Moederland: Nine Daughters of South Africa

by Cato Pedder

ISBN: 9781399810814

Published: 2026-01-06

'Exploring the past, bringing it to vivid life with wonderful prose . . . Pedder writes with perspicacity and sensitivity . . . We need more books like this' Observer 'Fascincating and engrossing' Literary Review How did South Africa turn out the way it did? In Moederland - 'Motherland', in Afrikaans - Cato Pedder takes us on an eye-opening journey across four centuries, tracing the country's turbulent past and the rise and fall of apartheid (and her family's charged legacy) through the lives of nine very different women. KROTOA is Khoikhoi translator to the newly arrived Dutch East India Company ANGELA, a former slave from Bengal, climbs the ladder of settler society ELSJE arrives from Germany aged 3, marries at 13, a mother at 15 ANNA, mistress of the Cape's grandest estate, regains control from her violent husband MARGARETHA, uncompromising Afrikaner farmer, resists the abolition of slavery ANNA loads her family on an ox-wagon and treks into the interior to elude the British...