In expanding our conceptual tools to understand the workings of silences we reveal the invisible but agentic work of the imagination to reconfigure our social worlds. When we reject dominant western oppositional hierarchies of silence and speech, and instead adopt frameworks where words, silence, dreams, gestures, tears all exist interdependently and within the same interpretive field, we find that the muted are always speaking. The article interrogates these ideas by discussing the institutional and symbolic features of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, within which women’s recollections were framed. It identifies the limits of verbal language and proposes that we reinterpret silence as language by outlining why and how. The article locates ways of reading these silences present in TRC testi-monies through a discussion of the following themes: silence as resistance and courage; silence as illusion of stability; and silence as a site for coping and the reconstitution of self.

The birth of a democratic South African state is being accompanied by increasing rates of HIV/AIDS related deaths among the country's young citizens. By the late 1990s South Africa became known as having the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates globally, with the worst hit province being KwaZuluNatal, the focus of this article. Given these shocking realities of sick bodies and living in the presence of constant death, it is not surprising that studies that probe the medical, social and economic implications of this disease have dramatically increased over the past decade. However, what remains under explored are general continuities and changes within African women's lived experiences, which are being informed by their changing experiences of physical and spiritual uprootedness, economic and existential survival, constancy of death experiences and the desire for intimacy in a highly strained everyday that continues to be shaped by this epidemic. In addition to exploring these mundane aspects of young women's lives, the paper aims to broaden concepts of agency under limit conditions by emphasizing the role of young women's flawed agency, as they attempt to remake their social worlds under conditions where historical violences still resonate but now with an encounter with AIDS. By fitting the project within a socio-historico and cultural framework of viewing African youth sexualities, I will also show how this creates opportunities to tease out broader issues of personhood, choice, risk, interrelationships, childbearing, individuality, communality and love, and more generally how meanings are generated in times of socio-cultural breakdown.In many explanations for the failure to effectively fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, culture has been cited as one of the most challenging barriers to confront (Brummelhuis and Herdt 1995). In conversational interviews conducted with young women, I have found the socio-cultural milieu in which they are remaking themselves and their futures -redefining what constitutes risky and normative

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In Male Daughters, Female Husbands (1987) Amadiume argues that the female orientation of Nnobi society and its emphasis on female industriousness is 'derived from goddess Idemilithe ancestral religious deity' (27). While Christianity dominates the outlook and conservatism of the post-colonial African state, we are seeing a growing public presence of African spiritual practitioners in southern Africa. The interview with Lieketso Gogo Mapitsi Mohoto reflects on her journey of becoming a healer. She uses the concept of 'uvalo' to argue for deeper connected spiritual awareness within this practice of healing. Using the Nguni concept of uvalo, she refers to the fluid meaning of intuition also known as Umbilini among Xhosa-speaking people, while Sesotho speakers call it Letswalo. This intimate connection with the Divine can sometimes mean a sense of fear for ordinary people, while it promotes a deep sense of knowing for the spiritually conscious. Gogo Mapitsi's connections between spirituality and land, speak to Amadiume's matrifocal understanding of productivity as linked to the goddess Idemili in Nnobi histories. Gogo Mapitsi reminds us that the multiple health, economic, psychological crises we face today are linked 'to how uvalo works.' She tells us that the 'cultivation of that inner knowing and the cultivation of trust in that knowing' is central to how a Sangoma understands and responds to the needs of their society.