Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa

by Cato Pedder

How did South Africa turn out the way it did? In Moederland - 'Motherland', in Afrikaans - Cato Pedder takes us on an eye-opening journey across four centuries, tracing the country's turbulent past and the rise and fall of apartheid (and her family's charged legacy) through the lives of nine very different women.
KROTOA is Khoikhoi translator to the newly arrived Dutch East India Company
ANGELA, a former slave from Bengal, climbs the ladder of settler society
ELSJE arrives from Germany aged 3, marries at 13, a mother at 15
ANNA, mistress of the Cape's grandest estate, regains control from her violent husband
MARGARETHA, uncompromising Afrikaner farmer, resists the abolition of slavery
ANNA loads her family on an ox-wagon and treks into the interior to elude the British
ISIE survives the Boer War to become wife of South Africa's Prime Minister and 'Mother of the Nation'
CATO escapes to England and the Quakers as white supremacy mutates into apartheid
PETRONELLA, returning to the Motherland, falls in love across the colour bar and risks everything to fight the system her grandfather set in motion.

Genres: Africa, South Africa, History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

417 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 25, 2024

Reviews

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 4 out of 5]

“As children, we are fresh films on which no light has fallen, pristine. Until the reel starts to turn, and the light falls and we too fall into knowledge. It is all new to us, all strange, unsullied. Backlit with an unholy light…”

Beautifully written and comprehensibly researched, Cato Pedder’s Moederland is more than a mere biography; it is in actuality, a journey through South African history.
Moederland is not only a portrayal of a family tree, but an account of the events that took place in the seventeenth century by the first arrival of Dutch East India Company and the Dutch settlers; events, choices, decisions and actions that shaped and dictated the lives of generations to come.

The book’s main focus is on nine women:

1652-1720

Krotoa, an intermediary between the Dutch and the Khoikhoi, a group of indigenous people.
Angela van Bengale, a slave from Bengal.
Elsje Cloete, A German immigrant.

1695-1773
Anna Siek, a strong-willed settler in Cape Town.

1787-1884
Margaretha Retief, an Afrikaner farmer.

1797-1891
Anna Retief, a trekker.

1870-1954
Isie Krige, wife of South Africa's Prime Minister Jan Smuts.

1904-1968
Cato Smuts, Isie and Jan’s daughter and the author’s grandmother who leaves South Africa for England.

1940-1994
Petronella Clark, the author’s mother, who returns to her motherland.

Thanks to the author, the publishers and the Netgalley for providing me an advanced copy in return for my review.

[Janet Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in the unusual position of having a heritage that aligns almost exactly with that of Pedder; she was raised in the UK to one English parent and one half-Afrikaner parent, I was raised in the UK by South African parents, including one who is half-Afrikaner. Like Pedder, my Afrikaner ancestor was deeply entwined with apartheid - although in her case, her great-grandfather Jan Smuts (or the oubaas, as she and her family refer to him) was, as Prime Minister of the country, one of the men who laid the foundations for apartheid, while my grandfather was a high profile anti-apartheid activist, a friend and contemporary of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and minister to Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe.

All of which is to say, I started reading this book both with high hopes that I’d find it not just interesting but relatable, but didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. Nothing I have read previously better articulates the specific tensions and contradictions of being a white South African, of being part-Afrikaner, of being raised thousands of miles from the place that is foundational to your family's myths and stories, but also to your family's shame and guilt. As Pedder writes, we are 'forever connected to a country 6000 miles from home, to a culture freighted with shame.'

Pedder chooses to tell the story of her family and of the modern state of South Africa through nine women, nine 'daughters of South Africa'. These women run the gamut from an enslaved woman from Asia, a Khoikhoi tribeswoman, a 17th century German immigrant, to Afrikaner wives and voortrekkers: they are also all Pedder's (and, therefore, Smuts') ancestors. Through a combination of memoir and narrative non-fiction drawn from primary sources, Pedder traces her family history, which is so inevitably, tragically entwined with the history of the country itself, drawing forth the previously ignored experiences of women without absolving those women of responsibility for the violence enacted on the non-white population of South Africa.

