Josie Mpama/Palmer. Robert R. Edgar
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Josie Mpama/Palmer - Robert R. Edgar страница 2
Название: Josie Mpama/Palmer
Автор: Robert R. Edgar
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
Серия: Ohio Short Histories of Africa
isbn: 9780821440940
isbn:
Contents
Preface: Researching the Life of Josie Mpama/Palmer A Note on the Names Mpama and Palmer
4. Declarations of Independence
Conclusion: Get Up and Get Moving
Appendix: Josie Mpama/Palmer on Gender and Politics
Illustrations
Figure 1.1. Stephen Mpama, 1920s
Figure 1.2. Baby photo of Josie Mpama/Palmer
Figure 2.1. A street in Makweteng Location, Potchefstroom, 1904
Figure 2.2. Washing clothes, Makweteng Location, Potchefstroom, 1905
Figure 2.3. Edwin Mofutsanyana, 1940
Figure 3.1. Josie Mpama/Palmer in Mozambique on her return from the Soviet Union
Figure 4.1. Grandmother Garson at Sophiatown home
Figure 4.2. Josie Mpama/Palmer with her children in the 1940s
Figure 4.3. Josie Mpama/Palmer appearing in a play put on by the Bantu People’s Theatre
Figure 4.4. The CPSA’s Johannesburg District Committee, 1945
Figure 5.1. Government notice listing Josephine Mpama as a member of the Communist Party, 1950
Figure 5.2. Josie Mpama/Palmer speaking at the Federation of South African Women, 1954
Figure 5.3. South African government banning order of Josephine Mpama, 1955
Figure 6.1. Josie Mpama/Palmer in church uniform with children
Figure 6.2. Josie Mpama/Palmer with a friend
Figure 6.3. Gravestone of Josie Mpama/Palmer at Avalon Cemetery
Preface
Researching the Life of Josie Mpama/Palmer
Piecing together the life of Josie Mpama/Palmer was challenging and required me to draw on a range of oral and written sources. My initial interest in her emanated from my research on Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana, her common-law husband from the late 1920s to the late 1930s. I interviewed him at length in Lesotho (where he lived in exile) in the 1980s. After the dramatic change in South Africa’s political environment in 1990, I started collecting information on Josie. A starting point was an interview that Julia Wells conducted with her in 1977 that focused on her activism in the South African city of Potchefstroom. I interviewed two of her daughters, Carol and Hilda, in 1995 as well as close friends who lived in her neighborhood in 1998. Later I interviewed four of her grandchildren, Belinda and Virginia Palmer and Lorraine and Bella Johnson, who spent much time in her home in Mzimhlophe when they were growing up and who gave me their generation’s perspective on her.
I also identified a variety of written sources. I combed through Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), left-of-center, and black newspapers published in the 1930s and 1940s. These contained materials on her public activities as well as columns by her on women’s issues.
Government records at the National Archives in Pretoria yielded information on her father, Stephen Mpama: a divorce case, a criminal trial, and the estate record at his death. The archives also contained extensive Potchefstroom municipal records on the protests of the late 1920s in which Josie Mpama participated. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Justice Department issued regular reports on communist activities in the Union of South Africa that occasionally mentioned her activities. I also consulted the Justice Department’s banning file on Josie Mpama from the 1940s and 1950s.
Critical records came from the papers of two important figures in the CPSA, Jack and Ray Simons, held at the University of Cape Town. Their papers include minutes of a critical CPSA central committee meeting at the end of 1938.
A crucial breakthrough came in 1998 when I examined the extensive Communist International (Comintern) and CPSA records at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History in Moscow. The CPSA may have been careful about defining its image to outsiders, but its records are remarkably revealing and do not shy away from revealing internal splits, personal disputes, СКАЧАТЬ