Why stories within stories?

I applied for a leadership development programme in 2017 and at the selection camp we were asked  to bring an item that we associate with our South African story that we would have to share with the other candidates and the programme managers. I struggled to think of an item to share because I had never really thought about what my South African story was. I brought along with me a journal that I had kept over the years to document stories that I had been told by family members and little diagrams that I had drawn of my family tree. My South African story is that I am a story within stories.

The first is that I am a Christ follower and I believe that I am a part of God's bigger story. Growing up, I was always amazed at the stories that I read of individuals who were used in extraordinary ways by God to reveal his glory. I was also born into the Bikitsha and Mlonyeni families, I am a story within this story: of two families from eGcuwa nase Dutywa. As a young black woman living in South Africa I am a story within our country's past, present and future. These stories are not independent of each other, but they intertwine to make a beautiful, complex and bigger story.

I chose the title stories within stories because I want to write biographies of women in South Africa who were involved in politics, who wrote as well as ordinary women whose stories form a part of our history as a country. Women have been erased from South Africa's political memory and historiography and I hope to use this blog to write about them and to explore culture, feminism, Christianity, education and other themes that jump out from their lives.

I am a History Honours student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and my thesis is on the political praxis of Nontsizi Mgqwetho's poetry, seeing her publishing her poetry as a political act and also looking at the politics influencing her views and poetry. I am obsessed with Xhosa Methodist hymns and I love laughing.