A Lion on
the Landing is the translation into English of Joubert’s
autobiography, ’n Wonderlike geweld:
Jeugherinneringe, 2005. The new title acknowledges Joubert’s courage in
exposing the truth about Africa in her writings. The epigraph is an excerpt
from Page 2, when she is barely three years old:
Where the stairs made a turn, there was a dark,
crouching lion carved deeply into the landing post, with open mouth, two fangs
and two paws that wanted to tear free of the wood. She crept fearfully up the
stairs with her back against the wall as far away from the lion as she could,
and at the very top she looked down on the lion through the bars and laughed
out loud with pleasure.
Joubert’s courage as a vulnerable woman in a
patriarchal society is foreshadowed by the three-year-old Elsa finding pleasure
in overcoming her fears. Indeed, a driving force throughout her life has been
the passion to meet head-on the mysterious, hidden truths about the people of
Africa. These were her lions to be mastered.
There is also a second autobiography that details her
life from age 26, starting with her journey to Central Africa and down the Nile
as a lone young woman, and going on to describe her life in South Africa and
her further travels in Africa and abroad in the second half of the last century
(Reisiger: Die Limietberge oor,
2009).
The present volume is about Joubert’s childhood and
youth growing up in the staunchly Afrikaner community of Paarl in the Cape
interior in the early twentieth century. She is immersed in a society that is
focused on developing a unity through an exclusive language, culture, education
and tradition. The rising Afrikaner nationalism would eventually lead to the
National Party coming into power in 1948 and maintaining that position,
together with the disastrous apartheid policies, for 35 years.
Joubert tells her story in simple language in the
third person, and with a ruthless emphasis on revealing the “truth” of events
as well as her feelings as a young girl; in the same spirit as she wrote the
story of Poppie. It is a sensitive and detailed personal account with little
judgment but rather emotionally laden depictions, leaving readers to draw their
own conclusions about the will to form a cohesive political entity. Moreover,
her development as a writer is detailed, beginning with her decision at an
early age that she would write in support of South Africa and Afrikaners. The
irony is that she would go on to speak up against the Afrikaner policies of
apartheid in her writings. Her agony over this paradigm shift is described in
her second autobiography.
Elsa Joubert Souh African author Skrywer Poppie Nongena The
Missionary Die missionaries Klaas Steytler British Royal Society of Literature
Bonga CNA-prize Hertzogprys Ons wag op die kaptein Die resie van Isobelle ’n
Wonderlike geweld
Reisiger A Lion on the Landing Irene Wainwright Winifrid
Holtby Order of Ikhamanga Afrikaners French Huguenot Paarl
