Charlotte Maxeke is one of the most misunderstood figures in South African nationalist narratives about the struggle for liberation. Maxeke is known as a ‘mother of the liberation struggle’ but no more – not an intellectual, a theorist, a feminist or a nationalist, merely a figurehead. Yet Maxeke's life enables an interrogation of the links that bind the state, women's political pasts and the politics of the public and private. Although she is celebrated within the African National Congress (ANC) and more broadly (witness the renaming of Johannesburg Hospital Charlotte Maxeke in 2008), the nationalist narratives of the struggle do not engage in a meaningful dialogue with Maxeke's ideas about, for instance, gender inequality, ‘native womanhood,’ justice, education, health and employment. Biographies of the nationalist movement sketch her as a subject whose identity has been misinterpreted. One example of this misunderstanding is the attempts to fix her within linear, incremental narratives about the origins of the liberation struggle.

While it highlights the strategies used by the nationalist movement, the literature on the rise of African nationalism in South Africa overlooks the intellectual history of women. This has resulted in what I call ‘struggle biography,’ which casts the involvement of women in the struggle in predetermined terms as an effect of the generosity of male figures. This chapter attempts to account for the intellectual history of women such as Maxeke, who injected a gendered reading of society into nationalist politics in the context of the 1910s and 1920s, thus shaping public political discourse in the early twentieth century. It does so by focusing on the socio-economic context that groomed Maxeke into a political subject in the various stages of her life: her family background, education, adulthood and political activities.

My research into Charlotte Maxeke's intellectual contribution began with an evaluation of collections and narratives of the struggle for liberation. My personal interest in the struggle was largely influenced by interviews I conducted with political activists while working as a research assistant for the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET), although my new interest soon distracted me from my original task. Outside the confines of the SADET project, my interest in the participation of women took on a life of its own as I began to focus on primary documents.