Robert R. Edgar - Josie Mpama/Palmer: Get Up and Get Moving

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Josie Mpama/Palmer

OHIO SHORT HISTORIES OF AFRICA

This series of Ohio Short Histories of Africa is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of topics in African history, politics, and biography, written by some of the leading experts in their fields.

Steve Biko

by Lindy Wilson

Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto weSizwe): South Africas Liberation Army, 1960s1990s

by Janet Cherry

Epidemics: The Story of South Africas Five Most Lethal Human Diseases

by Howard Phillips

South Africas Struggle for Human Rights

by Saul Dubow

San Rock Art

by J.D. Lewis-Williams

Ingrid Jonker: Poet under Apartheid

by Louise Viljoen

The ANC Youth League

by Clive Glaser

Govan Mbeki

by Colin Bundy

The Idea of the ANC

by Anthony Butler

Emperor Haile Selassie

by Bereket Habte Selassie

Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary

by Ernest Harsch

Patrice Lumumba

by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja

Short-changed? South Africa since Apartheid

by Colin Bundy

The ANC Womens League: Sex, Gender and Politics

by Shireen Hassim

The Soweto Uprising

by Noor Nieftagodien

Frantz Fanon: Toward a Revolutionary Humanism

by Christopher J. Lee

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

by Pamela Scully

Ken Saro-Wiwa

by Roy Doron and Toyin Falola

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation

by Douglas H. Johnson

Julius Nyerere

by Paul Bjerk

Thabo Mbeki

by Adekeye Adebajo

Robert Mugabe

by Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut

Albert Luthuli

by Robert Trent Vinson

Boko Haram

by Brandon Kendhammer and Carmen McCain

A Short History of Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart

by Terri Ochiagha

Amlcar Cabral

by Peter Karibe Mendy

Wangari Maathai

by Tabitha Kanogo

Josie Mpama/Palmer: Get Up and Get Moving

by Robert R. Edgar

Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa

by Nwando Achebe

Josie Mpama/Palmer

Get Up and Get Moving

Robert R. Edgar

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

ohioswallow.com

2020 by Ohio University Press

All rights reserved

To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).

Printed in the United States of America

Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Edgar, Robert R., author.

Title: Josie Mpama/Palmer : get up and get moving / Robert R. Edgar.

Other titles: Ohio short histories of Africa.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2020. | Series: Ohio short histories of Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020001392 | ISBN 9780821424100 (paperback) | ISBN 9780821440940 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Mpama, Josie, 1903-1979. | Women political activists--South Africa--Biography. | Communists--South Africa--Biography. | Anti-apartheid activists--South Africa--Biography. | South Africa--History--20th century.

Classification: LCC DT1927.M63 E34 2020 | DDC 968.05092--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001392

To the memory of Comrade Professor Phil Bonner, a friend who understood the distinction between scholarship and activism as well as how they can enrich each other

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Researching the Life of Josie Mpama/Palmer

Piecing together the life of Josie Mpama/Palmer was challenging and required me to draw on a range of oral and written sources. My initial interest in her emanated from my research on Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana, her common-law husband from the late 1920s to the late 1930s. I interviewed him at length in Lesotho (where he lived in exile) in the 1980s. After the dramatic change in South Africas political environment in 1990, I started collecting information on Josie. A starting point was an interview that Julia Wells conducted with her in 1977 that focused on her activism in the South African city of Potchefstroom. I interviewed two of her daughters, Carol and Hilda, in 1995 as well as close friends who lived in her neighborhood in 1998. Later I interviewed four of her grandchildren, Belinda and Virginia Palmer and Lorraine and Bella Johnson, who spent much time in her home in Mzimhlophe when they were growing up and who gave me their generations perspective on her.

I also identified a variety of written sources. I combed through Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), left-of-center, and black newspapers published in the 1930s and 1940s. These contained materials on her public activities as well as columns by her on womens issues.

Government records at the National Archives in Pretoria yielded information on her father, Stephen Mpama: a divorce case, a criminal trial, and the estate record at his death. The archives also contained extensive Potchefstroom municipal records on the protests of the late 1920s in which Josie Mpama participated. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Justice Department issued regular reports on communist activities in the Union of South Africa that occasionally mentioned her activities. I also consulted the Justice Departments banning file on Josie Mpama from the 1940s and 1950s.

Critical records came from the papers of two important figures in the CPSA, Jack and Ray Simons, held at the University of Cape Town. Their papers include minutes of a critical CPSA central committee meeting at the end of 1938.

A crucial breakthrough came in 1998 when I examined the extensive Communist International (Comintern) and CPSA records at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History in Moscow. The CPSA may have been careful about defining its image to outsiders, but its records are remarkably revealing and do not shy away from revealing internal splits, personal disputes, and ideological controversies. When Josie was in Moscow for party training in 1935, she left writings, including an autobiography about her youth and candid essays detailing her views on CPSA matters. While there, she testified at an important Comintern hearing on ideological disputes within the CPSA that featured Moses Kotane and Lazar Bach.

Despite consulting this range of sources, I still found significant gaps in reconstructing phases of Josies life. I hope that other historians will unearth more material.

A Note on the Names Mpama and Palmer

Josie used two surnames, Mpama and Palmer. Mpama (sometimes spelled MPama) came from her father, Stephen Mpama. The change to Palmer, an anglicization of Mpama, came in the mid-1930s when she and her family were living in Sophiatown. The advantage of taking the name Palmer is that her children could, with a European name, qualify for better schools. Because she shifted back and forth between the names throughout her life, I have avoided confusion by often referring to her simply as Josie in my narrative.

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