11/08/2026
"My belofte aan my Nonna."
Staying with National Women's Day (yesterday) in South Africa.
“However confronting and imbalanced the power relations in this country were, the black woman with the child peacefully on her back, without a doubt portrays the most tender and most sustained meeting point ever between black and white.” A Letter to Claudette - Antjie Krog.
For centuries it has been common practice for the African mother to raise her baby child on her back whilst she went around with her daily tasks. The indigenous term for this custom is “abba” from the Khoi word “awa,” “pepa” in Sesotho and “beba” in Kiswahili.
But not only black children have had the privilege to be carried and mothered by a black woman. Countless white babies during the apartheid era especially and even further back into our history, have also had the pleasure.
I remember it all clearly from when I was a little girl still – the ease and speed at which our housekeeper was able to throw her baby onto her back and secure her with a blanket and a pin. This made a powerful impression on me and lies at the foundation of the uBuntu Civics Academy.
Watching our housekeeper carrying her baby, I remember vividly feeling the intimacy, the snugness, and the protection that the child would have felt. I was mesmerised by how the baby would simply just let go and melt into the back of her mother and give in to the motion; absorbing the lulling rhythm of her mother’s body at work.
It has been suggested, and I resonate, that it is precisely because of the carrying of so many Boer children by black housekeepers that people are still reaching out to one another over ever widening gulfs and that ‘pepa’ prevented as it were, a bloody revolution.
The very popular and beautiful poem "Amakeia" by AG Visser that has been turned into a composition by various people and performed as a play for many years tells the story of the brave Xhosa woman - who, during the Anglo Boer war, gave her life to protect the white child that had been placed in her care.
When-ever it is Women's Day and Mother's Day, let us honor these black mothers and this inextricable bond that exists between black and white mothers and women, and all of us.
Enjoy the beautiful rendition of the song Amakeia by following the link in the first comment box below!
The lyrics of the poem by AG Visser and the song are in the second comment box.
And in the third comment box, find the link to the beautiful African lullaby - Thula Baba.
Phambili ngobuntu!
