The psychoanalytic view of trauma argues that until traumatic experiences and their personal meaning are fully recognised, understood and ‘owned’ by the survivor, these experiences will continue to manifest themselves in symptoms of distress and unconscious reenactments of the original traumatic situation. Perhaps this also provides a useful analogy for a traumatised society. Until we have a fuller understanding of the types of trauma that South Africans are exposed to, and the full range of the psychological impact of and meaning attached to such experiences, traumatisation in South African society is likely to be repeated from one generation to the next. An illustration of this possible kind of effect is the fact that one of the findings of a series of panel hearings on violence in Western Cape schools, held by the South African Human Rights Commission in 2006, was that children as young as seven frequently engage in games called ‘rape me rape me’ and ‘hit me hit me’ in the playground, demonstrating how endemic and normalised violence has become for the very young members of our society.

Given what we know about the prevalence rates of different forms of direct and indirect trauma exposure in South African society, it should be no surprise that trauma is a common, even normal, part of the lives of many South Africans of all ages, including young children. But in order to really understand the psychological impact of this exposure, to be truly mindful of what it means to live in a context of chronic danger, the meaning and functions of behaviours such as playground games about violence need to be carefully explored. A layered psychological understanding might suggest a range of different possible meanings and functions of such playground enactments, including that they are a form of traumatic re-experiencing, an active attempt at mastery over situations that make children feel anxious, a way of trying to understand things they commonly see and hear about in their homes and community, or a form of identification with adults (developmentally parallel to the more benign games of ‘house house’ or ‘doctor doctor’ that many young children engage in to ‘practice’ adult roles).