Safundi

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Story of a Mother: a Biopolitical Reading of

Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother

Namrata Dey Roy

To cite this article: Namrata Dey Roy (2021) Story of a Mother: a Biopolitical Reading of Sindiwe
Magona’s Mother�to�Mother, Safundi, 22:2, 162-176, DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2021.1943847

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.1943847

Published online: 12 Jul 2021.

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SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES
2021, VOL. 22, NO. 2, 162–176
https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2021.1943847

ARTICLE

Story of a Mother: a Biopolitical Reading of Sindiwe Magona’s

Mother to Mother
Namrata Dey Roy
Department of English, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother, a fictional rendition of Amy Motherhood; biopolitics;
Biehl’s murder, has been analyzed as a text that challenges the power; docile-body;
TRC’s reconciliatory philosophy, generates an empathetic dialogue sexuality; female
across the color line, and reclaims the subdued maternal identity
and voice. However, Mandisa’s narrative throws light on the condi­
tion of motherhood in apartheid South Africa. Examining Mandisa’s
position as a girl, woman, and mother through a Foucauldian bio­
political lens, this paper argues that Mandisa’s story reveals the
biopolitical construction of motherhood at a crucial historical junc­
ture of South Africa. This analysis reveals that the novel is not
a mere maternal testimony; rather, the narrative elucidates the
creation of the docile bodies of black women under structural
oppression and discursive regulation.

Introduction
In the introduction to South African Feminisms: Writing, Theory, and Criticism 1990–
1994, analyzing Ingrid de Kok’s “Mending” to explain the subjective position of woman
and mother in South African writing, M.J. Daymond states that “the matrix of female
roles . . . including motherhood” is “both consolatory and the origin of something new.”1
She draws on the subjective position of motherhood in the biographies of Sindiwe
Magona and Ellen Kuzwayo and concludes, “[w]hat emerges from these related uses of
the metaphor is that ‘motherhood’ in South African writing and criticism functions as
profoundly disruptive and potentially regenerative concept which could lead to new
practices. It stands against the father’s law (as Joan Metelerkamp puts it) on which the
apartheid state once rested and which could easily resurface in a new nationalism; but it
also offers a quality of mutual, non-constraining (even non-gendered) care that this
society needs to recover.”2 Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother corroborates Dayton’s
claims in the sense that the text not only presents motherhood as a “profoundly dis­
ruptive” concept challenging the TRC’s reconciliatory narrative, but also creates a “new”
space to understand the unheard stories of the black South African mothers from their
girlhood to motherhood. Based on the murder of Amy Biehl on 25 August 1993, Sindiwe
Magona’s Mother to Mother not only unfolds the complex socio-cultural and political

CONTACT Namrata Dey Roy ndeyroy1@gsu.edu

1
Daymond, xxvi.
2
Ibid.
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 163

influences behind the murder, but also reveals the narrative of a struggling black mother
of a probable convict. Going beyond these obvious interpretations of the text, Magona’s
strategic use of the motherhood trope analytically unfolds the construction of the female
body from childhood to motherhood. The deep focus on the mother figure shows
motherhood as a regulatory and disciplinary discourse, which deemphasizes the story
of racial murder and the apparent empathetic, reconciliatory conversation between two
mothers.
The existing criticism on Mother to Mother asserts that Magona’s portrayal of Mandisa
provides the mother-victim a voice and agency against the position defined by the TRC.
This reclamation of maternal voice, according to Samuelson, helps to dismantle the
constructed societal identity3 and to consolidate the idea of nationhood through the
representation of the female body.4 This critical discussion highlights the text’s narrative
capacity to engender a dialogue beyond the socio-political and racial segregation. On the
one hand, this empathetic bond underscores a reconciliation between the victim and the
perpetrator that the TRC advocates5; on the other, it also questions the politics of cross-
racial empathy that reinforces the TRC.6 These critics’ attention to the role of the TRC in
relation to the transnational and cross-racial bonding between two mothers discourages
us from reading Mandisa’s narrative as a story of a woman’s experience within her
personal and social spheres.
Sidelining this omnipresence of the TRC narrative, an analysis of Mandisa’s story
(from her girlhood to motherhood) sheds light on the sheer inequality inflicted by the
discriminatory apartheid system and regulatory patriarchal discourses that subjugate and
control black women’s lives. The central position of Mandisa in the narrative enables her
to flesh out the systematic oppression exerted by both the patriarchal society and the
apartheid regime on the female bodies.7 In this article, I argue Mother to Mother is a black
South African mother’s story that reveals her as a victim of the oppressive patriarchal
system that constructs and controls the female body, which becomes a site of mediation
between the larger society and reproductive capability. I apply a Foucauldian biopolitical
lens to Mandisa’s narrative to elaborate the social apparatuses of discipline and control
that shape and control the female body from the birth of a girl. These social norms,
community values, and practices define and decide the socio-cultural expectations of
girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood. By close reading Magona’s strategic use of
Mandisa’s story, this study thus unpacks the domination of social discourses on the
female body.
Identifying Mandisa’s story as the exemplary narrative of South African motherhood
runs the danger of yoking the “deeply divided” historical experience of South African
women into “an overarching” and all-encompassing motherhood.8 However, my analysis
of the discursive, socio-cultural practices that shaped Mandisa – the girl, the woman, the
wife, and ultimately the mother of the killer – enables us to comprehend how feminine

