What would the history of SA look like if the women were to tell their side of the story? Author Cato Pedder, a poet and former journalist, explores her heritage, her connection to nine SA women and the complex history of the country in Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa. As the great-granddaughter of twice-serving SA prime minister Jan Smuts, Pedder’s lineage dates back to 1652.
The book traces SA’s history across four centuries, from the 1600s to more recent times, shedding light on the legacy of colonisation, exploitation and racial tension. It’s a compelling blend of fact and fiction that excavates the life stories of these women, all the way back to the beginning. Pedder’s key question? Can a genetic link to indigenous people absolve one of guilt and responsibility?
English classicist Mary Beard wrote: “Women’s voices were never meant to be heard in public ... our cultural history has systematically silenced women.” It’s this lack of archival information that’s blamed for women’s absence from history books. But Pedder was determined to dig. Relying on secondary sources and primary texts like the Dutch East India Company journals, as well as thousands of letters and photographs from her family’s archive, she has composed a vivid picture of her ancestors’ lives.
The narrative begins on April 6 1652, the day Jan van Riebeeck and his men rowed ashore, and Cape Town became a remote outpost of the Dutch East India Company. One of the most moving accounts in the book is the story of Krotoa, one of Pedder’s earliest ancestors. Also known as Eva, the gutsy Khoi woman born around 1643 played a significant role in the early history of the Cape Colony. As a young girl, she was taken into Van Riebeeck’s household, where she learnt Dutch and Portuguese. Her linguistic skills and cultural knowledge made her an invaluable intermediary between the Dutch settlers and the native Khoi people.
Caught between two worlds, she lived in a state of personal and cultural turmoil. She was baptised, married a Dutch settler and had children but ultimately she faced social ostracism and died in a state of distress in 1674.
Pedder used the Dutch East India Company journals to reconstruct Krotoa’s life, aiming to capture her humanity and resilience despite her tragic end. “Krotoa exists at the confluence of eras and oceans — pre-colonial and colonial, Atlantic and Indian, with her fluid, tricky tongue,” Pedder writes. “Her children live on. How many times in the unwritten history do they think of this mother?” Although Pedder shares a middle name with Krotoa’s daughter, Pieternella/Petronella, can she claim her?
Turning to her seventh great-grandmother, Anna Siek, Pedder brings to life a woman reduced to a footnote in the annals of the past. Born in 1695, Anna was to shape 18th-century Cape society. Married at 15, she moves to Vergelegen, six hours away on horseback from her Cape Town home. Her first husband dies and she separates from the second at 46, freeing her family from his brutality. By the time he dies, she is a wealthy woman, having regained control of the Cape’s grandest estate.
Formidable, obdurate farmer Margaretha Retief (1787-1884), a woman bitterly opposed to the abolition of slavery in 1838, is “the cold dead hand at the centre of this book”. Likewise, “Ouma” Isie, wife of Smuts, was vehemently opposed to the idea of white women voting or holding seats in parliament. The thought of men of colour — or worse still, women of colour — participating in these roles was to her utterly unthinkable.
Pedder speaks about the disillusionment she experienced as she uncovered dark details about women like Margaretha and Isie. “I recognised that they were as culpable, as bad as men, in perpetuating terrible societal injustices.”
The focus on women’s stories in Moederland reveals the active roles they played in shaping history, whether through resistance, survival or complicity. Writing the book was a means of addressing and reconciling with the legacy of her great-grandfather, she says. Having grappled with the interplay of guilt and responsibility tied to her heritage, her distant connection to indigenous ancestors through DNA is not an identity she believes she can claim.
“In calling me Cato (Cuh-too, short for Catharina), my parents are not trying to burden me but to follow an Afrikaans tradition ... I am named for my maternal grandmother, the only Afrikaner among them,” she writes, “a commitment that ensures I am forever connected to a country 6,000 miles from home to a culture freighted with shame.”
By acknowledging that the past is never dead, Moederland succeeds in enriching our understanding of the present. It’s a significant achievement and a valuable addition to the body of work on the history of SA.
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