The latest books on history and genealogy, plus apps, podcasts and websites
FAMILY BIOGRAPHY
MOEDERLAND NINE DAUGHTERS OF SOUTH AFRICA
Cato Pedder
John Murray, 368 pages, £22
Cato Pedder is a former newspaper reporter. Her great grandfather is Jan Smuts (1870–1950), once prime minister of South Africa, and she can trace her family line back to the time of the first settlers in that troubled country. But what makes this family biography remarkable is that Pedder leaves the men in the background. Instead, she focuses on the lives of nine women in her family, stretching back almost 400 years.
Pedder starts with Krotoa, a young Khoikhoi girl who was taken in by the Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck’s wife as a servant in the first days of Dutch settlement in the mid-17th century, and ends with an account of her aunt Petronella Clark’s quiet rebellion against apartheid.
Men in this narrative are shadowy side-figures as women take centre stage. The challenges of domestic life, the importance of childrearing and the heartbreak of child-loss are all given their due prominence.
Where records of the women are slim, Pedder imagines their experiences, fleshing out details through research where she can. Later lives are filled out with information from family letters, diaries and memoirs.
Woven throughout the book is the evil of apartheid. How did South Africa end up following that path, and how does the author feel about her family’s involvement?
Pedder also ponders the restrictions that women have faced for generations, and her own complicated relationship with both domesticity and motherhood.
Moederland is a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in the history of South Africa, but it also opens a door to an alternative way to talk about the past. As Pedder says, “When women’s stories are left for dead in the archive, we lose the grain of daily life.”
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E-BOOK
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