Sewing the Revival Tents: Black Women’s Christian Organisations and the Public Duties of Home-Making in Early-Apartheid East London, 1950–1963

Abstract

This article examines the history of black women’s Christian activity in the East Bank location of East London (also known as Duncan Village) in the early years of apartheid. Oral, textual and photographic evidence in particular show how church women exercised Christian public motherhood through their use of religious space. Black women’s identities as Christian mothers sometimes brought them into the arena of formal political protest, as when women of the manyano supported the 1952 Defiance Campaign in East London. Much of the time, however, women’s Christian motherhood was defined in practical domestic terms of child-raising and house-keeping. Yet, this article argues, the authority and activity of manyano women extended far beyond nuclear family dwellings. Through their role in the construction of churches, black Christian women asserted their right to the city and their authority over young people in a context where their individual homes were highly insecure. This history of Christian public motherhood shows how gendered popular religious culture left a lasting mark on the urban landscape of apartheid South Africa.

Keywords:

• women
• public motherhood
• religion
• apartheid
• cities
• photography
• oral history

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was conducted while the author was a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Michigan State University.

Notes

1 B. Haddad, ‘The Manyano Movement in South Africa: Site of Struggle, Survival and Resistance’, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 61 (2004), pp. 4–13; D. Gaitskell, ‘Devout Domesticity? A Century of African Women’s Christianity in South Africa’, in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, David Philip, 1990), pp. 251–72.

2 D. Gaitskell, ‘“Wailing for Purity”: Prayer Unions, African Mothers and Adolescent Daughters, 1912–1940’, in S. Marks and R. Rathbone (eds), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870–1930 (London, Longman, 1982), pp. 338–57. Alternatively, see early manyano rule-books from the 1930s published by the Anglican and Methodist churches in isiXhosa and isiZulu, respectively: Diocese of Grahamstown of the Church of the Province of South Africa, Inkonzo Zo Manyano Lwa Manina: Kwi Dayosis Yase Rini (Lovedale, Lovedale Institution Press, 1930); African Women’s Prayer and Service Union, Ibandla Lama Methodist Le Ningizimu Ne Afrika. Isimiso so Manyano Lwa Makosikazi Omtandazo (Cape Town, Methodist Book Depot, 1933).

3 L. Ngcobozi, Mothers of the Nation: Manyano Women in South Africa (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2020).

4 As Joel Cabrita and Natasha Erlank have argued, histories of Christianity must move away from denominations as the primary unit of analysis in order to understand the common religious outlook that unites Protestant Christians. I take their analysis further and argue for the existence of a Christian public motherhood across Catholic and Protestant groups; see J. Cabrita and N. Erlank, ‘New Histories of Christianity in South Africa: Review and Introduction’, South African Historical Journal, 70, 2 (2018), pp. 307–23.

5 C.O. Ogunyemi, Africa Wo/Man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996).

6 O. Oyěwùmí, ‘Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist Epistemologies’, Signs, 25, 4 (2000), pp. 1093–8; L. Semley, ‘Public Motherhood in West Africa as Theory and Practice’, Gender & History, 24, 3 (2012), pp. 600–16; E. Jacob, ‘Militant Mothers: Gender and the Politics of Anticolonial Action in Côte d’Ivoire’, The Journal of African History, 63, 3 (2022), pp. 348–67; see also L. Semley, Mother is Gold, Father is Glass: Gender and Colonialism in a Yoruba Town (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010); R. Stephens, A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda 700–1900 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013).

7 M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women’s Antiracist Activism’, Signs, 42, 4 (2017), pp. 843–66; key voices in the South African debate about motherhood and maternalist politics include: N. Gasa, ‘Feminisms, Motherisms, Patriarchies and Women’s Voices’, in N. Gasa (ed.), Women in South African History: Basus’iimbokodo, Bawel’imilambo/They Remove Boulders and Cross Rivers (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2007), pp. 207–29; C. Walker, ‘Conceptualising Motherhood in Twentieth Century South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21, 3 (1995), pp. 417–37; S. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

8 N. Erlank, Convening Black Intimacy: Christianity, Gender and Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2022).

9 See, among many others, T. Masango Chéry, Kingdom Come: The Politics of Faith and Freedom in Segregationist South Africa and Beyond (Durham, Duke University Press, 2023); P. Landau, Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Politics in a South African Kingdom (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995); H. Mokoena, Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Durban, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011).

