Sewing the Revival Tents: Black Women’s Christian Organisations and the Public Duties of Home-Making in Early-Apartheid East London, 1950–1963

Abstract

This article examines the history of black women’s Christian activity in the East Bank location of East London (also known as Duncan Village) in the early years of apartheid. Oral, textual and photographic evidence in particular show how church women exercised Christian public motherhood through their use of religious space. Black women’s identities as Christian mothers sometimes brought them into the arena of formal political protest, as when women of the manyano supported the 1952 Defiance Campaign in East London. Much of the time, however, women’s Christian motherhood was defined in practical domestic terms of child-raising and house-keeping. Yet, this article argues, the authority and activity of manyano women extended far beyond nuclear family dwellings. Through their role in the construction of churches, black Christian women asserted their right to the city and their authority over young people in a context where their individual homes were highly insecure. This history of Christian public motherhood shows how gendered popular religious culture left a lasting mark on the urban landscape of apartheid South Africa.