In 1985 South Africa erupted. It was a year of widespread political and community mobilisation in many urban and semi-rural communities throughout the country. It was also the year of the gruesome public execution of alleged informants through the use of what became known as necklacing. Figures provided years later by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) reveal that as many as 400 South Africans lost their lives in this way as a form of public retribution.

I remember 1985 as a period of blood and tears. It was the year that a state of emergency was declared and the year during which a group of South Africans living in government-enforced exile were massacred by South African state operatives in Gaborone, Botswana. Among them were people I had once known, such as the African National Congress (ANC) activist George Phahle and his wife.

During a brief trip home from Yale that year, I was rattled by what I witnessed and haunted by the spectre of death and the maiming of people's psyches that was taking place on an unprecedented scale. Soon after my return to Yale, the heightened urgency of our political and moral crisis was starkly revealed to me by the horrific television images of the necklacing in Duduza, Gauteng, of Maki Skosana, who was accused (falsely, as it would later emerge) of being an informer. As I watched her burn from the comfort of an apartment in a mediumsized American university town, the image of those greasy flames and the lone boy who stood watch over the burning corpse like a vulture evoked an unforgettable sorrow.

With six months to go before my return home, I had ample opportunity to think about what I could do at the University of the Witwatersrand and in my part-time practice about the crisis that had overtaken us as a people and a country. I realised that my best plan was to solicit the necessary funding in the US for the establishment of a political violence and health resources unit at the university.

Finding financial support turned out to be the least difficult of the tasks at hand.