10 L. Bank, ‘Populism and the Africanists in East London in the 1940s and Early 1950s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 49, 5/6 (2023), in this issue; M. Breier, ‘Proving a Secret Massacre – the Case of South Africa’s Bloody Sunday, East London, 9 November 1952’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 49, 5/6 (2023), in this issue; H. Ndlovu, ‘Forgotten Bodies or Silenced Voices? Recasting Women’s Voices at the Bantu Square Massacre of East London, 1952’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 49, 5/6 (2023), in this issue.

11 A.K. Mager and G. Minkley, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind: The East London Riots of 1952’, Wits History Workshop, Working Paper, Johannesburg, 6–10 February, 1990, pp. 1–27; L.J. Bank and B. Carton, ‘Forgetting Apartheid: History, Culture and the Body of a Nun’, Africa, 86, 3 (2016), pp. 472–503; M. Breier, Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2021); H. Ndlovu, ‘Bodies That (Do Not) Matter? Black Sunday and Narratives of the Death of Sister Aidan Quinlan in Duncan Village Protest, 1952’, Agenda, 34, 1 (2020), pp. 48–54.

12 Breier, Bloody Sunday; Breier, ‘Proving a Secret Massacre’; Ndlovu, ‘Forgotten Bodies’.

13 Staff Reporter, ‘Swart Compares S.A. Riots with Mau Mau Outbreaks’, Eastern Province Herald, Port Elizabeth, 12 November 1952; Staff Reporter, ‘Rejects Bill in Toto: Mrs. Ballinger’s View’, Daily Dispatch, East London, 12 February 1953.

14 D.H. Reader, The Black Man’s Portion: History, Demography and Living Conditions in the Native Locations of East London Cape Province (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 31.

15 E. Nel, ‘Mdantsane, East London’s Homeland Township: Municipal Neglect and Apartheid Planning 1949–1988’, GeoJournal, 22, 3 (1990), pp. 305–13, p. 308.

16 Ndlovu, ‘Bodies That (Do Not) Matter?’

17 Theresia Ndlovu, interview, Mdantsane Neighbourhood Unit 13, trans. Phelisa Mtima, 16 December 2019 (henceforth Ndlovu interview). All interviews were conducted by the author.

18 Frances John and Rachel Doans, interview, Sister Aidan Memorial Centre, St. Peter Claver Church, Duncan Village, East London, 28 November 2019 (henceforth John and Doans interview).

19 Ndlovu interview; anonymous manuscript, ‘St Peter Claver’s – East London’, King William’s Town Dominican Sisters Archives, St. Vincent School, Johannesburg, 28/358 6, c.1956.

20 John and Doans interview.

21 A. Balcomb, ‘Nicholas Bhengu – The Impact of an African Pentecostal on South African Society’, Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context, 34, 4 (2005), pp. 337–48; A. Balcomb, ‘From Apartheid to the New Dispensation: Evangelicals and the Democratization of South Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 34, 1/2 (2004), pp. 24–5.

22 A.A. Dubb, Community of the Saved: An African Revivalist Church in the Eastern Cape (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 1976); D. Lephoko, ‘The Mission of Nicholas B.H. Bhengu in a Divided and Polarised Society: An Analysis of the Life, Work and Contribution to Mission in Southern Africa of an Important 20th Century Pioneer’ (MA thesis, University of Pretoria, 2005), p. 42.

23 L.J. Bank, City of Broken Dreams: Myth-Making, Nationalism and the University in an African Motor City (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2019), p. 14.

24 In 1957, women counted for over 70 per cent of the membership; see Dubb, Community of the Saved, p. 166.

25 Similar versions of this story were told to me by four interviewees from various Assemblies of God congregations around East London and Mdantsane who had joined the church at different points between the 1950s and 1980s.

26 Iqhiya in isiXhosa is a headscarf, known in Afrikaans as a doek; Beatrice Tyesi and Ndileka Tyesi, interview, Cambridge, East London, 25 November 2019 (henceforth Tyesi and Tyesi interview).

27 Alice Lungelwa Bistoli, interview, Summerpride, East London, 26 October 2023 (henceforth Bistoli interview).

28 Nokwanda Mlomzale, interview, Amalinda, East London, 14 January 2020 (henceforth Mlomzale interview).

29 Dubb, Community of the Saved, p. 110.

30 Mlomzale interview.

31 J. Cabrita, Written Out: The Silencing of Regina Gelana Twala (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2023), pp. 208–11.

