The Role of the Missionaries in conquest - NOSIPHO MAJEKE: A Biographical Note

From the book: The Role of the Missionaries in conquest by Nosipho Majeke

Nosipho Majeke was the pen-name of Dora Taylor. She worked in the liberatory movement in South Africa until, at the height of the repression in the 1960's, she and her family were forced to flee the country. England became her temporary home. In exile she continued to contribute to many journals, articles on the history of the Southern African liberation movement. Working mainly in the background she helped to found the Unity Movement and to clarify its political philosophy and strategies. Her principal personal interests lay in the world of literature, art and music. She wrote novels and plays with themes drawn from the history of struggle in South Africa and elsewhere. Regrettably, none of these has ever been published. Several of her plays, however, were presented in Cape Town, where she lived. She contributed regularly to Trek,a monthly magazine, which was arguably, the best general magazine ever produced in South Africa. She reviewed the works of significant authors in world literature to stimulate interest among young and old in these writers.

Among the student fellowships she lectured on literature in her uniquely fresh and challenging manner, opening up for serious readers vistas which no formal schooling could provide. With Jane Gool, Hugh Reybum, Edward Roux and others she shared a deep interest in frontier history, challenging the approaches of official historians like Eric Walker who, with McMillan dominated the field of new history writing. It is out of these studies and studies by A.J.H. Goodwin (a close colleague of her husband J.G. Taylor) and because she saw more clearly than most the significance of the role of the missionaries in imperial colonial conquest in Southern Africa that she set about writing her one great published work "The Role of the Missionaries" as it is best known. This single work and her role in helping to create the first truly national liberatory movement with its concepts of non-racialism, the building of one nation in South Africa, the minimum programme for full democratic rights and the policy of non-collaboration have earned for Nosipho Majeke (Dora Taylor) a pioneering position in the history of struggle in South Africa. Dora Taylor died in exile. Her ideals and her ideas live on in her book and in the great march to emancipation in Southern Africa.