Profiles in Diversity: Women in the New South Africa

“I am going to get trained”

Nancy "I'm going to get trained" Charton IN THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA changes are taking place not only on the political front, but within the Anglican Church as well. On 5 September 1992 Nancy Charton was the first South African woman ordained as an Anglican priest. This event, which occurred in Grahamstown, was the culmination oftwentytwo years ofpreparation for the then seventy-two-year-old feminist. She was joined in ordination by Bride Dickson, a medical doctor, and Sue Groves, a caseworker with African refugees from the rural areas. What makes Nancy especially unique, however, is the Afrikaner family background from which she emerged. "My father's mother was Afrikaans speaking and she had thirteen children, and they lived in a little Karoo town [center of rural Cape Province]. Her father was from a famous South African family-from the country branch. He was a lawyer, Rose Innes. The family was very devout [Dutch Reformed Church]. My father being the youngest of the thirteen, had weak lungs from having measles and whooping cough together, was sent out to the farm. He was actually sent to raise ostriches for a year in the mountains. He with a Coloured boy his own age. So Afrikaans was very special to him. . . ." In her early youth, she spent three years in the West Indies because of her father's health. "Coming home on the boat [her father] met Jan Smuts [at that time a leader of the Union Party] and both of them used to get up [at] 4:30 in the morning. Both of them liked to walk and they walked the decks together every morning-and I think it took two or three weeks to get back to South Africa. So by the time they arrived here my father was an ardent admirer of Jan Smuts. And of his holistic ideas on government and the future of South Africa." 177 l'\.\.\lCY CfL\RTO~ On her return to South Africa, Nancy's mother packed her offto a church private school for girls in Grahamstown-an English-speaking school. "A school for ladies-they tried to make me a lady, desperately, but they never did succeed." Growing up bilingual made it possible for her father to gear her toward an Afrikaansspeaking university. He chose for Nancy the University of Pretoria, a decidedly Afrikaner-dominated place, but only after some deliberations as to her future. "[Father[ asked if 1 wanted to be a doctor. 'No.1 don't want to be a doctor. 1 can't sew anything up.' ... What about a lawyer-all the family are lawyers and tcachers. 'No. I don't want to bc a lawyer.' Then he said, 'Well. what are you going to do?' He was of the opinion. and so was my mother. that I was extraordinarily ill favored and plain. and would never marry. I must become a civil servant. ... Pretoria had just the degree he wanted for me. So he died in ~[arch of that year-1938-and 1 had stayed home to be with him. 1 went off to Pretoria in 1939 just as the war broke out. "[At Pretoria) the war was extremely unpopular. It was regarded as an 'English' war. It was not an Afrikaans war-General [J.B.;\I.) Hertzog took that line.... He chose neutrality and when 1 got up to university. in that rcsidenee where 1 lived I think not more than a dozen of us who were pro-war.... But you know. we survived very happily. It was bad for my personal development because 1 couldn't join student organizations. "I did join NUSAS [National Union of South African StudentsI in my first year and the organization was banned at the end of that year by the Studcnt Represcntative Council. I never felt I could join [the Afrikaans student groups) because of their Nazi proclivities. Their jargon was Nazi. Their formation was Nazi: they had chains of command and leadership training.... 1didn't join that and it meant that at the political level I was marginalized. 1 had no experience after NUSAS was banned from political activity on campus and 1 think that was a great pity. "As far as the academic world was concerned, 1 was lucky because 1 was in an academic facuity headed by Professor Gey van Pittius. He was a good product of the London School of Economics and Professor [HaroldI Laske. He used the tutorial methods he had learned in England. He expected...