Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho's Daughters out in Africa

Then and now

:/0-9(1(*6):65 “I am deeply interested in authenticity. I studied Movement Therapy in Special Needs Education at the Laban Centre in Goldsmiths, South London. I am an Adult and Popular Educator with an Advanced Diploma in Adult Education and a Post Graduate Diploma in Women & Gender Studies from University of the Western Cape. I am an alignment and massage practitioner, and bodywork specialist. For the last twenty years I have been a trainer/facilitator, focusing on diversity, gender and anti-bias training. Six of my poems have been published in a book RAINFIRE – Women in leadership in South Africa, August 2005. I have played a part in actively promoting social change in this country for the past 22 years. I am a multi-skilled educator and have contributed to many publications and training manuals, including Agenda (empowering women for gender equity) and Investigating My Life, a grade seven educators’ guide. I work part-time for Jewish Care Cape, an umbrella organisation for the seven welfare organisations in the Western Cape.”  ;/,5(5+56> :/0-9(1(*6):65 My story and how to write succinctly about 56 years of a very varied life? Nevertheless I will try. The Gamsu family, my paternal Grandmother’s side of the family, are descended from the scholar Nocham Ish Gamzu who lived in the first century of the common era in the town of Gimzo which still exists in Palestine/Israel today. His grave has recently been found in the ancient Galilean stronghold of Jewish learning, Safed/Zefat, and the street in which it is located has now been named after him. The oral history of the family locates it, later, in Spain prior to the Inquisition where a well-known General Gamsu, a favourite of Isabella, the 15th century Queen of Castile, refused to convert to Christianity. He left his Spanish estate and went to Holland. Later the family moved to Russia. I was born into a culturally rich and diverse Jewish family, but we were everything but financially rich. My dad was gregarious, socially adept and embraced diversity. My father’s side were Bundists, Socialist Jewish workers. Many of the Jewish immigrants who came to South Africa had been inculcated with humanitarian andegalitarianideals.Insomecasesthesewererootedintraditional Jewish teachings; in others, Socialist and Marxist ideas widespread in Eastern Europe were the basis for these ideals. Some of the immigrants espoused those values that in 1897 had resulted in the General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, better known as the Bund. Radical activism was a way of life that some Jews brought to the tip of Africa. My paternal grandfather, Solly Jacobson, was one of the founder members of the South African Communist party. My grandmother, Fanny (Gamsu), was a founder member of the Garment Workers Union. My father grew up in Chapel Street, District Six, from 1918 to 1926. So, yes, I was born into activism at a very young age. My mother’s side of the family brought a mix of Austrian and Polish Jewish ancestry.  :/0-9(1(*6):65 What does that mean for me today? Shifra is a Hebrew name derived from the Tanakh, the Scriptures: Shiphrah and Puah were Moses’ midwives in the house of the king of Egypt and it is rumouredthattheylaytogetherasloversandlesbians.Iamproudto incorporate this ancestral heritage into my daily life. I understand that we all originate somewhere, and find ourselves somewhere else, therefore ancestry and origin (although constructed) have always fascinated me because I am a mixture, and these cells of mine are infused and dripping with remembrances of ancient times of Mesopotamia, and being in Pharaoh’s court. So, yes, I am an ancient Jewish South African Lesbian, and mother of two black girls – young women, ancestrally Xhosa, English-speaking – my adopted daughters. My sexuality is my own now, and of course I will always be a lesbian because I prefer women in so many ways over men. That is not to say that I don’t like some men, but generally as a group they do not spark my interest or desire. My maternal grandfather committed suicide in Namibia in 1929. From there my Gran and her three children went to Upington as they had some family there. Later they came to Cape Town. As a destitute single-parent family they became one of the first families to live at the then Jewish orphanage, and my Polish...