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‘THE ABANDONED MOTHER’: AGEING, OLD AGE AND MISSIONARIES IN EARLY AND MID NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH-EAST AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2001

ANDREAS SAGNER
Affiliation:
University of Munich

Abstract

This essay examines issues of ageing and old age in Xhosa-speaking communities to c. 1860. Drawing primarily on records of the Wesleyan Methodist and London Missionary societies, the article examines the construction of Xhosa ageing, old age and death in missionary writings. The primary medium of missionary reflection was the figure of the ‘Abandoned Mother’, modelled on contemporary British metaphors, that represented yet another atrocity story for legitimating the mission enterprise and the emerging colonial regime. It also argues that there were fundamental contrasts in the images of ageing and dying between those of the Xhosa and those of the missionaries. Though older persons found certain themes in the Christian message attractive, they preferred the local cultural model of ageing, old age and death.

Type
Dilemmas of Growing Up and Growing Old
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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