Illuminating, moving and beautifully written, if I could give this book ten stars, I would. And, while I occupy a specific and special relationship to the subject matter, I am confident that anyone with an interest in history, gender and race will be equally enraptured with Moederland.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such a good idea for a book - but disappointing.

I was truly excited about the concept of this book, i.e. telling the stories of various ancestors on a family tree and capturing some of the related history of the times. However, the author only seems to be able to see through a lens of oppression and does women a huge injustice by making them all weak victims with no agency at all, failing to recognise the remarkable achievements of women who transcend their circumstances, across races, through South African history. She seems unable to celebrate people, of any race or gender, as individuals who can do wonderful things in difficult circumstances, the unfortunate setting for so much of history everywhere. So no heroes/heroines in this book, no joy, very few kindnesses or recognised achievements - just victims of one system or another - not even the matriarch who single-handedly runs and develops one of South Africa’s premier vineyards as she takes the reins for a generation in trying times, or any others.

Rather, for the author, as a subscriber to identity politics, it is all about the oppressors (bad) and the oppressed (good) - often leading not just to much inaccurate history, but also double-standards throughout, e.g. Trekboer cattle-grazing in one place destructive, Khoikhoi cattle grazing in one place not a problem; Huguenots escaping persecution in the 17th century are grasping colonisers, while migrants to foreign lands in the world today are to be pitied; she can’t avoid women’s rights enshrined in Roman Dutch law, but then tries to undermine the fact. To meet its polemical ends, the book compromises on accuracy - and that’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t recommend reading it.

She is clear in her view that society’s woes are ultimately the result of the scourge of the patriarchy, more specifically the white patriarchy. One can’t help feeling the author is an unwitting victim herself, of indoctrination (SOAS, amnesty international, who knows?) and also of a self-inflicted guilt for her legacy from which she is desperate to distance herself, ashamed of her Afrikaans past. She can barely give her great-grandfather (and what he did for the world was truly great) credit for his remarkable achievements in bringing progress to humankind and the peace he wrought, but she rather feels the need to highlight where his legacy is seen as flawed.

Such a great idea for a book - a wasted opportunity sadly. The book is well constructed and she is clearly talented, writing well and there are moments, for example, when she tries to capture the sights and smells of an era, that make me think this is someone who could be a phenomenal author, if she could shake off her polemical prism - however that is hard to imagine based on this book.

[Lady Fancifull · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing, uncomfortable, absorbing read for head, heart and viscera

Cato Pedder has traced her ancestry back to the late seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company first began its trading activities in what became South Africa. Here, she examines the complex, disturbing history of European colonialism with particular incisive, personal focus, through the lives of 9 women across an almost 400 year period.

The early history of slavery inevitably meant that with the initially few white traders and settlers arriving with their families, there would be a quick history of what has sadly happened so many times when colonialist expansion happens. Women become part of what might be taken by force, part of property.

Plus of course the history of colonialists driving indigenous populations out of their lands and homes, as the European settlers began to expand and acquire.

This is an inevitably painful read for anyone with an ounce of empathy, imagination and wish to understand ‘how did we get to this place’. Pedder is the great granddaughter of Jan Smuts. Smuts both inhabits history of the divisive, pernicious wrongness of racial inequalities, and apartheid, yet also was involved in the founding of the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations. Cato Pedder examines the complexity of conflicts between what we might see as the impulse towards achieving a society which advances all, and a society which ‘others’, and has narrower self-interests. Including how this plays out within each individual.

This is a history of ‘the motherland’ literally told through the lives of her female progenitors

And it is fascinating, exploring through individual lives, changing mores and ideologies. Her focus, deeply personal – and therefore engaging the reader’s understanding of individual other lives – opens inevitably into considering all the wider perspectives. The personal IS political.

Beautifully, thoughtfully, written. It is perhaps a little overlong, still, - her afterword indicates substantial pruning happened – her agent made her cut 10,000 words!.

