My father's coat: A response (An open letter to the adults)

Hi everyone

You don’t know me but we have something in common: we’ve all watched Michael Charton’s “story” My father’s coat: five men and the great story of South Africa. I’ve been stunned at hearing how his story (it’s not a play; false advertising) has been making the rounds in your children’s schools and theatres around Joburg and Cape Town. I first watched the production—let’s call it a monologue from now on—at an independent boys’ school where I’ve been doing some work rethinking institutional culture in traditional white schools.

Looking at the title of the of monologue, I had hoped this would be a personal reflection about Michael’s own father and the coat would be a metaphor or symbol of sorts. I thought, hmmmm, maybe he’ll share something about white masculinity, maybe they were both part of the army and the coat is a symbol of authoritarian rule in South Africa. Unfortunately my curiosity went too far. Michael had simply taken the narratives of South African “protagonists” and merged them into yet another grand narrative of  history.

The conversation around South Africa’s historiography is as old as this country. So Michael’s attempt at presenting South Africa’s history as something that can be used for nation building is probably part of the discomfort I have about his narrative and approach in My father’s coat. The most interesting part of the conversation about South Africa’s historiography happens when women join the conversation. Historians such as Deborah Gaitskell, Nomathamsanqa Tisani. Megan Healy-Clancy, Cheryl Walker, Catherine Burns, Dawne Curry, Theresa Barnes, Penelope Hetherington, Jacklyn Cock, Janet Cherry, Yvette Abrahams, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Shireen Hassim, Lynn Thomas, Shula Marks (to name only a few) and the work of Nomboniso Gasa which culminates in the book Women in South African History has complicated the conversation about South Africa’s historical narrative which privileges men. Gasa’s work allowed me to think about the erasure of Charlotte Maxeke in Pixley ka Seme’s biography by Bongani Ngqulunga in an article in the Johannesburg Review of Books.  So you can imagine my shock and horror when in 2018 I sit down to watch yet another narrative under the guise of using the narratives of men to tell South Africa’s story. It was bewildering to say the least.

As a budding literary historian, I thought we (people deeply invested in History) had all agreed that we no longer do this with history; we no longer present grand narratives where “new facts are carefully leaked into the narrative, undermining previous biases and providing a new depth of understanding; until a balanced view eventually emerges” as Michael would have us believe. Unfortunately, he does not succeed in doing this. Instead he paints himself into a corner and does the thing he sets out not to do; he takes all the biases of history and presents them in a narrative that centres “the big men of history”. If you look at your children’s history books, you will see that the “big men of history” narrative has been challenged slowly over the years, but there’s still a lot of work to do. It is an error to think that South Africa’s history can be explored through the narratives of five men of history and the only woman who is featured is Paul Kruger’s wife whose name I don’t think was mentioned (seriously, all these men had no wives or lovers who influenced their lives?). Interestingly, I recently heard that Olive Schreiner and Cecil John Rhodes exchanged letters. If only Michael could include that tidbit.

Michael would have you believe he presents new facts about these great men. For example, when he speaks about Smuts as a great international statesman who could have changed South Africa’s history if he had not lost in the 1948 elections, I recognise this fact from my own history lessons in high school. My history teacher (whom we thought had a crush on Smuts the way she went on about him) had presented us with the narrative of the white liberal who wasn’t like the other Afrikaners. But I had a hunch that something was amiss in this narrative and my hunch was confirmed last year when I read Christa Kuljian’s latest book Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins which presents the nexus between science, politics and white supremacist ideology. In Kuljian’s book Smuts is complicit in some of the research which emerges out of South Africa which is used to dehumanise black and Khoi people as it justifies the white supremacy. However, Smuts is also friends with African intellectuals like Prof D.D.T. Jabavu whose daughter, Noni Jabavu, refers to him as Oom Jan in her 1977 column in the Daily Dispatch. While Smuts was “a product of his time” (Michael says this line more than once about these big men of history) we do not get the full extent of his contradictions in Michael’s monologue.

It seems disingenuous to me, a black woman, to listen to South Africa’s history with no mention of women who lived and breathed alongside the “great men of history”. It’s simply not good enough to present grand narratives of history in order to serve an argument that “is based on his belief that South Africa’s past – historically a tool used to inspire fear and hatred and division – can instead be a powerful source of unity and healing”. Grand narratives don’t bring healing; they erase and obfuscate complexity. Grand narrative erase people like Ellen Pumla Ngozwana, Noni Jabavu, Daisy Makiwane-Majombozi, Frieda Matthews, Nonstizi Mgwetho, Sibusisiwe Makhanya, Katie Makhanya (and to some extent) Charlotte Maxeke (amongst a long list of other women). There are no monuments remembering these women (Charlotte Maxeke has a hospital in Johannesburg and a statue in Umlazi). There are no statues honouring their contribution to South Africa’s narrative. There are no speeches dedicated to their work. There are no towns named after them. And this is a result of grand narratives because they erase women in spite of the work they did in making this country and continent what it is. Grand narratives remind me of Toni Morrison’s quote about racism:

            The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Grand narratives keep us from doing our work. They keep us explaining over and over again our reason for being. Somebody says black women writers don’t exist and we spend years proving that we do. Somebody says only men led political movements and women intellectuals and scholars have to prove that they did and so on and so forth.

None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

I walked away from My father’s coat thinking about my mother, her mother and the many mothers before her who have had no place in grand narratives of history. Thankfully, I am currently researching and writing about women, black women, who have been erased from history. One day I will send a letter to all the independent private schools asking for two hours of their busy timetable so I can tell them about Daisy Majombozi, Nontsizi Mgwetho, Charlotte Maxeke, Louisa Mvemve and Noni Jabavu. I’ll call it “Our mothers’ words”. I’ll start off by sharing about my grandmother’s passbook, dompas, and how I asked to keep it after she died. Other than a black dress which she wore when she was my age and the memories I have of my grandmother, her dompas is all I have. When they turn me down because they are too busy, I’ll remind them of My father’s coat.

Personal histories can lead us towards healing as our own histories can be looked at alongside grand narratives. It may have been more powerful to listen to a monologue about Michael’s own lessons about who he is as a white South African man by hearing about his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather and the women in their lives who have shaped who they are. While that is not the story Michael tells, it is the more compelling story because coming face to face with our own personal histories and how our identities have been formed in our own homes means that we don’t get to hide behind grand narratives to explain who we are. I would challenge you, now that you’ve watched Michael’s monologue: think of your own history, your family history and the connection points with other parts of history. That’s the story that’s worth listening to.

Cheers
A