MABEL PALMER

University of Natal , Durban
4 th November, 1950

Miss S. Makhanya
P. O. Umbumbula

Dear Miss Makhanya:

I wonder if it would be possible for you to take some interest in a little protégé of mine? She is Lily Moya, and she is now a pupil at Adams College . (I am paying for her).

She got in touch with me some years ago and told me she was an orphan, very anxious for education and that her Guardian would not consent to sending her away to school. Her letters were so lively and well written that I became quite interested in her, sent her books and tried to raise a small fund from the University women in Durban for her education. In this, however, I was unsuccessful and I finally decided just to undertake the charge myself.

Finally Lily was faced with the threat of being married to a much older man whom she disliked and without awaiting for arrangements to be completed for her to attend Adams college, she ran away; she got to Kokstad, the intrepid little thing, had never been in a train or used a telephone before but she phoned me. Naturally I could make very little of what she said, but I did just gather that she was arriving in Pietermaritzburg and wanted me to meet her there, which was quite impossible. However, I arranged with Mr. Bang, who is the head of the Municipal Affairs in Pietermaritzburg, to have her met by the Railway Police on her way to Amanzimtoti, where she finally arrived and was enrolled in the School.

Lily does not seem to be settling down very satisfactorily, of course it is difficult for a girl coming in the middle of a term like that, and she is I am afraid a very self centred young person.

I went down to Adams to see her and she came up and spent an afternoon with me in Durban , but it is a little difficult for me to do much for her. I think it would be unwise to have her as an overnight guest, as I so pleasantly had you some years ago, because she is already, I think, a little puffed up by my interest in her and being so self centred she is a little inclined to presume on it. I feel she could be more effectively helped by a woman of her own race, and I would be extremely grateful if you could see her and perhaps invite her to your Settlement. I would gladly pay any charges necessary for her and would be very glad indeed if you could help her to learn to think of other people and less of herself.

I think she is very well worth helping, she certainly can write. Her letters are most interesting and amusing although mainly about herself. I have in mind that she might be encouraged to be a journalist, but of course at first that could not be her main source of livelihood, but she could do a teacher's course and write in her spare time. She certainly has character and initiative. When she tried to take a ticket to Pietermaritzburg for Kokstad, they refused to give her one as she had no permit of any kind, so she took a ticket to the Border instead, nipped out of the carriage and took a ticket to Pietermaritzburg, dreading all the time that she might be discovered and sent back to the Location [Reserve] near Umtata. She will be a very unhappy woman though unless she can be helped out of her present self absorption.

It would be very kind of you if you could give me a little aid in this direction.

Venturing to thank you in anticipation.

I am,

Yours sincerely,
Mabel Palmer.

(Cited in Not Either An Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women edited by Shula Marks, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1987).