Perhaps her final paragraph, at the end of the acknowledgement section, best outlines both the structure and matter of the book, and incorporates something wider for all of us, each of our journeys as individuals, and ancestrally

“Moederland took me ten years to write. But it took nine women a lifetime to live. This is my tribute to them……..This is the fruit of the family tree. None of us are perfect: we all try, we all fail. And the story is not yet over”

[Elgouldio · Rating 5 out of 5]

The epic tale of the history of South Africa from the first Dutch settlers to the fall of apartheid told through the intertwined stories of the author and 9 of her foremothers.

I loved this book - the author (a poet) uses beautifully evocative language to tell the violent and confronting story of a forcibly divided land. As an average British person I really knew nothing about this apart from the events of the the early 90s that saw Nelson Mandela becoming president. Moederland manages to convey this history through the eyes of 9 very different women. It is a book that explores issues of gender, race, colonialism and the author's own struggle with the actions of some of her ancestors. It is often uncomfortable. But the language used and the way these stories are told is never dry, it is that unusual thing: an unputdownable history.

Buy it now - you will have no regrets.

[Rita Reets · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining read

I liked the personal stories of every woman and the way their everyday lives were brought to the reader. The incidents that were news while I was living in South Africa were vividly described. The historical events were equally brought to life as never before for me. I enjoyed reading this book. The only downside was all the hand wringing guilt that the author felt obliged to include in the book.

[Eloise Robbertze · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has taken me a long time to get through this book. Initially, it seemed to me to read like a textbook. But as I read deeper into the novel, it became more interesting. I think this is probably due to the beginning being more "research" based and the later parts more emotionally and anecdotally based.

An interesting read that I would recommend, just persevere!

[Emma Postlethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has opened my eyes to the history - mostly terrible - of the white man in South Africa. I loved how it was told through the ancestral women of the author. It's a long read but worth sticking at.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. Thought provoking and shaming. But incredible.

[Bregda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love how lines are drawn and links made through generations of women. What an interesting and thought-provoking read.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part-memoir and part-history, with touches of narrative flair throughout, Pedder has produced a magnificently crafted look into the history of South Africa, and of her own family. She writes with a really unique beauty and insight, even about relatively mundane things. I underlined a lot of insightful, interesting, or simply eloquent lines in this book. Flicking back through it, here is a small semi-random selection:

On how she viewed he South African grandmother growing up: "No wonder we children think of our grandmother as apart of pre-history, she does not belong to the continuity of which we are part."

On her mother's American citizenship: "But the small navy rectangle embossed with a bald eagle, its head surrounded by a glory of stars, the small rectangle my mother tucks in her handbag, the retention of this passport, adds another dimension to the mould of my person."

On the emergence of Afrikaner identity: "No longer immigrants, no longer foreign, they have become static, they have become Afrikaners."

On the increasingly dilapidated Jan Smuts House today: "The history it contains means nothing in the new dispensation, an irrelevance to a black culture trying to assert itself."

On the Nigerian village where her aunt worked: "Hopeful garages in a village without a road, let alone cars."

I deduct a star only because Pedder can be repetetive in her less polished moments, and sometimes a little overly-didactic too. I am nevertheless shocked that this book has so few reviews, it is really something special.

[Holly Reynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put - this is a phenomenal read!

The book is well researched, and it was extremely interesting to hear the roots of the author traced back to the 17th century, when the first Dutch settlers arrived in South Africa. It was eye-opening to see the uncertainty that the author had to deal with - a grandfather who was a prominent figure in South Africa, and certainly considered a figurehead of Apartheid - vs her own feelings about Apartheid and race equality.

Having emigrated to South Africa in the late 80's as a small child, I have so many memories of the changes that were taking place around the time - Nelson Mandela's release, the integration of non-white children into 'white' schools, etc.

This book made me emotional throughout and I both enjoyed the nostalgia of Cato's childhood, since some of the experiences were similar to mine, and the discomfort that it, rightly, ignited within me to have lived within a country where such inequalities and injustices were lived out, simply because of the colour of a person's skin. The book makes me feel glad to have witnessed the positive changes that started taking place in the 1990's.

A difficult but fantastic read!