The Politics of Motherhood: Reproductive Labour in Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper I argue that Lauretta Ngcobo’s feminism can be described as grounded in the Marxist-socialism of the Pan African Congress – a politics that she was deeply involved with during the struggle, and which she reclaims and re-envisions for the specificities of black women’s experiences during apartheid. The approach that Ngcobo adopts in her writing places women’s myriad experiences within a historical-material context that also considers the intersections of race, class and gender. One of her chief concerns, evident in her recurrent return to this topic in her fiction and non-fiction, is that of motherhood and the ways that motherhood, which should be an empowering experience, is often used to determine or erase the agency and identity of women in certain cultures. Motherhood, and indeed the politics of motherhood, are two central themes in Ngcobo’s second novel, And They Didn’t Die. The theme of motherhood intersects with themes of politics, agency and identity in various ways which I unpack by reading the novel in terms of two key ideas in Marxist-feminist thought: the role of women in the public and private space, and reproductive labour. I propose that a reading of And They Didn’t Die that considers the theme of motherhood in terms of reproductive labour allows us to understand how motherhood was constructed and regulated by apartheid – a system designed for the control and exploitation of black labour.