Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 30th April 2024
Hardback
Published: 30th July 2024
Paperback
Published: 29th July 2025
Publishing Details
Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa
By (Author) Cato Pedder
John Murray Press
John Murray Publishers Ltd
30th July 2024
25th April 2024
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
African history
Gender studies: women and girls
968.0099
Physical Properties
Hardback
368
Width 160mm, Height 238mm, Spine 34mm
600g
Description
How did South Africa turn out the way it did In Moederland - 'Motherland', in Afrikaans - Cato Pedder takes us on an eye-opening journey across four centuries, tracing the country's turbulent past and the rise and fall of apartheid (and her family's charged legacy) through the lives of nine very different women.
KROTOA is Khoikhoi translator to the newly arrived Dutch East India Company ANGELA, a former slave from Bengal, climbs the ladder of settler society ELSJE arrives from Germany aged 3, marries at 13, a mother at 15 ANNA, mistress of the Cape's grandest estate, regains control from her violent husband MARGARETHA, uncompromising Afrikaner farmer, resists the abolition of slavery ANNA loads her family on an ox-wagon and treks into the interior to elude the British ISIE survives the Boer War to become wife of South Africa's Prime Minister and 'Mother of the Nation' CATO escapes to England and the Quakers as white supremacy mutates into apartheid PETRONELLA, returning to the Motherland, falls in love across the colour bar and risks everything to fight the system her grandfather set in motion.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 *
Author Bio
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.
