Visibility, erasure in SA history

THIS year, the government set about honouring Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, one of the country’s most remarkable women who was born 150 years ago.

It is said she was only the “second woman to be memorialised and honoured in this way since 2018, when (anti-apartheid) Struggle icon Albertina Sisulu was honoured”.

Charlotte Makgomo Mannyamaxeke was born in 1871. Through funding from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, she graduated from Wilberforce University in Ohio and became the first black South African woman to earn a degree, in 1901.

When she returned to South Africa, she became involved in many movements. She was the founding president of the Bantu Women’s League, which was established in 1918, and president of the National Council of African Women, founded in 1937.

She was instrumental in the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the country.

By the time she died in 1939, she was a force to be reckoned with in South Africa’s socio-political sphere.

Various events have marked the memorial year. A play, Tsogo: The Rise of Charlotte Maxeke, was staged at the State Theatre. It was written by Napo Masheane. Previous works about her include Zubeida Jaffer’s biography,

Beauty of the Heart, Margaret Mccord’s The Calling of Katie Makhanya, and Thozama April’s PHD thesis on her intellectual contribution to the Struggle for liberation in South Africa. A documentary about her life, For the People, was also launched.

Now, her grand-nephew Modidima Mannya has published a book, Lessons from Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-maxeke, to add to the cultural, literary and scholarly engagement with her.

According to the blurb, Mannya’s book provides an accurate account of her life, through oral history from an insider perspective, and presents a scholarly account through archival research. The book is “not a biography”; it is “about the ethos and the values (Maxeke) espoused”.

Mannya’s book is divided into chapters that deal with different facets of her life – her character, religion, education, politics, support for women’s rights, leadership and racial inequality.

It reads as a consolidation of the previous works on Maxeke. While the appendices include tributes, articles and government documents and letters by and about her, it is not clear whether the overall book offers anything new. The scant bibliography belies the extensive interest in her.

Mannya’s book claims to be an accurate account of Maxeke’s life. I found this jarring, given the contested nature of archives, which are curated based on who has power, and the nature of oral history, which is always in flux depending on who is telling the story.

Thanks to the public events and the scholarly engagement with her life and work, Maxeke has become one of the most visible South African women from the 19th and 20th centuries. But her visibility is not without its problems. While Mannya attempts to place Maxeke within a milieu, the book takes away from the stories of the women who would have been her peers, friends and comrades.

The ANC has “reclaimed” her because she was the only woman present in 1912 when the party was established, but Mannya is at pains to show that she was not a member of the ANC. Maxeke died in 1939, before women could be admitted as members in 1943. The South African Native National Congress, was the ANC’S original name.

The ANC Women’s League was established in 1948. It is linked to the Bantu Women’s League, though scholars such as Frene Ginwala have complicated this connection. This points to the need for more research.

This focus on Maxeke’s relationship with one organisation undermines the ways she would have related to women in her network. For example, Adelaide Tantsi, a poet and teacher, is not mentioned as among the other women at Wilberforce University alongside her.

Nokutela Dube, teacher, musician and co-founder of Ohlange Institute with ANC founding president John Dube, is mentioned. But they are not linked together as women whose paths would have crossed politically, through the church and as founders of schools and while travelling abroad.

There is little engagement with the women who built the Bantu Women’s League alongside Maxeke or with Mina Soga, one of the founders of the

National Council of African Women.

Mannya chooses political activists such as Winnie Madikizela-mandela and Ellen Kuzwayo, who no doubt were inspired by Maxeke as young women but were not her peers. This inclusion seems anachronistic – an attempt to read Maxeke through a modern framework rather than locating her within her context.

Maxeke’s life was a network of relationships and organisations where she was constantly building political, spiritual, intellectual, transnational and social connections. It is not possible that she did this alone.

Making an exception of her risks making her the sole representative of black women who lived at the turn of the century. It erases the stories of other women who lived and built organisations alongside her.

This book is an invitation to ask more questions about how we make meaning of history. The book contributes to the larger South African story and the ways in which it reproduces Maxeke at the expense of many women whose stories need to be told. It challenges us to look closer at historical narratives which often fall off the radar.