A fascinating, unflinching and forensic work of non-fiction by Cato Pedder, the great-grand daughter of Jan Smuts, the South African prime minister responsible for heralding the age of apartheid.
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Summary
A fascinating, unflinching and forensic work of non-fiction by Cato Pedder, the great-grand daughter of Jan Smuts, the South African prime minister responsible for heralding the age of apartheid.
Description
Moederland is a courageous and modern appraisal of what it means to be descended from the people who created the ultraracist apartheid system in South Africa. Illuminating its turbulent history through the lives of her female ancestors, it is a history of South Africa like no other, told from the perspective of women long silenced in the historical narrative. It asks, what were they doing while white supremacy was constructed?
In Moederland, Cato Pedder travels the centuries from the 1600s, when Cape Town was a remote outpost of the Dutch East India Company, to the kraal of a Zulu king in the 1800s before doubling back to Europe and then culminating with the English Quaker aunt who defies apartheid to marry across the colour line. As anti-racist campaigners call out the statue of Jan Smuts in Parliament Square, Cato painstakingly excavates the long-forgotten life stories of the women of her prehistory, unpacking the legacy of her Afrikaans heritage and bringing their collective shame into the light. Moederland brilliantly sits at the borderline between personal history and memoir and shares themes with The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam and Maybe Esther by Katja Petrowskaja, both of which use unknown forebears to throw new light on the troubled past. It will also appeal to readers of Damon Galgut's Booker Prize winning novel, The Promise.Critic Reviews
Compelling . . . traces South Africa's turbulent past through the contrasting lives of nine women in [Cato Pedder's] prehistory. From 1600s Cape Town, then a remote outpost of the Dutch East India Company to her aunt Petronella who falls in love with a 'coloured' man, she unpacks the cargoes of her Afrikaans heritage -- Caroline Sanderson, Editor's choice Bookseller
Fascinating and engrossing . . . part memoir, part account of [Pedder's] own lineage and part exploration of what it is to be wedded through one's family to race exploitation and conquest Literary Review
Informed by impressively thorough research . . . Exploring the past, bringing it to vivid life with wonderful prose, [Pedder] intersects the lives of her ancestors with her own thoughts and experiences . . . But this is not another whinging apologia by a white author. Pedder writes with perspicacity and sensitivity . . . Moederland provides more questions than answers, but that is not a flaw. It is the questioning that makes this book valuable . . . We need more books like this, we need more detailed research, more people allowing themselves to be uncomfortable and to question Observer
These women's stories come down to us in fragments, having been written out of 'recorded history' . . . Moederland proves Cato Pedder to be uniquely qualified to tell that story Independent
Through the lives on nine women - Pedder traces the impact of white Afrikaner identity of 400 years of South African History . . . Fragment by fragment, she brings her forebears to life . . . a deeply personal book The Spectator
About the Author
Cato Pedder was born into the Quaker Clark shoe family and is a former newspaper reporter with 15 years of experience in South Africa and the UK, including at the Johannesburg Star and The Sun. She graduated from Cambridge University in English Literature and holds further degrees in African Studies from SOAS and Creative Writing from Kingston University, where she won the academic prize. She is a published poet, was born in California and brought up in England. She has lived in South Africa and returns there regularly.
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