32 Ibid., pp. 251–4.

33 Ayanda Sgwala, interview, Vincent, East London, 24 October 2023; Lephoko, ‘The Mission of Nicholas B.H. Bhengu’, p. 44.

34 Dubb, Community of the Saved, p. 3; 5 pounds 14 shillings was the government’s ‘recommended’ monthly wage for black men in East London in 1948; see Department of Native Affairs, ‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Social, Health and Economic Conditions of the Urban Natives (Smit Report)’, (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1942), p. 3.

35 Dubb, Community of the Saved, p. 12.

36 Tyesi and Tyesi interview.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Staff Reporter, ‘Last Service Held in West Bank Church’, Daily Dispatch, 31 August 1965.

40 B.A. Pauw, Christianity and Xhosa Tradition: Belief and Ritual among Xhosa-Speaking Christians (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 296–7.

41 Margaret Ngcayiya and Mazoe Nopece, interview, St Philip’s Church, Gompo, East London, trans. Phelisa Mtima, 15 November 2019; M. Ngcayiya, ‘History of St Philip’s Church’, trans. Mazoe Nopece, undated typescript in the personal collection of M. Ngcayiya.

42 Cory Library (hereafter CL), Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 3 October 1959.

43 CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 17 September 1960.

44 Dubb, Community of the Saved, pp. 26–7.

45 Ibid., pp. 27, 115–20.

46 Mlomzale interview; Balcomb, ‘Nicholas Bhengu’.

47 Mager and Minkley, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind’, p. 2; population estimate for the East Bank location from the Border Regional Survey, summarised in Reader, The Black Man’s Portion, p. 42.

48 C. Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2000), pp. 51–2, 59–60; G. Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2005).

49 L. Ntsebeza, ‘Youth in Urban African Townships, 1945–1992: A Case Study of the East London Townships’ (MA thesis, University of Natal, 1993), pp. 64–5.

50 Mayer and Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, second ed. (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 88.

51 Ntsebeza, ‘Youth in Urban African Townships’, p. 66.

52 Reader, The Black Man’s Portion, pp. 42, 106.

53 See Reader, ibid., p. 21; Breier, Bloody Sunday, pp. 55–7; L.J. Bank, Home Spaces, Street Styles: Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City (London, Pluto Press and Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2011), pp. 67–72.

54 Reader, The Black Man’s Portion, p. 31.

55 D. Goodhew, ‘Working-Class Respectability: The Example of the Western Areas of Johannesburg, 1930–55’, The Journal of African History 41, 2 (2000), pp. 244, 252.

56 On Cato Manor, see A. Manson, ‘From Cato Manor to Kwa Mashu: Class Formation and Political Opposition in Kwa Mashu Township, 1958–1980’, Reality, 1981, pp. 10–15; B. Freund, Outsiders and Insiders: The Indian Working Class of Durban, 1910–1990 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995); on District Six, see S. Jeppie and C. Soudien (eds), The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present (Cape Town, Buchu Books, 1990).

57 D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991); D. Posel, ‘Influx Control and Urban Labour Markets in the 1950s’, in P. Bonner, D. Posel and P. Delius (eds), Apartheid’s Genesis (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1993), pp. 411–30.

58 For example, Mmabatho Montsho’s short film Joko Ya Hao [Your Load] (2020) dramatises the experiences of a Methodist manyano woman (loosely based on young Winnie Madikizela Mandela) whose disappointment with patriarchal church leaders prompts her to organise against forced removals. Philippe Denis’s oral histories from KwaZulu-Natal also illustrate the frustrations faced by manyano women who experienced discrimination within the church; see P. Denis, ‘“We Also Had to Live with Apartheid in Our Homes”: Stories of Women in Sobantu, South Africa’, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 30, 1 (2004), pp. 151–67.

59 Lipuo Morolong, interview, Mdantsane City Mall, Mdantsane, 19 February 2020; G. Minkley, ‘The Pass Photograph and the Intimate Photographic Event in South Africa’, in P. Hayes and G. Minkley (eds), Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2019), pp. 105–25; C. McNulty, ‘Daniel “Kgomo” Morolong’, Everard Read Gallery, available at https://www.everard-read-capetown.co.za/artist/DANIEL%20%27KGOMO%20%27_MOROLONG/biography/, retrieved 20 December 2023.

