The Calling of Katie Makanya

Margaret McCord

Description

Winner of the Johannesburg Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize for Nonfiction

Discover a people's enduring power through the inspiring life of a fascinating woman.

Critical acclaim for The Calling of Katie Makanya

"A very marvelous and precious document. . . . It is a magnificent story superbly told. The combination of Katie's extraordinary life and McCord's immense talent as a storyteller is overwhelming. I found it compulsive reading and deeply moving." --Athol Fugard.

"I fell in love with the Delaney sisters, enjoying both the book and the play. It is good to know their sister in Africa also has her say, that Katie's life, too, can be shared." --Nikki Giovanni

"To know the story of Katie Makanya is to feel the pain and promise of life for blacks in South Africa for generations." --Detroit Free Press

"Emotionally compelling, resonantly detailed, and of extraordinary cultural significance." --Kirkus Reviews

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Sudáfrica
• South Africa
• Biography
• Boer Wars
• Autobiography
• Afrique du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 février 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780471673583
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Calling of Katie Makanya
A Memoir of South Africa
Margaret McCord

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
New York Chichester Weinheim Brisbane Singapore Toronto
This text is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 1995 by Margaret McCord Nixon
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.
First published in 1995 by David Philip Publishers (Pty) Ltd, 208 Werdmuller Centre, Claremont 7735, Cape Town.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
ISBN 0-471-24691-3
For John and Margaret with love
Among the many friends who kept encouraging me to write Katie s story, I particularly want to thank Ray and Maggie Bradbury and Bonnie Wolf. Dr. Veit Erlmann and Eileen Haddon were very helpful in identifying the English newspapers commenting on the performances of the Jubilee Choir in London during 1891; Naomi Ainslie made a number of pertinent suggestions; and Elizabeth Johnson spent long hours at the typewriter preparing the manuscript. I also want to express my gratitude to my agent, Julie Popkin, for her continued support.
Contents
Preface
Part One
Durban 1954
1 Uitenhage 1877-1885
2 Port Elizabeth 1885-1889
3 Kimberley 1885-1889
Durban 1954
4 London 1891
5 England 1892-1893
Durban 1954
6 Kimberley 1893-1894
7 Soekmekaar 1893-1894
Durban 1954
8 Johannesburg 1894-1895
9 Johannesburg 1895-1897
10 Soekmekaar Johannesburg 1897-1899
Part Two
Durban 1954
11 Durban 1899-1902
12 Amanzimtoti 1902-1904
13 Durban 1904-1906
14 Soekmekaar 1906
15 Durban 1904-1909
16 Johannesburg 1909-1910
17 Durban 1910-1917
Durban 1954
18 Durban 1917-1930
Durban 1954
19 Durban 1930-1939
20 Adams 1939-1954
California 1993
Preface
As a child, Katie was so nearsighted that she could barely see the blackboard at school, and the effort of learning to read gave her chronic headaches. To compensate for her poor eyesight, she trained herself at a very early age to listen to those around her and to remember what was said. This may explain her prodigious memory, for she seldom forgot a name, a face, an event, or the circumstances surrounding a particular individual.
She also had an instinctive sense of drama which enabled her to conjure up events long past and by the use of body language and dialogue give them a sense of immediacy, a quality which I inevitably picked up when working with the transcripts of taped recollections. This has led a number of African scholars to ask how much of Katie s life story is told in her own words and how much I may have embellished it.
Most of the dialogue is taken verbatim from conversations as she remembered them. There are a few exceptions. Under the stress of strong emotion (as, for instance, when she talked about the death of one of her children) she occasionally lapsed unconsciously into Zulu. At such times I hesitated to remind her of the language barrier between us for fear of interrupting her train of thought. Instead I waited until the end of the day s session and then asked one of the nurses at McCord Zulu Hospital to listen to the tape and tell me what she had said. Few of these younger women shared Katie s fluency in English, and their translations usually needed some paraphrasing to blend in with Katie s style of speech.
In general the physical descriptions of people and places are mine. Until Katie was eighteen, her vision of the world around her was one of blurred shapes and undefined patches of color. Up to the time she got her glasses, she described what she knew, not what she saw. For instance, when she first spoke of seeing Romohokpa s Location from across a valley, she mentioned that the little courtyards around the huts were all connected and all the people lived close together. This was very different from the widely separated Zulu kraals in Natal, and only when I travelled to the Northwestern Transvaal and visited her relatives could I visualize the Location sixty years earlier and grasp the shock she and her mother must have felt in finding themselves in such an alien environment. Her comments about England were more pictorial, based, I suspect, on the comments of her fellow choir members rather than on what she herself actually observed.