3
Samuelson, “Reading the Maternal Voice,” 237, 241.
4
Samuelson, Remembering the Nation.
5
Schatteman, “Xhosa Killing,” 283.
6
Whitehead, “Reading with Empathy,” 186.
7
Loren Anthony in the review of the novel specifies that Mandisa’s narrative demonstrate her “refusal to be victim, to be
other” and her protest against her “brutalized existence” (83). However, this review does not analyze the process of
othering presented in the novel.
8
Walker, “Conceptualising Motherhood in Twentieth Century South Africa,” 418.
164 N. DEY ROY

identity and subjectivity are constructed by the society. It is my argument that in

examining Mandisa’s position through a biopolitical lens, her narrative transcends the
testimony of the mother of a convicted son, depicting motherhood in South Africa as
both a relationship and an institution, but also revealing how diverse regulatory dis­
courses create and perpetuate such institutions by controlling a woman’s body and
sexuality from birth.

II
Mother to Mother opens with Mandisa’s plea to understand her son and assess the socio-
political and economic reasons behind his heinous crime: “you have to understand my
son. Then you’ll understand why I am not surprised he killed your daughter . . . Not after
that first unbelievable shock, his implanting himself inside me; unreasonably and totally
destroying the me I was . . . the me I would have become.”9 With this statement, Mandisa
allocates herself a pivotal position in the narrative. While analyzing the story of her son,
she narrates her own experience of being a virgin mother, rearing a child, marrying
against her wishes, and her struggle to survive in an overtly oppressive patriarchal social
structure. The patriarchy’s systematic control and disciplining of the female body work
through different discourses – girlhood, wifehood, and motherhood. In each case,
according to Foucault, sexuality becomes a crucial factor that engenders mechanisms
of control, discipline, and normalization to create a “docile body.”
The theoretical underpinning of this argument is based on the Foucauldian concept of
the regulatory power that explores the intricate systems of surveillance and discipline (at
times disguised and minimalist) that have deep effects on the targeted bodies. Employing
the ideology of “minimum expenditure for the maximum return,” the dominant power
structure of the society aims to create “docile bodies” to perpetuate the system.10 I will
employ this Foucauldian conception of “docile bodies” to discuss the construction of
female subjectivity in Mother to Mother. According to Foucault, the regulation and
discipline of both the body and population are “two poles around which the organization
of power over life was deployed.”11 These two poles of power over life are, first, the
“anatomo-politics of human body” that focuses on the “disciplining, the organization of
its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its
docility” (in short, disciplinary power), and second, the “biopolitics of population,”
which exerts power over “propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life
expectancy and longevity.”12 These two axes of power work in tandem to take “control
of life and biological processes of man-as species” and create disciplined, regularized,
docile bodies.
This conceptual foundation helps to explain how in a patriarchal society, discursive
power regulates the female body, subjects it to different disciplinary discourses (the
anatomo-politics of the human body) and also controls sexuality, reproduction, and
biological existence of women (the biopolitics of population). In a patriarchal society, the
female body is regulated and subjected to different disciplinary regimes within the
9
Magona, Mother to Mother, 1–2; emphasis added.
10
Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 105.
11
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 139.
12
Ibid.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 165

domestic sphere. Deployment of such regulatory familial rules are the minimal and
trouble-free measures to create docile female bodies. Magona’s description of
Mandisa’s life in Blouvlei, Guguletu, and Gungululu during the apartheid era elucidates
this systematic patriarchal control of black female bodies. Mandisa is a fictionalized
character based on Evelyn Manqina, with whom Magona identifies herself. This identi­
fication helps her to “[excavate] the details of Mandisa’s childhood from her own
autobiography.”13 Samuelson argues, “[b]y making her own story interchangeable with
that of Mandisa’s, Magona suggests that this story can stand as the representative of the
numerous tales of black women growing up under apartheid.”14 Magona’s identification
and application of the stories of her own motherhood help her to elaborate the making of
female subjectivity under the apartheid regime and the patriarchal social structure of the
black community.

