It took me a while to pick this up but once I did I couldn't put it down. An important and interesting read. I would recommend this to South Africans and foreigners alike.

This book interests me, because I am from the Netherlands and always interested in the history of my country. This book hits hard on the undeniable facts of misbahoviour of my forebearers. The writer has the same struggle with her forebearers, which is really well written. It is an uncomfortable and therefore slow read and I haven't finished the book yet. On occassions I had to put it down as I couldn't read on due to the fact that the actions of my forebearers were so awful.

The premises of following three women who history has forgotten is a good one, unfortunately more and more other women or drawn in at a time when the book could have finished. The latter part is more of memoir of the writer's experience, which are interesting, but I wonder whether the mixture of history and memoir works well.

The book is generally well written, but there are however a few mistakes in it I would like to see addressed:
- The introduction is very rambling and hard to follow
- The Dutch flag is called red, white and blue, not blue, white and red (red is on top)
- Dominie is dominee (reverend)
- The Netherlands as a country wasn't founded unti 1815, references to that name earlier are historically incorrect. The predecessor was the 7 Provinces.

A worthy and possibly important addition to the retelling of South African history. I read this out of curiosity, rather than because I have any particular connection to the country. I learned lots, and loved the way that the history was told through the story of the author's ancestors. If you are interested in history or in this region, I would definitely recommend.

“As children, we are fresh films on which no light has fallen, pristine. Until the reel starts to turn, and the light falls and we too fall into knowledge. It is all new to us, all strange, unsullied. Backlit with an unholy light…”

Beautifully written and comprehensibly researched, Cato Pedder’s Moederland is more than a mere biography; it is in actuality, a journey through South African history.
Moederland is not only a portrayal of a family tree, but an account of the events that took place in the seventeenth century by the first arrival of Dutch East India Company and the Dutch settlers; events, choices, decisions and actions that shaped and dictated the lives of generations to come.

The book’s main focus is on nine women:

1652-1720

Krotoa, an intermediary between the Dutch and the Khoikhoi, a group of indigenous people.
Angela van Bengale, a slave from Bengal.
Elsje Cloete, A German immigrant.

1695-1773
Anna Siek, a strong-willed settler in Cape Town.

1787-1884
Margaretha Retief, an Afrikaner farmer.

1797-1891
Anna Retief, a trekker.

1870-1954
Isie Krige, wife of South Africa's Prime Minister Jan Smuts.

1904-1968
Cato Smuts, Isie and Jan’s daughter and the author’s grandmother who leaves South Africa for England.

1940-1994
Petronella Clark, the author’s mother, who returns to her motherland.

Thanks to the author, the publishers and the Netgalley for providing me an advanced copy in return for my review.

I am in the unusual position of having a heritage that aligns almost exactly with that of Pedder; she was raised in the UK to one English parent and one half-Afrikaner parent, I was raised in the UK by South African parents, including one who is half-Afrikaner. Like Pedder, my Afrikaner ancestor was deeply entwined with apartheid - although in her case, her great-grandfather Jan Smuts (or the oubaas, as she and her family refer to him) was, as Prime Minister of the country, one of the men who laid the foundations for apartheid, while my grandfather was a high profile anti-apartheid activist, a friend and contemporary of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and minister to Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe.

Nothing I have read before better articulates the specific tensions and contradictions of being a white South African, of being part-Afrikaner, of being raised thousands of miles from the place that is foundational to your family's myths and stories, but also to your family's shame and guilt. As Pedder writes, we are 'forever connected to a country 6000 miles from home, to a culture freighted with shame.'

Pedder chooses to tell the story of her family and of the modern state of South Africa through nine women, nine 'daughters of South Africa'. These women run the gamut from an enslaved woman from Asia, a Khoikhoi tribeswoman, a 17th century German immigrant, to Afrikaner wives and voortrekkers: they are also all Pedder's (and, therefore, Smuts') ancestors. Through a combination of memoir and narrative non-fiction drawn from primary sources, Pedder traces her family history, which is so inevitably, tragically entwined with the history of the country itself, drawing forth the previously ignored experiences of women without absolving those women of responsibility for the violence enacted on the non-white population of South Africa.

Illuminating, moving and beautifully written, if I could give this book ten stars, I would. And, while I occupy a specific and special relationship to the subject matter, I am confident that anyone with an interest in history, gender and race will be equally enraptured with Moederland.

As a South African immigrant, this was a must read for me. I found this so incredibly tough to read, but so incredibly interesting.

