust but to explore what it would take to rebuild it.
Crime narratives in Stellenbosch
Hodge also hails from Johannesburg and grew up in Parkview with her parents and three sisters.
Her study looks at Stellenbosch, which – with its oak-lined streets and nearby wine estates – is often portrayed as a “safe" space. But periodic waves of crimes targeting students – including a fatal stabbing and reports of abductions last year – rattle that perception.
Hodge was struck by the media coverage of high-profile incidents in 2024, including social media threads teeming with racist and xenophobic responses. Some framed the incidents as proof of national decline under a black-led government; others blamed immigrants from elsewhere in Africa. Still others expressed shock that such violence could happen “here".
“That is part of what I'm trying to unpack," Hodge says. “Why is violent crime in Stellenbosch seen as more shocking than elsewhere? What does that reveal about the town's history and its current racial and spatial dynamics?"
For her thesis, she will be using interviews, participant observation of safety meetings, and discursive analysis of documents and online commentary. She will examine how current narratives reflect, reproduce, or depart from historical constructions of criminality – particularly those shaped by apartheid's enduring legacies of race and space.
Hodge's interest was sharpened by her earlier participation in Ubuntu Learning, a short course by SU's Faculty of Law that brings students into shared classrooms with incarcerated individuals at Brandvlei Correctional Centre near Worcester.
“It was a transformative experience. It's impossible to come away without rethinking what you thought you knew about crime, punishment and humanity," she says.
Common threads
Mafalo's Alexandra and Hodge's Stellenbosch could hardly be more different in demographic profile and history. Yet both studies are anchored in the understanding that crime and policing are never just about individual acts; they are embedded in narratives shaped by history, inequality and identity.
For Mafalo, the police-community relationship in Alex cannot be disentangled from the legacy of apartheid's violent policing of black urban life – nor from the current injustice of ongoing service delivery failures in townships.
For Hodge, the “shock" of crime in Stellenbosch exposes lingering assumptions about who belongs where, whose lives are valued, and which spaces are seen as deserving of protection.
Pros and cons of Stellies
Both say they have never quite felt at home in Stellenbosch. Mafalo describes the town as a “bubble", while Hodge describes it as “conservative".
Both have their own escapist leisure pursuits. Mafalo unwinds with horror films – the darker, the better – relishing the solitude of watching them alone, lights off. Hodge, by contrast, is an avid gamer, happiest in the virtual worlds of The Sims and Stardew Valley.
Even so, both emphasise the value of their time at SU. In their home department and at AVReQ, they have found spaces where they can grow, connect with mentors and sharpen their insights.
Gobodo-Madikizela sees their projects as part of AVReQ's core mission: to link rigorous scholarship to the reparative work societies must do after violence. “How to think about the present moment, how to repair injustices and reimagine transformed futures is a challenge that may be a function of our courage to take on this task," she said last year after being awarded the Templeton Prize.
For the love of research
Both postgrads speak with passion about research. “Reading and finding things out is very stimulating," Mafalo says. “My mom asks, 'When are you going to stop studying?' and I tell her, 'Not anytime soon. I like understanding what is happening around me.'"
Hodge says she may study further abroad for a while, but she wants to return to South Africa to, in her words, “develop with our country" (her emphasis). “I want my work to be meaningful beyond theory," she says.
Why their views matter
At a time when South Africa's policing apparatus is under scrutiny, it is tempting to see reform as a purely top-down process. Mafalo and Hodge's research is a reminder that trust, legitimacy and justice are also built – or eroded – in everyday conversations about the present, the past and the future.
Their projects speak directly to AVReQ's mission and to the themes of a new interdisciplinary MP??hil in Violent Histories and Repair, which the Centre will launch next year. The first of its kind in South Africa, the programme “aims to educate, train and mentor emerging scholars and young researchers, empowering them to explore new terrains of investigation into the complex and enduring legacies of violent histories," Gobodo-Madikizela said.
“The programme also includes a critical examination of psychosocial processes of repair to explore new imaginaries of what it means to repair or heal violent pasts," she added.
The closing date for applications by South African students is 31 October.
* Desmond Thompson is a freelance journalist.
CAPTION: Modiegi Mafalo and Ella Hodge. PICTURES: Ignus Dreyer/SCPS
