Ukuzimamela: conjuring stillness for the selves that are present, past and yet to come. An act of refusal.
Ukuzimamela means to listen to one’s self/selves to pause, to hear, remember, gather one’s self, dream, imagine and for the sheer joy of it. 5 individuals will be identified and invited to form part of the inaugural cohort of Ukuzimamela:conjuring stillness for the selves that are present, past and yet to come. An act of refusal. For the inaugural intake the cohort will be from SA. The vision is that future cohorts will come from all over the world.
Drawing on my work as a healer and facilitator of healing spaces and in collaboration with other healers, the establishment of what is hoped to be an annual intake of a cohort, the development of methodologies, materials, healers directory, antidotes, tools; etc. which form part of a formalized repository of resources and dedicated time to investigate a healing justice practice.
The activities are rooted in a refusal of existing benchmarks and demands to maintain a toxic relationship with productivity that is rooted in harm, self-betrayal and hyper and toxic-productivity. These individuals will be both from a rural and urban setting and must participate in formal labour or “unrecognised/unpaid” labour care work. The programme for each individual will be co-created with them to suit each individual’s needs. There will be individual and joint activities.
The programme allows for a 9 month window where one is while being active in their daily lives and taking cognisance of existing commitments and challenges still create the space for the intentionally exploring this practice in a manner that strives for embodiment. It will be combination of -time at my residency makwande.republic residency and retreat in Goshen village, Eastern Cape,
-Consultations from a menu of healing modalities and practitioners that are affirming and restorative to the black condition rather patholigising it,
-Curated content (music, film, art and other tools)
-Part of this process will include non-intrusive documentation that takes care not to feel like an anthropological gaze. Because this is a healing practice that is co-created and based on intuition of ukuzimamela, it is counter intuitive to lock down a programme.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
The emergence of movements like the Nap Ministry that advocate for deep-wellness through rest are an important form of an emerging activism. Multiple tactics and perspectives on what this should look, taste, and feel like are a critical part of our collective imagination and alternative-world-building for Black liberatory futures.
A healing-justice framework is a lens to counter an anti-black world that doesn't have the cognitive ability to comprehend Black people as worthy and deserving of care. A refusal to participate in and enable systems that only ascribe value to black people based on how productive they are being and are performing their value through hyper-productivity is viewed as being suicidal. Black people are forever chasing the illusive possibility that their labour (physical, emotional and spiritual) in service of white supremacist, heteronormative, ableist, patriarchal society renders them valuable. It is devastating to witness, participate in and imagine more generations trapped in this abusive cycle. Carving out spaces for deep listening, stillness, slowing down, rest, pleasure and joy are as Audre Lorde puts it “… not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation an act of political warfare”.
This is exploration of a healing justice framework that makes the pursuit of deep wellness for Black people a priority and ongoing practice not an event. “The term “healing justice” was coined by the Kindred Southern Healing Collective, from the need to identify political strategies that centre the great impact of collective and generational trauma, and the role of healing and healing practitioners in our collective liberation”.
Impact
Contribute to work in healing justice in ways that integrate healing as part of a strategy for survival, reparations, and everyday life and not a once-off event.
Provide an affirming and supportive space that recognizes the different dialects of violence (structural, intergenerational; etc.) as contributors to the unwellness of black people and explore interventions and antidotes for our repair and refusal to engage in our own harm to achieve a healing justice we deserve.
Contribute to a global repository of this work and the making of physical spaces for respite and safety through makwande.republic residency and retreat. Tap into alternative forms of power that are constructive and affirming to black life that can be activated through rejecting the existing systems of domination as a survival and healing justice imperative.
Co-create what this means from various perspectives so that the work is multi-dimensional, inclusive, and evolving. Address the links between time, support, wellness, and human potential. Tap into healing methodologies, healers and practitioner that are affirming to black people and spiritually rooted in who we are as black and African people.
Grow this intervention to offer support on an ongoing, sustainable way and to be able to offer it as a sanctuary for black people from all over the world continuously.
Create communities and networks of care that negate the manufactured forms of isolation and separation across class, rural and urban amongst black people.
Actively work towards narrative- building and verbalizing the harm done and repair needed to raise awareness.