III
At the center of Mandisa’s narration is her son’s story, but her own story from her
childhood to her motherhood serves as the foundation of the text. The unique story
of Mxolisi’s conception provides Mandisa the pretext to discuss the patriarchal
system of the Xhosa community that expects the women to be subservient, sub­
missive, and procreators of heirs. The description of Mandisa’s girlhood enables
Magona to foreground the patriarchal society’s strategies to deploy sexuality and to
construct female subjectivity. Mandisa relates that from her girlhood, her family
controlled not only her behavior and activities, but also forcefully submitted her to
the process of inspecting virginity. The deployment of sexuality, which ultimately
defines the woman’s body and her reproductive capability, is thus contingent upon
social variables and factors such as age of marriage, contraceptive practices, sexual
relations, birthrate, and so on.15 Describing Mandisa’s experience as a teenager,
Magona discloses the repressive role of the patriarchal society in determining the
sexual conduct of the girls, who are considered as potential reproductive bodies. In
a patriarchal society, such as Mandisa’s, with minimal rights over their bodies, the
women’s biological existence becomes contingent upon the acceptance of the dis­
courses of sexuality, reproduction, and marriage.
Magona provides a detailed account of the prohibitions and preventive measures
practiced by Mandisa’s community to secure the prospective reproductive bodies. The
elder women (mothers and grandmothers) inspect the teenage girls to ensure their
purity, and if the girls protest against this practice, they are threatened with being
scrutinized by the male members. Such cost-effective and discreet use of the family
produces maximum results. The girls remain cautious enough not to face the harrow­
ing experience of being inspected by their male superiors. Mandisa recounts her
disgusting experience of being the subject of her mother’s monthly examination:
“Mama’s making sure I remained ‘whole’ or ‘unspoilt’ as she said.”16 She grudgingly
13
Samuelson, “The Mother as Witness: Reading Mother to Mother alongside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission,” 130.
14
Ibid., 130–31.
15
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 26.
16
Magona, Mother to Mother, 95.
166 N. DEY ROY

accepts this otherwise humiliating practice as her mother browbeats her by saying, “If
you don’t want me see you, I’m calling your fathers to come and do it themselves.”17
These measures help to subjugate the female body to what is socially designated as
“good and right and proper” and “fitting.”18 These societal and familial dictates, while
inculcating fear of disgrace, indirectly indoctrinate the girls with the feminine respon­
sibilities, duties, and roles. Mandisa’s mother constantly reminds her “it is the girl’s
responsibility . . . to see that certain boundaries are not crossed.”19 From this very
young age, a girl is trained to understand the importance of the duties and respon­
sibilities that her gender confers upon her. The focus of such disciplinary regulation
of female bodies, as Foucault describes in Sexuality, is “their utility and their docility,
their distribution and their submission.”20 This surveillance regime requires the girls
to obey the commands, which gradually creates disciplined “docile bodies” who are
healthy, virgin, and also obedient.
Mandisa’s mother’s and grandmother’s actions and behavior clearly demonstrate how
far the women internalize this regime of bodily surveillance. Doing so, these women
become both the victims and the apparatuses of the biopolitics that aims to secure the
potential reproductive agents. Laying bare the family’s role in safeguarding Mandisa’s
virginity and defining her sexuality, Magona displays the dissemination of patriarchal
power and the deployment of its disciplinary regime through the intricate network of the
family members. Here, the family works as an institution that accepts and imposes the
pre-determined discursive rules and norms to control the girls from their childhood and
to curb their anomalous sexual behaviors, which can harm the would-be procreators.
While discussing the Foucauldian concept of “power,” David Macey asserts that power
does not reside in “single authority,” but rather works through “multiple networks and
relations of force that are always open to conflict and negotiation.”21 Thus, family plays
a quintessential part in this surveillance regime perpetuating the dominance of the
patriarchal system.
Living in a society of rampant rape, abduction, and lack of proper sex education, the
South African mothers espouse such regulations and surveillance strategies to save their
girls and meet the expectations of the larger community. Being forcefully relocated, living
in the unstable tin shacks and scrambling to meet their ends, the dislocated families face
difficulties in shielding their adolescent girls. The mothers (such as Mandisa’s), who had
to work as maids, gladly adopt and adapt the measures of physical examination to save
their girls from any unwanted pregnancy. This physical inspection serves two purposes:
one, it conforms to the discourse of patriarchal society to preserve the potential repro­
ductive body; two, the fear-psychology of this procedure saves the girls from the botched
abortion and untimely death. In a way, the fear of being disgraced and the fear of
premature death work in tandem to make girls cautious about their virginity.
Mandisa’s immediate feelings after the discovery of her pregnancy betray the latent
effects of the society’s indoctrination regarding female virginity. Her deep fear, which
is definitely a normal reaction given her age and position, reveals how the structural

17
Ibid., 98.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid., 97.
20
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 139.
21
Macey, “Rethinking Biopolitics, Race and Power in the Wake of Foucault,” 196.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 167

