prison of Mandela after 27 years, restored the freedom of the press and suspended the death penalty. De Klerk was the country’s president in 1993, when the contemporary events surrounding the murder of the white girl are described in the novel.
The end of apartheid was finalised in a series of negotiations in the years 1990 and 1991, ending in the general elections of 1994 (a year following the events described in Mother to Mother), the first time in the country’s history that all South Africans were allowed to vote. The process was violent, with both “black on black” violence erupting all over the country as well as white supremacist attacks on anti-apartheid activists and even assassinations of anti-apartheid leaders. The negotiations were repeatedly interrupted by protests from groups and organisations representing the far-right white racist minority. The violence continued right up until the day of the general election, with car bombs exploding and people being killed. On April 27, 1994, the apartheid state officially ceased to exist, and South Africa raised its new flag and sang the new official national anthem, “God Bless Africa”.
The novel is very much about the apartheid era – about the forces (racism and colonialism) which made it possible, the terrible consequences it had for society as a whole, and for tribes, families and individuals. Sindiwe Magona is a generation older than her main character, Mandisa, and Mandisa’s experiences are based on Magona’s own life, specifically the places she was forced to live and the pressures on her as a black woman and a young mother. Magona was born in 1943 and witnessed the apartheid era in its entirety; as an adult she campaigned ceaselessly from the UN in New York for an end to apartheid.
The Xhosa
Mandisa and her family (and the other African characters we see in the novel) are all Xhosa. There are 8 million Xhosa people living in South Africa (roughly 18% of the population, according to the 2011 census). They are an ethnic sub-group of the Bantu peoples, which is the umbrella term for the hundreds of ethnic groups in Africa who speak variants of the Bantu languages. The language spoken by the Xhosa is called isiXhosa, and it is the second most commonly spoken language in South Africa (after Zulu).
During apartheid, the Xhosa were denied South African citizenship, and were instead allowed to live in self-governed so-called “homelands”, called Transkei and Ciskei.
The cattle killing movement: “The hatred has but multiplied.”
The cattle killing movement of 1854–1858 was a near-catastrophic act of self-destruction committed by the Xhosa, based on a prophecy by a young girl. Cattle introduced by the white settlers had spread new diseases to the native cattle, many of which died. The loss of cattle – which were for the Xhosa an important status symbol as well as being a source of food and leather (see pp. 176–177) – was a serious problem. The girl, Nongqawuse, told her father that she had encountered spirits out in the fields, and that they had told her that the Xhosa should kill all of their cattle. The spirits of all the dead Xhosa would then return to drive out the white settlers, and bring back all the cattle with them (p. 180).
Her prophecy made its way to the chief of the Xhosa, who ordered the tribe to kill all their cattle and destroy all their grain supplies. Some Xhosa allegedly believed the prophecy to be genuine, and some simply followed orders. Whatever their reasons may have been, the results were disastrous. Famine struck, the Xhosa had no food, the prophesied return of the ancestors never happened and the dead cattle never reappeared. Instead, the white European settlers were forbidden by their governor Sir George Grey from helping the starving, helpless Xhosa unless the tribespeople signed labour contracts with the white landowners. The Xhosa were then bound to work in the mines, labouring for the white colonists.
This is told to Mandisa by her grandfather Tatomkhulu (see Chapter 10, pp. 175–183). A true story and an important episode in Xhosa history, the story has additional significance to the novel. Mandisa has been taught that the Xhosa followed the prophecy because they were “superstitious and ignorant” (p. 175). But her grandfather teaches her that it was an act of desperation, fed by their hatred of the white settlers who had stolen absolutely everything from the native peoples of the country they had colonised – a colossal, catastrophic act of self-harm. Mandisa comes to believe that the story reveals something honourable rather than merely being a display of disastrous ignorance. Her grandfather positions it in a sequence of protests and uprisings against the white settlers through the colonial history of South Africa, pointing out efforts by the black inhabitants of the country to reclaim their land which had been stolen from them, and to resist the “button without a hole” – meaning coins, because money was unknown to pre-colonial South Africa – because of the damaging effect money would have on a purely agrarian culture.
The symbolism of this history of honourable but doomed protests and violent, apocalyptic uprisings against the hated white oppressors is of great relevance to the tragic story of the killing of the white girl in Guguletu – the story at the heart of Mother to Mother. The same hatred of colonists who had stolen everything can be seen in both the cattle killing movement of 1857 and the “one settler, one bullet!” war cry of the furious anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s and 1990s, and the mob who killed Amy Biehl.
Rites of passage and traditions: Marriage, parenthood and gender
We see different examples of traditional customs and rites of passage in the novel, and learn about the traditions which organise marriage, the business of parenthood and the roles and interaction of men and women. These traditions are seen with a degree of ambivalence: While Mandisa is frustrated by the unfairness of the limits imposed on her as a woman and a young mother, and is equally annoyed by the dominance allowed to males within the culture, she also sees how a lack of traditions and respect for customs and cultural roles can damage and break a society.
We will look at the role played by traditional initiation rites and customs in the chapter on themes in the novel (see p. 100). These include:
Marriage arrangements and ceremonies
Circumcision and coming of age rites for young men
Naming customs
The patriarchal structure of tribal society
Tribal legends and myths
Faith healers (Sangomas)
Education and politics
“Boycotts, strikes and indifference have plagued the schools in the last two decades. Our children have paid the price.”
(Mandisa, p. 72)
Poster from 1985 protesting and demanding reform of the education system.[5]
The combination of inadequate education, social neglect and bad politics (at once irresponsible, oppressive politics proved to be explosive in the immediate aftermath of the apartheid regime. The protests and explosions of violence which Sindiwe Magona talks about in Mother to Mother were shocking to many – to locals and neighbours as well as outsiders and foreign observers.
The apartheid system influenced education as well as every other aspect of life in South Africa. From the early 1980s, black schools were legally required to conduct the majority of their lessons in English and Afrikaans, with the native languages only allowed to be used for subjects like art and music. The government’s goal was to make sure that all black people in South Africa knew how to communicate with white people in “white” languages. There were widespread and at times violent protests against this, as many students didn’t want to speak Afrikaans. There were strikes and boycotts of schools throughout the townships.
Multilingual colonial societies have an interesting side-effect when it comes to languages. Organising a society along racial lines – as in apartheid South Africa, with whites on the top and blacks on the bottom – and enforcing the language(s) of the minority ruling class means that the lower classes are forced by circumstance and