Recovering the lives of African women leaders in South Africa: the case of Nokutela Dube
Date
2020-04
DOI
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OA Version
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Abstract
[Thanks to a long tradition of scholarship—from Mia Brandel-Syrier in midtwentieth century to contemporary writers such as Deborah Gaitskell and
Meghan Healy-Clancy—our understanding of African women’s agency in private and public Christian associational life in South Africa has been
immeasurably enriched.2 Against the backdrop of their work, this chapter focuses on women leaders in these communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that a blind spot in our vision has led to a tendency in biography (especially in patriarchal societies) to credit men with all kinds of achievements for which a more careful examination might reveal that credit really
ought to be shared. The implication is that many more African women probably served in leadership positions than are remembered in the published record of the period, which is crowded with men but in which very few named women appear.]
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Copyright 2020 Dictionary of African Christian Biography. All rights reserved. Reproductions, with appropriate citation and credit, may be made for noncommercial educational purposes. Revision or editing of this content, the creation of derivative works, posting on websites containing advertising, and all other commercial uses require the express written consent of the Journal of African Christian Biography.