regulations and disciplinary measures make a girl feel accountable for her actions.
Mandisa states with deep remorse that even being a virgin mother cannot save her
from the upcoming dreadful consequences. She vents her fear and says in despair,
“what good was that precious virginity under these changed circumstances? I wished
I would just die . . . . I was so ashamed. So scared. My whole world has simply collapsed
and was no more.”22 The conception of a child immediately disrupts her world and puts
an end to her girlhood.
Mandisa stops being a teenage girl, and becomes a would-be mother who has
responsibilities toward her baby and family. She blurts out, “my very life came to an
abrupt halt. The life I had known. The life I had envisaged. Everything I had ever known
had been bulldozed, extinguished, pulverized. Everything was no more.”23 The realiza­
tion of the significance of her pregnancy destroys her defiant nature that used to
challenge the physical inspection and surveillance. This pregnancy forces her to subscribe
and succumb to the socio-cultural ideal that women should not be impregnated before
marriage because that would devalue her prospect in marriage. Angela King explains that
such “biological essentialist and determinist paradigms” of the male-dominated society
“define[s] woman according to her reproductive physiology.”24 The consequences of
Mandisa’s accidental pregnancy manifest these “essentialist and deterministic para­
digms,” and Mandisa grasps her failure to perform the role of a capable reproductive
agent in the society. She understands that she has crossed the bar of appropriate sexual
behavior or the biological standards for the female members of the society.
Mandisa’s family confines her to escape the scathing gibes of the neighbors. However,
this house arrest is a kind of punishment to teach her the implication of her noncom­
pliance and to make her realize the responsibilities of her forthcoming role as a mother.
Mandisa remembers how her mother constantly monitors her actions during her con­
finement period. She says that she “was a prisoner in [her] home. Mama forbade [her]
even to go to the toilet except during” the early hours of the dawn and the sunset.25 Her
mother forces her to use a chamber pot during the day and stops going to her work to
keep an eye on Mandisa. Mandisa’s experience shows the suffering that a teenage black
girl can face due to her unwanted pregnancy. Her motherhood manifests in diminished
and delimited female subjectivity. Confined in her house, she keeps on hoping to meet
her boyfriend China, the father of her baby. Unfortunately, as a single mother, she has no
right to contact the father of the baby. The patriarchal power structure forces the female
body to follow the normal order of the society, which in Mandisa’s case is to wait for the
male members of her family take her to “China’s home to present the case before them.”26
The pregnant girl’s future basically rests in the hands of the patriarchs of the society.
Guilt-ridden and ashamed, the girl turns into a voiceless victim of the disciplinary
discourses of the society.
The fictional rendition of Mandisa’s pregnancy thus explores the synergy between
Foucauldian theory of biopolitical power and socio-cultural standards of patriarchal
society. Mandisa’s position as a teenage single mother denotes how the concepts of

22
Magona, Mother to Mother, 114.
23
Ibid.
24
King, “The Prisoner of Gender,” 31.
25
Magona, Mother to Mother, 117.
26
Ibid., 119.
168 N. DEY ROY

right and wrong are structured and executed through diverse power relations in her
community. Mandisa’s pregnancy marks her as an aberration from the normal female
identity. Mandisa’s mother clarifies that the unwanted pregnancy has no effect on the
position and character of China, as he is a man. In a community where women are
criticized for the tiniest mistake, such unwanted pregnancy marks an unmarried girl as
a fallen woman, a burden that should be disposed of. Moreover, such pregnancy before
marriage lowers the lobola (bride price) signifying the decrease in economic utility that
the girl’s parents expect for nurturing a healthy, virgin girl for marriage. Ruth Miller
states that this regulation of the inception of pregnancy materializes “in the name of
protecting a woman’s political, sexual, social, and civilizational self, rather than in the
name of the health and integrity of the race.”27 She defines the womb as “a biopolitical
space” because “it is in the womb that the bio-political subject is formed.”28 According to
Miller, the womb does not empower the mother; rather, it renders her into a biopolitical
subject consenting and yielding to the norms and rules of the family (inside) and
(outside) the society. Mandisa’s womb – the symbol of her unplanned pregnancy and
of her unborn baby – stands as the “biopolitical space” where the future “biopolitical
subject” has been conceived. Both the society and family are concerned about the birth,
security, and preservation of this subject, who is considered as the potential heir of the
family. A single mother is not considered as capable of providing proper security and
supporting this future biopolitical subject. Marriage is the only option for young single
mothers. Silently, Mandisa observes the disturbing discussion about lobola and her
marriage. The constant control curbs her agency and reduces her to a powerless, voiceless
female body at the mercy of the society. She is allowed to give birth to the baby. Mandisa
is lucky enough that she does not have to face a painful abortion. In the absence of
modern medical procedures and resources, such abortion can result in the mother’s
death. Allowed to “foster life,” Mandisa’s position exemplifies the working of biopower
that, according to Foucault, allows to “foster life or disallow it to the point of death.”29
Allowed to “foster life,” she becomes a voiceless tool of the social structure, a “docile
body,” trying to fit herself into the role assigned to her. Rather than empowering her,
motherhood makes her ready to accept social and familial instructions about her life.
Mandisa’s experience as a young, single mother indicates that motherhood is
a complex state of being. Though this experience of motherhood is “joy, pure and
simple” and can make one forget all “disappointment and bitterness, all grudges,
everything negative,” motherhood is beyond doubt a social institution that patri­
archy defines and controls.30 However, Mandisa’s case specifies how motherhood
affects a girl’s position in both the family and the larger society. As a mother, she is
expected to be responsible to both her immediate family and her whole community.
Motherhood is not just about personal experience and feelings. Under the subjective
façade of motherhood, the objective dimensions are quite palpable and tangible.
Being a mother, a woman becomes the fulcrum of the family, who is expected to
adopt a specific identity and role. Thus, Mandisa’s wish not to marry China and
continue her study is never fulfilled. Even her father (Tata) has to change his

