Women on top of Table Mountain
Looking beyond the predictable. FOR CENTURIES before colonisation at the Cape in 1652, women have had a close relationship with the Table Mountain Chain.
Khoi women used its plants for survival, its caves as a haven and its forest clearings for encampments.
Women, as the chief gatherers of the roots, wild fruits and nuts which their families used for food and medicine, regularly traversed the mountains in search of plants.
They used their knowledge of the natural environment to locate, identify and collect the indigenous plants they required for survival. With their intimate knowledge of the mountain and its natural resources, Khoi women and girls were not only the Cape’s first naturalists, but led the way for women in subsequent centuries.
The Khoi used Table Mountain for pragmatic reasons and its recreational use began when European traders began calling at the Cape on their way to the East after Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape in 1488.
During the voyages that followed, sailors and traders looked forward to rest and recreation at the Cape, and for many, this meant climbing the mountain.
Given the cultural restrictions on the freedom of movement of European women (not to mention cumbersome garments), it is unlikely many ventured onto the mountains in the early years of the colony. It would not be until the 18th century when the first recreational ascents by women were recorded.
Among the earliest was that in 1797 by Lady Anne Barnard, wife of John Barnard, secretary in the British Administration in the Cape.
Lady Anne famously climbed in a pair of her husband’s trousers and claimed to be one of the first two European women to summit it. Barnard, who was a talented artist with a keen interest in the natural world, turned out to be an agile climber who did not need the porters hired to assist her to navigate the steep and stony Platteklip Gorge.
In her journal, she mentioned Lady Anne Monson, who had preceded her to the top, because she, like Barnard, was interested “in seeing what is seldom seen”.
Lady Monson, a British aristocrat, was a distinguished naturalist who had spent some time at the Cape in 1774, while on her way to join her husband in India. Described by the Swedish physician and botanist Carl Thunberg (then spending time at the Cape) as a “learned lady”, Monson had wanted to add to the “fine collections” of animals and plants she had already amassed.
However, neither Monson nor Barnard were the first European women to summit, nor (given the intimate familiarity of Khoi women with the mountain) is it likely they were the first women. In making her claim, Barnard ignored the same accomplishment of the two female slaves who had accompanied her.
Unbeknown to Barnard, several European women had preceded her and Monson during the late 1730s. Otto Mentzel, a German tutor then based at the Cape, wrote admiringly of “several courageous ladies have made this ascent… dressed like the Amazons of old – short coat and trousers”. Like Barnard, they were “accompanied by slaves, who acted as guides and rendered assistance when they were in difficulties”. Another who had her ascent recorded, was Margaret Herschel, the wife of the astronomer, Sir John Herschel.
In the mid-1830s, she accompanied her husband and Thomas Maclear, director of the recently-established observatory in Cape Town, on horseback from Constantia Nek. Higher up the slope, the fourmonths pregnant Herschel swopped her horse for a chair slung between two bamboo sticks to be borne by four slaves all the way to the summit.
However, these ascents by women were those which happened to have been recorded, so it is likely that other European or colonial-born women had preceded them.
The sport of mountaineering became established at the Cape in the late 19th century and women were eager to participate.
At first, women were denied full membership by the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA), established in 1891. However, due to robust lobbying by keen (white) female mountaineers, the original prohibition was revoked at the first annual general meeting in 1892.
The ban was undoubtedly due to the fact that, during the Victorian era, the notion of passive femininity held sway and there was a widespread perception that, given their childbearing function, sport and strenuous activities such as mountaineering, were unsuitable physical activities for women.
However, despite being encumbered by long skirts, and subjected to paternalistic comments about being little more than “sweet companions” who needed a “manly arm” to assist them, these early female mountaineers acquitted themselves well.
These pioneers were the first wave of many able and talented female climbers who would join the MCSA in the ensuing decades.
Nor was the MCSA the only club in which women showed their mettle. They also did so in the Cape Province Mountain Club, formed in 1931 to cater for those excludedby the MCSA. Women were welcomed and had their talent encouraged and developed by the veteran members.
This was the experience of former District Six resident Colleen Knipe-solomon, who became a member in 1973 after having been nurtured within the club as a junior. Knipe-solomon’s parents, dedicated CPMC members Rodney and Shirley Knipe, had virtually brought up their two children on Table Mountain, spending weekends and public holidays walking and climbing, and instilling in them a love of mountains, Table Mountain in particular.
Knipe-solomon grew up to become a serious rock climber, who went on conquer other mountains in the Western Cape, southern Africa and abroad.
It was not only women climbers who were active on Table Mountain, but scientists too. Elsie Esterhuysen and Stella Petersen deserve mention.
Esterhuysen, who obtained a master’s degree in botany in 1933 – a time when women faced enormous discrimination in the workplace – went on to become a legendary plant collector, helping to fill many of the gaps in the collections of the Bolus Herbarium at UCT on the slopes of Table Mountain.
A member of the MCSA, Esterhuysen was an energetic mountaineer, tireless in her pursuit of new species and local variants, hunting them not only on Table Mountain, but on many other Western Cape mountains, as well as further afield.
UCT conferred an honorary master’s degree on her in 1989 in recognition of her immense contribution to the botanical archive and her breadth of knowledge of the Cape flora.
Petersen was the first black woman to graduate with a BSC degree at UCT in botany and zoology, as well as an MSC in the mid-1940s. She completed her studies at Syracuse University in the US, graduating with a master’s degree in education in 1949. With a professional career as a scientist and academic denied to her as a result of racial discrimination, Petersen spent several decades as a biology teacher at Livingstone High School in Claremont, inspiring and educating generations of young students.
It was on her retirement that her close association with Table Mountain through her work at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, began.
In 1990, as first a garden guide, then as a volunteer education officer, she continued inspiring more generations to value the natural environment, to understand the connection between people and the environment, and to protect their natural heritage. Petersen received an honorary doctorate in education from UCT in 2011, in recognition of her unstinting services to people and the environment.
This relationship with the natural heritage site is ongoing – whether using the mountain for work, recreation or advancing our knowledge of its natural wonders, women continue to be “on top”, as they have been for centuries.
Dr Khan is a Cape Town-based environmental historian with an interest in gender issues