Remembering in times of misery. Can older people in South Africa 'Work through'?

In this article the author shows through ethnographic data collected in a South African township how the memories of older people are memories of loss and resilience. The author describes and analyses remembering as a moral activity, which comments on the social fabric of present everyday South African life. She shows that those memories and the narratives about their lives have become peripheral in commemoration. Most elderly belong to the silent victims of violence in the past and in the present. Disrupted family and other social relationships are the main factors making it impossible for elderly to 'work through' their experiences of violence and atrocities