60 L.J. Bank and M.K. Qebeyi, Imonti Modern: Picturing the Life and Times of a South African Location (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2017); P. Mnyaka, ‘From Salons to the Native Reserve: Reformulating the “Native Question” through Pictorial Photography in 1950s South Africa’, Social Dynamics, 40, 1 (2014), pp. 106–21; University of Cape Town, Digital Collections, ‘Daniel Morolong Photographic Collection’, available at https://ibali.uct.ac.za/s/uct-photography/item-set/109879, retrieved 30 October 2023.

61 Jiki Lebetloane, interview, Dorchester Heights, East London, 2 March 2020.

62 Nongenile Nyongo, interview, Bell Village, Eastern Cape, trans. Nolovuyo Wonci, 13 November 2019.

63 Nontle Kombele, interview, Gompo, East London, 16 December 2019.

64 Mayer and Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, p. 220.

65 On the Young Women’s Manyano, its difficulties and limited appeal, see Gaitskell, ‘“Wailing for Purity”‘. Judging by the membership of and financial statements from Queenstown, the Young Men’s Manyano appears to have been more successful.

66 ‘ESynod yaseTsomo: Imali yeConcert yamadodana eyayidibene namanina yafuma £7.15 kwelamanina icala’. CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 7 September 1944, my translation.

67 CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 27 November 1947, my translation.

68 CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 19 November 1949.

69 CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Quarterly Session of the Queenstown Manyano, 22 December 1960.

70 Shireen Hassim makes a similar point about the women’s control over young men in the Zulu nationalist organisation, Inkatha, in the late 20th century; see S. Hassim, ‘Family, Motherhood and Zulu Nationalism: The Politics of the Inkatha Women’s Brigade’, Feminist Review, 43 (1993), pp. 1–25.

71 E. Engel, ‘Southern Looks? A History of African American Missionary Photography of Africa, 1890s–1930s’, Journal of American Studies, 52, 2 (2018), pp. 390–417.

72 T. Thompson, Light on Darkness?: Missionary Photography of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012).

73 For example, in 1952 the Queenstown women’s manyano commissioned a group photograph of its members; CL, Methodist Collection, C5: Box 4, Minutes of the Queenstown Women’s Manyano, 30 October 1952.

74 H. Mustafa, ‘Portraits of Modernity: Fashioning Selves in Darakois Popular Photography’, in P. Landau and D. Kaspin (eds), Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), pp. 173.

75 S. Feyder, ‘Lounge Photography and the Politics of Township Interiors: The Representation of the Black South African Home in the Ngilima Photographic Collection, East Rand, 1950s’, Kronos, 38, 1 (2012), pp. 131–53.

76 P. Mnyaka, ‘The Profane and the Prophetic at a South African Beach’, in Hayes and Minkley, Ambivalent, p. 227.

77 ‘Introduction’, in Hayes and Minkley, Ambivalent.

78 See, for example, A. Ukah, ‘Charisma as Spectacle: Photographs and the Construction of a Pentecostal Urban Piety in Nigeria’, in M. Rodet, J. Cabrita and F. Becker (eds), Religion, Media and Marginality in Modern Africa (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2018), pp. 175–201; H. Behrend, ‘Photography as Unveiling: Muslim Discourses and Practices on the Kenyan Coast’, in ibid., pp. 112–32.

79 On the complicated history of the Order of Ethiopia, see Pauw, Christianity and Xhosa Tradition, p. 26; J.T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 218–20.

80 Bistoli interview.

81 P. Mwaura, ‘Gender and Power in African Christianity: African Instituted Churches and Pentecostal Churches’, in O.U. Kalu (ed.), African Christianity: An African Story (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2007), pp. 410–43.

82 A. Hastings, A History of African Christianity 1950–1975 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp.114–5.

83 See, for instance, T. Scarnecchia, ‘Mai Chaza’s Guta Re Jehova (City of God): Gender, Healing and Urban Identity in an African Independent Church’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 1 (1997), pp. 87–105; Z. Groves, ‘Urban Migrants and Religious Networks: Malawians in Colonial Salisbury, 1920 to 1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 38, 3 (2012), pp. 491–511; P. Martin, Catholic Women of Congo-Brazzaville: Mothers and Sisters in Troubled Times (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2009).