Author: Ella Hodge – Masters Fellow at AVReQ
At the beginning of January, Renee Good was murdered by ICE agents in Minnesota. The next day, footage from a TikTok livestream went viral. Also in Minnesota, the video documents the events that unfolded after a food delivery driver sought refuge from ICE agents in the TikToker’s house. We see the homeowner panic and rant, reluctant to force the woman out of her house but afraid of the legal and safety implications of not doing so. She calls the police for advice, and they advise her to release the woman, claiming she could be charged with harbouring a fugitive. The homeowner stands at her door with the woman, both clearly distressed, yet she continues to yell at the ICE agents. She goes on to call them ‘modern Nazis’ and invokes her Native American identity. She becomes more emboldened as neighbours show up, filming the scene. Eventually, the ICE agents retreat in the face of her persistent questioning of their authority.
What does it mean to bear witness in a time of relentless violence? Advancements in digital technologies allow images and narratives of violence to circulate widely and almost instantaneously, often eliciting deeply polarised responses, ranging from condemnation and solidarity to justification or even endorsement of the violence itself. In this context, we are forced to reflect on the ethical, emotional, and political dimensions of bearing witness to suffering. It raises questions of moral responsibility and how we stand in solidarity with those at risk.
These questions were explored in a public dialogue, facilitated by Dr Sophia Sanan, between Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Professor Herman Wasserman and Thabolwethu Tema Maphosa. The discussion was centred on the aforementioned video and moved beyond abstraction to reflect on moral responsibility, what it means to bear witness, and how we stand in solidarity with those at risk.
Sanan began the discussion by reflecting on the rise of “citizen journalism,” noting that viral videos like this have become a primary source of “news” for many people. Following this, Sanan invited Wasserman to reflect on how the rise of citizen journalism is reshaping ideas of truth, veracity, and the role of journalism. Wasserman began with the point that the proliferation of digital technologies has resulted in a fundamental shift in the communication model of journalism, as the line between media producer and consumer is increasingly blurred. The rise of “citizen journalism” and other content creators, Wasserman argued, reflects both a shift in media production and an erosion of trust in journalism as an institution and democratic institutions more broadly. Nowadays, it is relatively easy for people to produce and circulate content without relying on mainstream media to give it a platform.
“But the question of who is a journalist is not the same as what is journalism,” says Wasserman. Drawing on Jane Singer’s notion of the “responsible existentialist,” he argues that journalism implies an ethical way of seeing and communicating. “And that then raises the question of, what is this that we’ve witnessed, what we’ve seen here? Is this journalism? Is this entertainment? Is this spectacle?” he provokes. In our digital landscape, this is difficult to answer. Wasserman suggests looking at the normative values of journalism to evaluate this type of content. Building on Lilie Chouliaraki’s work on the “spectatorship of suffering” and Susan Moeller’s notion of “compassion fatigue,” Wasserman argues that such content should not merely expose suffering but critically engage it by holding power to account while making an ethical appeal that inspires action rather than passive consumption.
Wasserman foregrounds the conditions in which this type of footage circulates, raising important questions about spectacle, journalism, and ethical engagement. Equally important, however, is the question of what is actually happening in the footage? Since the onset of the genocide of Palestine in 2023, arguably even before then, we have been confronted with an unprecedented scale of violence and cruelty across multiple global contexts. In such a moment of saturation, it is worth asking: what makes this video stand out?
For Gobodo-Madikizela, what makes this footage so powerful is that it captures a moment of profound ethical tension. The homeowner is caught between what she is told is her legal obligation and her own values. In the context of state violence, it is particularly moving that she ultimately decides to follow her conscience in making this moral decision. Gobodo-Madikizela explains, “what made this video so poignant and made, invited us, to really reflect as a community on what does it mean to be caught up in this dilemma and what does that process entail?” What ultimately drives action over the self-interest bias, she suggests, is emotion, especially empathy.
However, this is not just an individual moment, it goes beyond the personal into the political. In these situations, community is important, argues Gobodo-Madikizela. This is evident in the video as the community gathers, witnessing and filming, the terrain of courage shifts and the homeowner becomes emboldened. Importantly, this shift does not only affect the homeowner. Extending the role of emotion beyond the bystander, Gobodo-Madikizela turned to focus on the ICE agents. The ICE agents are forced to confront their conscience and reflect as they face resistance from the community. It is not so much reasoning, she argues, but about inviting empathy through asking “can you have empathy with the situation?”
There is a universality that is gestured towards through appealing to a shared sense of what it means to be human. Yet, the video itself complicates this universality. Throughout the video the homeowner continually refers to herself as Native American, invoking her history of settler violence and dispossession and likening it to the present. This suggests that moral action is also shaped by particular histories and identities. Sanan raised this, asking Maphosa to speak to the complexity of the universal and the particular in grappling with who you are in a situation.
Maphosa offered a compelling lens on identity and agency, urging us to consider how we are always already “overdetermined” by social structures before we act. Drawing on the work of Mbuso Nkosi, Maphosa explained, “so what violence does when it’s enacted in the moment, it seeks to ensure a future where people live according to its dictates.” In this sense, moments of moral reckoning are never neutral but shaped by broader histories and social expectations that “predetermine” how one should respond.
Reflecting on a personal encounter, Maphosa critiques how our society values individualism and rationality at the expense of love, tenderness, and empathy. For him, moral courage lies in refusing the roles we are expected to play and instead embracing what he called a “poetics of care.” Why a “poetics”? In Maphosa’s own words: “Because when there’s a poetics to care, then care is an ongoing thing. We do not lean on how we’ve been overdetermined by society, but we reckon with the society.”
Sanan concluded the dialogue by reflecting on the range of public responses to the video. These reactions serve as a reminder that acts of public witnessing do not necessarily foster compassion but can just as easily intensify hostility, scepticism, or indifference. The panellists did not shy away from this ambiguity, instead engaging directly with the complex and often contradictory nature of witnessing in the present moment.
Yet, rather than dismissing witnessing altogether, the dialogue turned to its continued ethical and political potential by asking what ethical witnessing might look like. Across the different perspectives, a common thread emerged: to bear witness is not simply to see, but to be moved in ways that compel care and action. This thought-provoking dialogue encourages us to reflect on what it means to bear witness in a time of relentless violence. A question which will be further explored at the end of the year during AVReQ’s conference “Bearing Witness: Recognition, Responsibility, and the Burden of Seeing.”
Ella Hodge is a masters’ fellow at AVReQ, pursuing an MA in Sociology at Stellenbosch University (SU). She holds a BA Humanities (cum laude), majoring in sociology, history, and psychology, and a BAHons in Sociology (cum laude) from SU. Passionate about criminal justice reform, she has participated in the Ubuntu Learning Community programme at Brandvlei Correctional Centre and supported initiatives at Allandale Correctional Centre. Her research interests relate to the intersection of gender and race with crime and punishment, particularly in how it plays out in public and official discourse.