A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women's Education

Acknowledgements

xi Acknowledgements Asaclosereaderofacknowledgementpages,Ihavelearnedthatwriting good history hinges on having good friendships. I can only hope that this study is as rich as the intellectual comradeship that went into it. First, the women and men affiliated with Inanda Seminary, past and present, gave life to this project. Their contributions – interviews and archival materials, gathered from Connecticut to Cape Town – are evident throughout its pages. Thanks to my interviewees Roger Aylard, Thuthula Balfour-Kaipa, Lindiwe Baloyi, Nomangcobo Bhengu, Mwelela Cele, Mabel Christofersen, Carohn Cornell, Bongi Dlomo, Thandeka Dloti, B.K. Dludla, Pam Dube, Melodious Gumede,AndileHawes,CarrollJacobs,NonhlanhlaKhumalo,Cecilia Khuzwayo,SiphokaziKoyana,ConstanceKoza,KhanyisileKweyama, LungiKwitshana,NomsaMakhoba,GloriaMalindi,NozizweManeli, Dorcas Meyiwa, Ntombi Mngomezulu, Khosi Mpanza, Rudo Mphasane,ThembiMsane,VuyoNcwaiba,LaurettaNgcobo,Mamsie Ntshangase, Ndo Nyembezi, Faith Nyongo, Karen Roy-Guglielmi, Esther Sangweni, Caroline Sililo, Darlene Woodburn, Kho Zimu, Dumi Zondi, Thembekile Zondi and Mandisa Zungu. Special thanks to Inanda’s former principal Dumi Zondi, who first provided me with access to Inanda’s wide-ranging collection of archival materials and who contextualised these materials with his knowledge of the school’s past. Thanks as well to Inanda’s principal Judy Tate, chaplain Susan Valiquette and development manager Scott Couper. They have been unwaveringly supportive of my research without attempting to direct my research agenda – a rare and wonderful combination for a historian. Scott has also been a stimulating and dedicated colleague, despite his hectic schedule. xii This book came out of my 2011 Harvard University doctoral dissertation in African Studies. Thanks to my advisor, Emmanuel Akyeampong,whopatientlyworkedtoreininmyverbosity,tocurtail my descents into narrative history and to tease out my embedded arguments – and who first observed that the core tensions I was describing were tensions over social reproduction. My other Harvard committee members, Caroline Elkins and Evelyn Higginbotham, helped me see the bigger picture – beyond Inanda Seminary, South Africa, and the African continent – that my musings on the politics of social reproduction illuminate. Through Carrie and Evelyn’s mentorship, I had the privilege to become a part of the other pillars of African Studies at Harvard, the Committee on African Studies and the Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Thanks to the support of the Institute’s Director, Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and Executive Director Vera Grant, I benefited from the collegial support of my fellow Du Bois Fellows, as well as from the intrepid research assistance of Emily Jendzejec and Yvette Ramirez. As a postgraduate and now as a lecturer at Harvard, I have benefited from conversations with many other wonderful colleagues and students, particularly Sibusisiwe Khuluse, Matthew Kustenbauder, Margot Leger, Daniel Liss, Carla Martin, Erin Mosely, Amber Moulton and Zolisa Shokane. Jeanne Follansbee and Anya Bernstein Bassett have made the Committees on Degrees in History and Literature and in Social Studies ideal places for me to research and teach. I conducted research for this project between 2007 and 2010 – at a most fascinating time in South Africa, and in the company of scholars who have become some of my favourite people in the world. Thanks to Nonhlanhla Mbeje and colleagues in the Fulbright-Hays Zulu Group Program Abroad in Pietermaritzburg, who laboured to teach isiZulu to this wooden-tongued American and who introduced me to KwaZulu-Natal in the cold southern winter of 2007. When I returned to Durban on a Harvard grant between September 2008 and June 2009, I was fortunate to undertake much of my research at the Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where I met my dear friend Mwelela Cele – the consummate librarian, with incredible knowledge of and passion for South African history. It is fitting that we first bonded over our enthusiasm for the work of xiii MarkGevisserandShulaMarks,asMwelelahastaughtmemuchabout the power of biography as history. I was also privileged to be affiliated with the Department of Historical Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, during the brilliant Catherine Burns’ tenureatthehelmofitsHistoryandAfricanStudiesSeminar.Through this seminar, I met Jason Hickel and Jeff Guy. Many of the best ideas inthisthesis – particularlyarounddomesticityandstatepower – came out of conversations with Jason over cappuccino or pinotage. With great patience for my historian’s obsession with detail, he asked hard questions of my project as it unfolded, which tricked me into theorising; he has been a wonderful friend to me and to this project. During my academic year in Durban and since, Jeff has been an ideal mentor and friend: he understood the value of my project before I did, and...