27
Miller, The Limits of Bodily Integrity, 65.
28
Ibid, 6.
29
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 143.
30
Magona, Mother to Mother, 127.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 169

decision as “his brothers, and the whole clan were opposed to idea of” her “going
back to school.”31 She is not only the mother of her newborn baby, but she also
“belonged to the whole clan in good and bad time.”32 Her father cannot make
decisions for her on his own because the “decisions affecting [her] life were not his
to make . . . not alone, or to the exclusion of what collective wisdom dictated.”33 The
prospect of pursuing her study and the decision to be a single mother set her apart
from the social standard of normative married life. For her family, marriage is the
only viable and respectable option for the security of both the mother and the child.
Mandisa’a society blatantly overlooks the subjective position and negates the indi­
vidual decisions of the single mother.

IV
Discussing the patrilineal and patriarchal structure of Xhosa society, Zoliswa Made
comments that women’s economic dependency on their male counterparts along with
the “cultural practices of respect, has promoted obedience and passivity as hallmarks of
African femininity.”34 This ideology denies a young girl like Mandisa the right to decide
the future of her child. The patriarchs of the society goad her to marry China. Again,
Mandisa’s rebellious nature is curbed, entrenching the mandates of “obedience and
passivity,” and making her docile enough to perpetuate the male rule and female
subordination. Magona shows us that marriage becomes a “mechanic of power”35 that
trains her to respect and obey the customs and rules of her husband’s household.
Analyzing the Xhosa culture during the apartheid era, Soga describes the culture of
hlonipha which he translates as “to respect or to worship,” specifying a married woman’s
subservient position at her husband’s household where she is considered as an outsider.36
This cultural imperative to subdue the newly wed woman is executed by forcing her to
perform several rituals and to follow the household customs. The moment Mandisa
enters China’s house as a new bride, her identity is “manipulated” and “shaped” through
the ritual of conferring a new name. Mandisa recounts, “[i]t was the custom to leave all
the things of one’s girlhood behind, including the name.”37 Renaming is a violent
“mechanic of power” that erases someone’s existing identity and imposes a new one.
This procedure molds and reshapes the female identity. Mandisa’s new name,
“Nohehake,” demonstrates the linguistic violence inflicted upon the “inapt body” of the
new wife.38 The meaning of her new name angers and annoys Mandisa: “Hehake, an
exclamation of utter surprise at some incredible, unimaginable monstrosity, some
hitherto unheard of dreadfulness.”39 Her new name symbolizes Mandisa’s inconsequen­
tial position and the unwanted, grudging acceptance of Mandisa and her son in China’s
household. Mandisa silently accepts “the mockery of a name with which” they welcome

31
Ibid 131.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Made, “Patriarchal attitudes in two selected isiXhosa literary texts,” 147.
35
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 138.
36
Soga, The Ama-Xhosa Life and Customs.
37
Magona, Mother to Mother, 135.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
170 N. DEY ROY

her “into their midst.”40 The process of naming assigns her a specific place inside the
family structure that ultimately controls and regulates her role, duties, and every aspect of
her life. Subsequently, China’s family renames her son too. They reject the child’s name
selected by Mandisa and her family because “children are named by grandparents,”
establishing their claim over their new successor.41 Her in-laws and other relatives are
angry at Mandisa’s audacity to name her son and they utter in disbelief, “You? You call
him? . . . Are you telling us you named him yourself?”42 Even being a mother, Mandisa
does not have any right to name her own child. Naming her son “Hlumelo,” she
challenges the traditional custom of naming newborn babies. It is her futile attempt to
resist the system that regulates her identity and her existence.
Rituals and ceremonies such as these, from a Foucauldian perspective, are disciplinary
processes that further “the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the
objectification of those who are subjected.”43 This description of the naming ceremony
enables Magona to call attention to the subjective positions of the African women
through the internalization of the family’s rules and customs that aim to objectify
them. Placed in this situation, the newly wed bride is incapacitated, and she silently
acquiesces to the authoritative dictates. Mandisa eventually accepts her son’s new name,
Mxolisi, incorporating the biopolitical discourses that the institution of family facilitates:
“The renaming of Hlumelo upset me. Shocked me. It was as though I lost a child.”44 The
juxtaposition of this naming ceremony with the bereavement of the loss of a child
emphasizes Mandisa’s incapacity to struggle against the established norms. Ironically,
this statement foreshadows her inability to save Mxolisi, in future, from the ill effects of
apartheid society.
However, in her in-laws’ home, Mandisa’s primary role is to perform the duty of a wife
rather than to be the mother of Mxolisi. The next day after her renaming, Mandisa begins
to perform the role of all “good makotis” – good newly married women.45 She soon
acclimatizes “to the grueling routine” of “last to bed and first to rise.”46 In the patriarchal
Xhosa community, married women like Mandisa have little control over the situation
and they are just supposed to toil hard to complete all the house chores and to obey the
male members of the household. When China leaves them for good, she becomes “a
burden” and “a real square peg in a round hole.”47 Placed in a precarious position –
without a husband but with a child – patriarchal social structure considers her as
a burden. Realizing her changed status, she leaves her in-laws’ home and finds a new
place to start her life. By not going back to her father’s home and renting a place for
herself, Mandisa strives to resist the system that restricts her to work and live as a single
mother.
However, Mandisa’s friend, Nono, urges her to move on in her life and to find a new
partner for herself. Nono’s question, “When are you giving Mxo, here, a baby sister?,”48