I was intrigued by this title from the outset, as I grew up in South Africa during the 1970's. This wasn't the only subject that captured my imagination: women's history, or the lack of it, has always been of interest to me. That Cato Pedder could trace her female ancestry all the way back to the initial establishment of a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, four centuries ago, was fascinating.

Her relationship with South Africa is a troubled one. Not South African herself, but with family living there and having an ancestor as illustrious as Jan Smuts, makes for an interesting read. Her family history also crosses the colour bar, which over the years, has always been a contentious issue in South Africa with its history of apartheid and the horror that entailed, and the repercussions thereof.

I very much enjoyed the personal and the historical aspect of this book. It explores the role of women and how they are affected by historical and personal circumstances, especially of the nine women who form part of her ancestry. She describes them individually, in context, and brings them to life. Pedder's personal accounts are also affecting; how she feels about the conflicting and confusing country that is South Africa with all its controversial history and her place within it.

I was able to appreciate this book, having had a personal experience of living there, struggling with the same feelings of privilege and questionable belonging. I was also familiar with the history, and found it all thought provoking and engaging.
I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in history, particularly South African history, and women's place within it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

Disturbing, uncomfortable, absorbing read for head, heart and viscera

Cato Pedder has traced her ancestry back to the late seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company first began its trading activities in what became South Africa. Here, she examines the complex, disturbing history of European colonialism with particular incisive, personal focus, through the lives of 9 women across an almost 400 year period.

The early history of slavery inevitably meant that with the initially few white traders and settlers arriving with their families, there would be a quick history of what has sadly happened so many times when colonialist expansion happens. Women become part of what might be taken by force, part of property.

Plus of course the history of colonialists driving indigenous populations out of their lands and homes, as the European settlers began to expand and acquire.

This is an inevitably painful read for anyone with an ounce of empathy, imagination and wish to understand ‘how did we get to this place’. Pedder is the great granddaughter of Jan Smuts. Smuts both inhabits history of the divisive, pernicious wrongness of racial inequalities, and apartheid, yet also was involved in the founding of the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations. Cato Pedder examines the complexity of conflicts between what we might see as the impulse towards achieving a society which advances all, and a society which ‘others’, and has narrower self-interests. Including how this plays out within each individual.

This is a history of ‘the motherland’ literally told through the lives of her female progenitors

And it is fascinating, exploring through individual lives, changing mores and ideologies. Her focus, deeply personal – and therefore engaging the reader’s understanding of individual other lives – opens inevitably into considering all the wider perspectives. The personal IS political.

Beautifully, thoughtfully, written. It is perhaps a little overlong, still, - her afterword indicates substantial pruning happened – her agent made her cut 10,000 words!.

Perhaps her final paragraph, at the end of the acknowledgement section, best outlines both the structure and matter of the book, and incorporates something wider for all of us, each of our journeys as individuals, and ancestrally

“Moederland took me ten years to write. But it took nine women a lifetime to live. This is my tribute to them……..This is the fruit of the family tree. None of us are perfect: we all try, we all fail. And the story is not yet over”

Not since Rian Malan's book, 'My Traitor's Heart' (1990), have I read such an important book on South Africa's background and its people. Since there are significant similarities of purpose in both books, a comparison is almost essential. Both texts are a blend of autobiographical writing and history. Furthermore, both writers bear the burden (for it must be a burden) of being descendants of figures who played prominent roles in South Africa's complicated history. Malan is great great grandson to D.F. Malan (1874 - 1959), South Africa's fourth Prime Minister (1948 to 1954) and the father of the much-maligned Apartheid system. Pedder is the great great granddaughter of Jan Smuts (1870 – 1950), who served two terms as prime minister (1919 to 1924 and 1939 to 1948) and is known as architect of the League of Nations and a founder member of the United Nations.

Cato Pedder's Moederland ['Motherland' in Afrikaans] shines a light on some of the women who were significant figures in their time, but who due to their gender, have largely fallen under the radar for historians. The author has clearly conducted a great deal of research into her ancestry. The book, generally well-written as it is, at times feels a little rushed. The strapline reads: "Nine Daughters of South Africa". Perhaps if Pedder had focused on the five or six who had the most impact on modern South Africa and taken her time in fleshing out their lives in greater detail, it would make for a more leisurely and insightful reading experience. That said — an observation, rather than a criticism — Moederland is undeniably a seminal and much-needed contribution to the canon of literature about South Africa's beleagured history and legacy and essential reading for anyone interested in its politics who wishes to gain a realistic picture of the country's past.

Many thanks to the publishers and to Netgalley for the ARC.