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FRIEDA BOKWE MATHEWS |
Frieda Bokwe Matthews had family ties which were extraordinary
by any measure: daughter of Reverand John Knox Bokwe, who was one of the
leading figures of the Xhosa intellectuals in the 1880s grappling with
the historical experience of modernity among the African people; sister
of Dr Roseberry Bokwe, a medical doctor who belonged to the great tradition
of New African medical doctors from Abdullah Abdurahman to A. B. Xuma and
Yusuf Dadoo; and, wife of Z. K. Matthews, a brilliant educationalist, an
important teacher of Nelson Mandela, and close friend of Jomo Kenyatta
and Mnandi Azikiwe. Frieda Bokwe was a teacher by profession. She is memorialized
as a teacher at Adams College in Amanzimtoti by Ellen Kuzwayo in classic
autobiography Call Me Woman: "Several women teachers made a lasting
impression on me while I was at Adams. First there was Sis Frieda - as
we called her - the producer of "Esther', which I mentioned earlier. She
was a very good-looking woman, kind but firm, and very outspoken on the
subject of courtship. Her approach was more on what girls should do than
on what they should not. She was the first woman in my life to talk openly
about sex. Perhaps I valued this informal education because I had lost
confidence in the person of my mother. Frieda provided a model of married
life and motherhood for all of us" (p.87). Given that Call Me Woman
is taken as one of the fundamental books of South African feminism in the
second half of the twenyieth-century, Ellen Kuzwayo's recollection of Frieda
Bokwe Matthews takes on greater significance. Continuing on the new visions
and new pesrpectives made possible by the activities of Charlotte Manye
Maxeke, the great apostle of South African modernity, Fried Bokwe Matthews
was in effect the teacher of Ellen Kuzwayo's generation of women of the
proper role of the African woman in the ongoing unfolding of New African
modernity. Frieda Bokwe Matthews' Remembrances is an autobiography that
re-establishes the intellectual lineages of the New African Movement.
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