40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid.
43
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 185.
44
Magona, Mother to Mother, 137.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 145.
48
Ibid., 155.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 171

on the surface concerns Mandisa’s safety, but obliquely underscores the social hierarchy
and power structure that prohibit women from rearing children alone. Mandisa’s wish to
find a new partner, and her not-yet-realized plan for Mxolisi’s baby brother or sister,
immediately situate her within the discursive formation of family. Unknowingly, Nono
becomes part of the system that dictates to women when to marry, to have children, and
to conform to the normal standards of sexuality. Her simple question stirs Mandisa’s
thoughts about her own sexual desires and future. Nono’s question demonstrates how
hegemonic discourses are embedded in regular, domestic conversation. Her question
leads Mandisa to ponder over her sexuality, her desire, her position as a virgin mother –
“My virginity was rent not by a lover or husband . . . but by my boy.”49 She feels slightly
self-righteous for not being “a loose young woman” compared to her friends like Nono.50
Mandisa’s own perception of herself indicates her involuntary acceptance of the stan­
dards and discursive ideas of society regarding teenage pregnancy.
Although a “hokkie [cubicle] of [her] own” imbues Mandisa with a sense of freedom
for a short period, she cannot conceive of herself without a male counterpart, or of her
existence without further sexual relationship. Mandisa’s internal conflict reveals her own
struggle over her sexual desires and emotions:

What is the matter with you, Mandisa . . . . Who are you saving it for? China? D’you still
want him? Are you waiting for him? Or, is it your good name you’re worried about? Your
virginity, perhaps? D’you think you’ll ever be that again? Is that what is bothering you? What
you’re trying to reclaim . . . what you were cheated out of?51

These conflicting demands (her own sexual desires as a woman and her position as
a single parent) initiate a dilemma that she has to face in her further journey. Mandisa’s
realization of her feminine sexual desires indirectly posits her within the discursive
practices that regulate the female body and sexuality. Though Mandisa “made it quite
clear” that she “was not looking for marriage,” Lungile (her second boyfriend) “had
become a permanent fixture” in her home.52 Starting to live with Lungile, Mandisa
conforms to heteronormative sexual behavior. She gradually adapts the established
institution of family and totally embraces her role as a mother and a wife.
After Lungile’s border crossing to become a freedom fighter, she marries Dwadwa –
the father of her daughter Siziwe. Marriage to Dwadwa is not only necessary for the
fulfillment of her own sexual desires but is also essential to sustain her growing family.
Dwadwa’s “solid, steadfast, predictable” nature makes him the best choice for a stable
family. With time, Mandisa has internalized the patriarchal ideologies of the society that
designates “solid, steadfast, predictable” males like Dwadwa as the perfect and safe
selection for a sustainable and long married life. Mandisa’s description (or realization)
of Dwadwa as the perfect male counterpart indicates how dominant discourses shape and
control the beliefs and choices of human life, and how they construct a subject. With age
and experience, Mandisa has understood the importance of a husband to efficiently run
a family. The bold attempt to live alone with Mxolisi after China’s disappearance
gradually disappears. Now, as a mother of three children, it seems a practical decision
49
Ibid., 156.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid., 155.
52
Ibid, 157.
172 N. DEY ROY

to get married to provide the children a secure life. Her final decision to marry Dwadwa
and her reasoning behind it clearly emphasize her acceptance of the “docile position” and
her realization of the importance of the institution of family. By internalizing the
ideology of a secure family, Mandisa accepts the established patriarchal discourses of
motherhood and wifehood. Accepting these so-called ideal narratives of perfect family
and proper husband, women like Mandisa indirectly strengthen and perpetuate the
regulatory system of the society that discursively constitutes their identities and sub­
jective positions.

