Cato Pedder’s Moederland tantalisingly traces nine women who aided apartheid in South Africa

History

Nelson Mandela and South Africa president FW de Klerk after the first talks between the government and the ANC in 1990. Photo: Getty

Eilis O'Hanlon

Most people who delve into their family trees don’t find anything very interesting. Their ancestors were, like most of us, ordinary people. They lived, loved, worked and died. Then they were largely forgotten, especially women, whose names, as the author of Moederland observes, are “misplaced as they marry”.

The family of Cato Pedder is different in that respect. She’s an American-born, English-raised journalist and poet whose great-grandfather happened to be Jan Smuts, “a white supremacist who supported racial segregation” in South Africa and twice served as prime minister.