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What is the impact of trauma on children, particularly in the context of the xenophobic outbursts earlier this year? This was the question that struck Prof Cecilia Jansen as she considered the plight of children in two Pretoria camps, namely, the Malas camp in Marabastad and the Stanza Bopape camp in Mamelodi.
Together with her University of South Africa Teacher Education colleagues, Dr Pinkie Mabunda and Prof Francois Pretorius, and Ms Refilwe Ramagoshi from the Department of African Languages at the University of Pretoria, Prof Jansen felt that one thing they could do was to visit the camps and offer the children simple things such as paper and crayons to express their emotions.
The children, mostly of primary school age, and some as young as three, were asked to make a drawing to express their inner feelings. The resulting artwork is devastating. All the pictures portray emotional pain: flames, weapons, disaster and death. "The impact of the events that they have lived through," said Prof Jansen, "is like an emotional earthquake."
The camps have since been broken up and the children dispersed, but for the project team, nothing will ever be the same again. "The pictures have a message for us --- embrace our children." If we fail to care for this generation of children, we will reap the results a few years later.
An account of the project, "Children’s perceptions of the traumatic impact of xenophobia: exploring the use of drawings --- a narrative research approach", will be presented at the Education Association of South Africa (EASA) Congress to be held from 13 to 16 January 2009.
For more information, please contact Prof Cecilia Jansen (012 429 4070; janseca@unisa.ac.za) or Dr Pinkie Mabunda (012 429 4478 or mabunpl@unisa.ac.za). | 