V
The institution of family configures and defines the role of the mother. Family guides its
members to follow several other disciplinary institutions, which train, shape, and dis­
cipline them to perform their assigned roles. In this context, Chloe Taylor has aptly
pointed out that Foucault perceives the “family as an exclusively biopolitical and dis­
ciplinary institution.”53 The patriarchal society solidifies the role of the father (the
patriarch figure) within the family, who “exercises power in his name” and becomes
the “most intense pole of individualization, much more intense than the wife or
children.”54 Mother assumes the role of caregiver and nourisher, who surveils, scruti­
nizes, and protects the progeny and rears them as healthy, normal, capable members to
strengthen the family unit. Performing such duties, mothers become conduits of bio-
power in the family: “Not only do women have a privileged relation to biopower due to
their procreative roles as mothers, but also in other caretaking and typically feminine
roles such as nursing, teaching, family medicine.”55 The failure to fulfill these roles can
mark one as the “bad mother.” As per the standards of maternal role in the family,
Mandisa fails to become a “good mother” as her son disrupts the familial code of
discipline and regulation.
Cheryl Walker investigates how the varied perceptions of “the good mother” in South
Africa among both white and black races function as the core element in the prevalent
maternal discourses. Based on Walker’s socio-historical study, Koyana contends that the
“each group’s [the black working class and white middle class] economic activity” affects
the mother’s identity and her role.56 In Mother to Mother, Mandisa’s identity as a mother
is defined and affected by her family’s economic condition. Mandisa serves as
a housemaid for a white family to support her own family and to bring up her children
properly. With her husband’s meager income, she has to take “a job. What else? As
a domestic servant.”57 As a result, she fails to tend her children during their childhood
and early adulthood as “a mother’s supposed to do.”58 Even if she feels utterly guilty for
neglecting her children, she says that she has to “swallow my guilt . . . . We couldn’t
possibly survive just on what Dwadwa makes . . . . We hardly make it as it is, with me
working full time.”59 Mandisa’s position as a mother and a working housemaid thus, on
53
Taylor, “Foucault and Familial Power,” 206.
54
Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 80.
55
Taylor, “Foucault and Familial Power,” 213.
56
Koyana “Why are you carrying books?” 21–22.
57
Magona, Mother to Mother, 145.
58
Ibid., 8.
59
Ibid.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 173

the one hand, discloses the economic condition of black African mothers during the
apartheid era, and on the other, explains the reasons behind her failure to live up to the
standard of the “good mother.” This unique position indicates the convergence of the
severe effects of apartheid and also patriarchy on poor black South African mothers.
The forced removals during apartheid affected families socially and economically,
causing psychological damage. Along with the sudden loss of social correspondence
(friends and neighbors), the displacement produces economic deficit in the family
units. Depletion of the household income forces the women to accept different menial
jobs. In this changed socio-economic condition, earning for the family becomes a new
institution consigned to the women. Even Mandisa’s mother starts working as domestic
help after their displacement to Guguletu. The socio-economic changes, along with the
demands of the family, construct new parameters and goals for the women – specifically
the mothers, who raise and safeguard the future generation. Magona’s portrayal of this
altered maternal role distinctly presents the mothers as the victims of dual exploitations.
So, this changed situation does not empower the woman to be the individuated matriarch
of the family. Rather, the mothers just act as agents to rear the healthy successors and
sustain the institution of family.
Altering one’s maternal status appears to be a significant variable that directly influ­
ences the lives of the children. Mandisa recounts how the African mothers’ changed
position redefines the dimensions of childrearing. The mother’s absence from the house­
hold deprives the children of their deserved attention and care: “There are not enough
mothers during the day to force the children to go to school and stay there for the
whole day.”60 With none to guide and control them, the children “do pretty much as they
please. And get away with it too. Who can always remember what was forbidden and
what was permitted?”61 Even Mandisa, as a mother, reflects on her vain attempt to pose
as an authoritative figure, knowing quite well her incapacity to supervise her children.62
After coming back from work, tired and battered, the mother cannot look after her
children properly. Even if “[f]or working class women, motherhood was inseparable
from work, both productive (outside the home) and reproductive (inside the home),” it
becomes difficult for the mothers to strike a balance between the two roles.63 They have
“to work . . . to stay alive,” resulting in their children’s neglected upbringing. Mandisa
sadly sums up that “the righting of one, is the undoing of another (problem).”64 This
crude irony of their choice demonstrates how black African mothers become helpless
victims of the systematic violence of apartheid that damages the “ordinary” sphere of
household.65
Forcefully replaced and burdened with new roles, the mothers are always “at work. Or
they are drunk. Defeated by life. Dead.”66 Mandisa bewails the sheer change of African
motherhood under the inhuman brutality of apartheid: “In the times of our grand­
mothers and their grandmothers before them, African people lived to see their great-

60
Magona, Mother to Mother, 32.
61
Ibid., 8.
62
Ibid.
63
Koyana, “‘Why are you carrying books?” 22.
64
Ibid., 9.
65
Njabulo Ndebele in “The Rediscovery of the Ordinary” discusses the latent “ordinary” violence against the prominent
“spectacular” violence in Africa (Ndebele, “Rediscovery”).
66
Magona, Mother to Mother, 32.
174 N. DEY ROY