All the events covered in this story were part of Katie s recollections, but they are only a fraction of the material she recorded on the tapes. In some ways Katie s mind was like a computer in that it dredged up a welter of memories and experiences without any forethought or attempt at organization. A remark about one incident might suddenly remind her of another which had occurred at a different time and in a different context. Consequently her narrative moved back and forth over the years and shifted without warning from place to place or from one group of people to another. The result was a rich, colorful, impressionistic collage of anecdotes. After transcribing the tapes (which took up two hundred pages of single-spaced, legal-sized pages) I wrote my first draft of Katie s life story. It ran to eleven hundred pages of typescript. It took several drafts to pare the material down to manageable size and still retain the essential ingredients of a black woman s life in South Africa from 1873 to 1954.
I am indebted to Lois Goodenough Petersen for the copy of a letter from Mr. Curzon which she found among the papers of the American Board of Missions in the Natal archives in Pietermaritzburg after the South African publication of The Calling of Katie Makanya. This letter supports the position taken by the Zulus in Johannesburg who formed the Zulu Congregation in 1897 at the beginning of what was known as the Ethiopian Movement. This was a trend inspired by a growing spirit of independence from the European missionaries which was sweeping through African churches of all denominations.
I am also indebted to Russell Martin, editor at David Philip, Publishers, Ltd. in Cape Town for the verification of the names of individuals whom Katie mentioned, particularly in the years before I was born. Although Russell was unable to trace two women in London in the 1890s, a Mrs. Keithley who supposedly lived in Bedford Square and a Miss Gosling of the furniture-making family, I have accepted on faith their presence during those years. Russell was also kind enough to have the spelling and meaning of the few Zulu phrases I used checked by Zulu linguists, who seemed puzzled by the name of Katie s husband, Ndeya Makanya. According to Zulu custom, babies were named in accordance with some condition associated with their birth, but the word Ndeya called up no such association. However, Katie s grandson, Desmond Makanya, assured me that his grandfather s name was indeed Ndeya but avoided answering any further questions. The mystery of Ndeya s name was solved by a group of nurses and midwives at McCord Hospital in Durban who all agreed that it indicated a premature birth. This narrowed down but did not contradict Katie s loose definition of the name as meaning a little one. She was always very careful about observing what she called the courtesies, whether conforming to the polite conventions of an English tea party or adhering to the complicated structure of mentioning or addressing family members in traditional African society.
Margaret McCord Los Angeles, 1996
Part One
Durban
1954
Katie sits enthroned on a straight-backed chair in my rented apartment. Her rounded cheeks gleam like polished ebony. Her head is crowned with a velvet cloche, frayed at the seams and pulled down over her ears. Her brown silk dress, probably bought at some church rummage sale, is thirty years out of date, and her leather shoes are scuffed. But her back is straight and she holds her head with regal dignity.
He mentions me, she taps at the book in her lap. But you know, Ntombikanina, - she still calls me by my African name - there are some things he forgets.
Different people, remember different things, I reply.
She nods. You are very much educated so you know about these things. That s why you must write my story.
But Auntie, I can t do that, I gasp.
Why not?
Because- (I search for the right words) - we live in different worlds.
She shakes her head impatiently. Now you talk foolish. God only created one world.
I mean we lead such different lives.
What does that matter? When you were little you slept in my bed, ate my food, played with my children. When I was too busy to answer your why-why-why, you tied my baby John to your back and pretended he was your own brother. You were like a daughter to me. Katie s eyes, magnified by her small gold-rimmed spectacles, sparkle with amusement. When I used to speak of Margaret, my husband would laugh and ask me, Which one? The black one or the white one?
But things changed between us after I started school, I say.
Katie shakes her head. They didn t change. You still came to me for comfort when you were hurt or frightened. You still came to show off your treasures or pester me for stories. Even when you were in high school you would come into the supply room when I was having my afternoon tea and ask, What was it like when-? And just before you went to America and I was having that trouble with Livingstone, you came to see me in my house and held my hands and cried the tears I could not shed.
That wa