The older my children get, the harder it is to know what it means to protect them.
Even as we enter the tween years in our household, which feels like a far cry from the depths of teen-dom, both child and parents are learning over and over again what it means to negotiate freedom, independence, and choice.
The story of Manche Masemola, martyred at age 15 in Marishane, South Africa in 1928, offers families a story of the nebulousness of such negotiations. One of four children and of the Pedi people, Manche was sent to work on her family’s farm. The Pedi, once a powerful kingdom, had been depleted at the hands (and guns) of colonizers. Pedi farms and families were relegated to a small area—the least desirable pieces of the land. With colonization, we Anglicans know, comes the Church. A local congregation began in the area, led by an African priest, Fr. Augustine Moeka, along with a school and infirmary.
Manche’s cousin Lucia began attending services at the church and reportedly invited Manche, then 14, to join her. Manche’s parents remonstrated, as joining a church was understood as participating in the life of the colonizers—and by default, abandoning the heritage of her own people and family. Manche continued attending services and then entered the catechumenate. Fr. Moeka understood the familial challenges—he would tell the girls in his classes to honor their parents, especially as families would physically punish their children or remove their clothes as a way of shaming them into not attending church. Manche declared that her parents would not stop her from attending and, indeed, from being baptized.
Missionary tales and historiography usually have a good/ bad framework—the good people are always the Christians, stalwart and brave in the face of danger. The original tale of Manche was that, in defiance of her parents, she continued going to church and professed a Christian faith, and because of this, her parents—and possibly her whole community—set about to sway her with potions, violence, and finally, death at the hands of her parents at age 15, a month before her scheduled baptism at Easter. They buried her by a granite rock ‘in a lonely place’.
Records show that people began visiting her grave on Easter only a year later—and that it became a pilgrimage site soon after (along with asks for funds to build a church there). In 1975, she was given a feast day in the Anglican calendar, and in 1998, she became among one of the ‘modern martyrs’ above the door at Westminster Abbey.
When I first read Manche’s story, I kept thinking about her adolescent vigor, drive, and fierce independence. But after reading it three or four times, I kept returning to her parents. Her parents who, for all intents and purposes, loved her. Needed her. Relied on her. Saw her as the future of a past that had been taken from them. Watched her, in their estimation, become less like them and theirs—and more like the people who had taken their livelihoods (and ultimately futures) from them. Feared for her.
What would I do, I kept—I keep—thinking, to protect my child from herself and from those who would take her from me?
Murder isn’t on the top of my list, but I can sense in myself the hopes that I have already for my children, and what of their heritage I desire for them to carry on with them into the future. I can see in myself, in my darker, or rather, more honest moments, what I would do to protect them, even if it meant curtailing their freedom and independence.
Fear can have a terrible hold on us—parents and people who love young ones. We fear what may sway them and entice them outside of our control. Or, fear how their choices can wholly detour from the path we have set for them (and for ourselves). The Collect for Manche Masemola includes this line: “Grant to us your servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in [Manche’s] triumph may profit by her example.”
A like faith and power of love.
In 1968, forty years after Manche’s murder, her mother converted to Christianity. I continuously wonder at the strength it took, the love at work, the fears and oppressions faced, for her to make that decision. My deepest hope is that it was a move made in love—in moving closer to her daughter, long held in the arms of God—and as an act of courage. Even more, as redemption; allowing love to conquer fear and death and offer up new life.
Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
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