great-grandchildren. Today, one is lucky to see a grandchild” (32). These mothers are far
removed from the generations of African women who used to work on farms and fields.
In an interview with Renee Schatteman, Magona states that these mothers “worked so
that their children could at least have something to eat.”67 However, such jobs never set
the women free. Devoid of subsistence rights, the mothers engage themselves in support­
ing the family rather than patiently nurturing the children by staying at home. Being left
alone, the children fall prey to the “senseless inter- and intra-racial violence as well as
other nefarious happenings.”68 Mandisa explains how Mxolisi grows up in the midst of
such violent and disturbing ambience. Mxolisi “could already tell the difference between
the bang! of a gun firing and the Gooph! of a burning skull cracking” just at the age of
four.69 His childhood is scarred by several brutal incidents in which he at times unknow­
ingly becomes participant and mute observer. Being brought up in a social system “that
promoted a twisted sense of right or wrong,” Mxolisi absorbs the violent ideologies that
force him to indulge in inhuman atrocities.70 Reflecting on her son’s murder of Amy
Biehl, Mandisa impassively states to Amy’s mother, “I was not surprised that my son
killed your daughter.”71 Mandisa’s analysis of apartheid’s effect on young people like
Mxolisi throws light on the helplessness of mothers like her. Even if she has no role in her
son’s atrocious activity, she is held responsible for her son’s deviance.
However, some disciplinary institutions of the society are quite noticeably more
violent than the insidious discursive ideologies that mold and shape feminine
identity. Samuelson notes that the police raid of Mandisa’s house in search of
Mxolisi is “a scene in which the incursion of violence upon her life is mapped
out.”72 Violence of such state-guided police investigation exerts disciplinary regula­
tions upon the lawless and culpable. In her maternal role – as mother of Mxolisi –
Mandisa faces the corporeal disciplinary actions in lieu of her son, as if she
influences Mxolisi to kill Amy Biehl: “people look at me as if I am the one who
killed your daughter. Or expressly told Mxolisi to go and kill her.”73 The story that
unfolds behind Mandisa’s position as the mother of a killer indicates that “[m]
otherhood is a ‘regulatory regime,’” whereby “the fear of not being a ‘Good Mother’
oppresses, regulates, controls, and produces docile bodies that will not resist, or
question” the established discourses of society.74 Lindsey Rock explains that the
mother who fails to be the “Good Mother” (according to the social discourse) tries
to “find value in herself by devaluing ‘Other’ mothers who do not share her values
or beliefs regarding childrearing.”75 But in Mother to Mother, Mandisa does not
devalue “the other mother’s” beliefs; rather, from the beginning of her narrative she
accepts “[t]he hurt of the other mother.”76 At the end of her narration, she
addresses “the other mother” (Biehl’s mother) as “my Sister-Mother” and poses
some crucial questions: “Am I your enemy? Are you mine? What wrong have
67
Schatteman, “The Stories She Writes,” 178.
68
Magona, Mother to Mother, v.
69
Ibid., 146.
70
Ibid., vi.
71
Ibid., 1.
72
Samuelson, “The Mother as Witness,” 138.
73
Magona, Mother to Mother, 163.
74
Rock, “The ‘Good Mother’ vs. the ‘Other’ Mother – The Girl-Mom,” 21.
75
Ibid.
76
Magona, Mother to Mother, 4.
 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES 175

I done . . . or you me?”77 She relates herself to Biehl’s mother and states, “My Sister-
Mother, we are bound in this sorrow . . . . we did not choose, we are chosen.”78
Only analysis of the social discourses that construct motherhood and the idea of
mother can help one to understand the position of both Mandisa and Biehl’s
mother.

Conclusion
The society that designates Mandisa as the killer’s mother marks Amy’s mother as the
victim’s mother. Their identities as mothers (irrespective of the color line) of killer or the
victim are conditioned and structured by the violent discourses of apartheid society.
Analysis of Mandisa’s story underscores the multifaceted and complicated roles she takes
up as a woman that ultimately deemphasizes Mxolisi’s story – the story of the killer. The
story of the woman (before being Mxolisi’s mother) remains at the background as the
TRC makes her just an onlooker in the case of Amy Biehl’s killing. Delimited and
disenfranchised by institutional mandates such as the TRC’s, Mandisa’s story becomes
just another story of pain and suffering due to a delinquent son. A biopolitical reading of
Mandisa’s story specifies the importance of understanding the regulatory violence of
social norms and rules (that silently work through discursive practices) to which the
women knowingly and unknowingly submit themselves. Given the country’s unrelenting
gender-based violence (even in recent times), a biopolitical reading of literary works such
as Mother to Mother helps us to perceive beyond the historical, political, and economic
reasons behind women’s subjugation. It throws light on the insidious regulatory social
regime that monitors, controls, and suppresses the female bodies making their roles –
mother, wife, daughter – complex.

Acknowledgments
This paper started as a small response paper in a course on South African literature conducted by
my advisor, Dr Renee Schatteman at Georgia State University. I thank her for encouraging me to
write this article and providing feedback on all the drafts. I also thank two anonymous respected
reviewers whose comments and suggestions have enriched the paper. And, I thank Dr Shane
Graham for helping with the complicated editing procedure. Publishing this paper was an
enriching academic endeavor.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Namrata Dey Roy She is a doctoral candidate of English Literature at the English department of
Georgia State University. Her research interest is postcolonial literature and theories with a focus
on South African Anglophone writers. She works as a teaching assistant and writing studio

77
Ibid., 198.
78
Ibid., 201.
176 N. DEY ROY

consultant. She completed her bachelor’s degree (English Honors) from Presidency College,
Calcutta and Masters from Calcutta University, Calcutta. She completed her M.Phil from
Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta. She has presented papers at several national and interna­
tional conferences (SAMLA, BCPS) and has publications online and offline.

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