The women of the Mazeppa in 1842: absences from settler Natal’s social memory and memorialisation

Abstract

During the conflict between the Boers and the British at Port Natal in 1842, a group of women played a significant and heroic role far beyond the prescribed roles of women in the Victorian era. The concept of Victorian military heroism is discussed to provide a context for the further discussion of this incident. Regrettably, the actions of the women of the Mazeppa are only very rarely recalled in social memory, in traditions, and in texts, but not on memorials. This is contrasted with the memorialisation of women in Afrikaner mythology, as expressed at the Voortrekker Monument. The social memory of colonial Natal and the dominant historical narratives favoured heroic male figures, particularly in this instance, the male settler Dick King (his Zulu companion Ndongeni kaKoki was included in the memorialisation as a contested afterthought). However, the heroism of the women who sailed the little schooner Mazeppa out of the Bay of Natal, under heavy Boer fire, north to the Mozambique Channel in search of a British warship to come to the aid of their menfolk, has been largely ignored. Their voyage was unsuccessful, but this paper surmises that even if they had been successful, their contribution would have been memorialised in a manner subsidiary to that of the male ‘heroic’ figures aboard the ship.