The Life of Charlotte Maxeke immortalised in print
The historical nature and subject of the book make it a must for schools and universities, writes Kristine Melville
CHARLOTTE Maxeke Academic Hospital in Johannesburg is named after a woman who was neither a doctor nor a nurse, but she was the first black African woman to get a BSc degree.
This was awarded by Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1901, an almost impossible achievement for a black South African – or even a black American – in those days.
Or, as Professor Jonathan Jansen puts it in his foreword, it was a time when “your oppression as a person of colour was institutionalised in law and in practice on both sides of the Atlantic”.
But Maxeke was an unusual woman. Or, as someone said of her: “There was nothing naive or feckless about Charlotte Maxeke; she knew what she wanted and was adept at obtaining it.”
She was a teacher, a social worker, a church woman and an activist.
Although Maxeke’s name has been given to both the hospital and a submarine, she has not received the hero status she deserves and most documentation about her life was flimsy or inaccurate, until Zubeida Jaffer wrote Beauty of the Heart.
The research is profound, with insightful narrative making this exciting reading. Its historical nature and subject matter make it a work that should be included in school and university curricula, suggests Jansen.
Maxeke had a wonderful voice, and this opened doors for her.
“Her beautiful contralto voice was an undreamed-of diamond that was part of the riches of Africa successfully trained by a competent artist,” said Dr Alfred Xuma, president of the ANC in the 1940s.
Charlotte and her sister, Katie Malubisi, were part of the Jubilee Choir that journeyed to the UK to sing, and one performance was for Queen Victoria on the Isle of Wight in 1891.
Shockingly, the organisers changed the choir’s name to the “K ***** Choir” for the performance. The sisters’ outrage was to no avail but Maxeke rose above this, like many of the trials she faced in her life.
Her husband was Marshall Maxeke from a Xhosa family. She was from the Pedi clan Setlokwa, but she was also seen as an English woman and an African-American woman; she carried many identities. She lost her only child, Clark, when he was just 4, and little information is available about this time of her life.
The book contains never-seen-before photos, including beautiful portraits of some of the choir singers and of Maxeke’s sister on their tour of the UK. There is also a photo of her at her graduation at Wilberforce on June 20, 1901.
Jansen says that, even in the dark and difficult days around the turn of the 20th century, “there was the possibility of hope when moral leaders stood up amid the desperation of those times and laid the foundation for a new country… It is a message that, thanks to Charlotte Maxeke and Zubeida Jaffer, we so desperately need to be reminded of today”.
Beauty of the Heart should be on all shelves in the history and heroes category.
Nothing naive or feckless about her… she knew what she wanted and was adept at obtaining it.