Interviews

CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION

7. Sources

7.1. Oral Sources

7.1.2. Interviews

How did the interviewees construct their narratives? In the area of gender, one looks at the large number of women working in the hospitals. Due to the caring role assigned to women by most societies, it is therefore not surprising that for this study there are more women interviewees than there are men. Critiquing the gender imbalances in the nursing profession, Shula Marks wrote that the sisterhoods of Kimberley under Sister Henrietta Stockdale did a disfavour to the profession:

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Sister Henrietta and the sisterhoods in moulding the very concept of nursing in South Africa in these years – and since. Thus professional nursing in South Africa inherited from the sisterhoods the military notions of duty and the control of nursing staff and patient care could only be entrusted to a

‘lady’, an educated woman who was usually wealthy and of some social standing – all also characteristics of the British profession.²⁶

Obstacles militating against a comprehensive research on Lutheran mission hospitals in southern Africa are mainly of a financial and temporal nature. Many medical missionaries have returned to the countries of origin. Given the limited finances and time-slots in which one could set up interview appointments, one had to settle for those interviewees who could avail themselves for interview. In 2002, while in Germany, I successfully managed to interview nine people previously connected to the medical missions. While some people appreciate to be interviewed for various reasons,²⁷ others would rather not talk about their past experiences. It is understandable that some missionaries, especially those who returned to their country fearing a revolution or revenge by Blacks after the 1994 democratic elections, refused to be interviewed. Although academic, the research project can be misinterpreted as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of sorts, to expose the crimes or faults of the missionaries during the colonial and the apartheid eras. There may be other reasons why former missionaries refused to be interviewed.

26 Shula Marks, Divided Sisterhoods: Race, Class and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession.

Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg. 1994, p.43.

27 Radikobo Ntsimane discusses this subject at length in his chapter “Why should I tell my story?

Culture and Gender in Oral History” in P. Denis and R. Ntsimane (Eds.), Oral History in a Wounded Country: Interactive interviewing in South Africa. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press:

Pietermaritzburg, 2008, p.125.

It is of critical importance also to acknowledge the fact that my observations about the interviewees’ willingness or unwillingness to be interviewed are based on interpretation rather than facts. I cannot advance my interpretation as fact especially where the potential interviewees did not state their reasons for declining to be interviewed. As a historian, I am at liberty to interpret thereby revealing my bias.

Even in the case of my interpretation of the narrative, the whole exercise remains just that, an interpretation. Paul Ricoeur wrote that historians are like judges “placed in the real or potential situation of a dispute, they attempt to prove that one given explanation is better than another.” By using the evidence available to them, historians rigorously evaluate the plausibility of each in comparison to others in order to reconstruct a credible story. Simply put, the historian, as in my case, is the one who decides what among the bias sources is credible to be used. While doing that the historian’s biasness is undeniable.

In June 2011, I went on a trip to Germany to revisit the Lutheran archives to again look at the documents used in this thesis and to reference them accordingly. On the same trip I asked the surviving interviewees a written consent to append to the transcripts of their interviews within the thesis. It is understandable that the retired medical missionaries living in retirement homes are not trusted by their minders to give interviews any longer due to old age. In similar fashion, principal interviewees living in South Africa refused to give a written consent. Since some of the information that they divulged could cause defamation to others or to themselves they did not allow the transcripts of the interviews to be made public. In his chapter on the Ethics of Oral History, Denis wrote about this possibility of refusal:

In any event, it is recommended not to transcribe and preserve interviews or parts of them when they contain defamatory statements.

When a statement is believed to be false or damaging to the reputation or privacy of a third party, the portion of the interview and the transcript containing the statement should not be made available to researchers and certainly should not be published until the subject of the statement is dead.²⁸

28 Philipe Denis, “Ethics of Oral History” in P. Denis and R. Ntsimane (eds.) Oral History in a

For this reason I have chosen not to append any transcripts to this thesis. It is better to respect the interviewees’ wishes rather than to cause irreparable damage to relationships and to block opportunities for other researchers.

Some interviewees were eager to give their consent but were unwilling to append their signature out of ignorance or out of fear of reprisals. Although the interviewees have given permission to use the information gathered during the interviews for this thesis, I do not have written permission to make such information public through appendices for all to see. When a request was made to make the transcripts public by appending them on the thesis, a refusal was received. The caution of Denis to researchers is relevant here:

In vulnerable communities with high levels of suspicion, as is the case in many communities in South Africa, a signed consent form can be perceived to as a threat. In those communities, some people have a low level of literacy and written document – even if it is in their home language – may intimidate them and even dissuade them from participating in a project. For this reason, it may sometimes be more appropriate not to use a written consent form. If the risk of harm is very low, a recorded verbal statement may be sufficient.²⁹

Among those interviewed were missionary doctors (Bergter, Lutkins, Schmidt);

missionary nurses (Bauseneick, Gnauk, Sommerfeld); other nurses, (Helen Msimanga, Magdalena Seabo); children of medical missionaries (Solveig Otte, Wilhelm Weber, Richard Schiele); hospital administrators (Jabulani Mdluli and Peter Schildkneckt); committee members (Friedrich Dierks, Nason Danisa, Eli Makhoba);

chaplains, (Vivian Msomi, Mookodi Rangongo); other knowledgeable people related to the hospitals (Dean Mthethwa, Titus Dlamini, Sibusiso Xulu, Sindisiwe Zikalala) and; a driver (Simon Dlangamandla). All those who were interviewed were interviewed on the bases of their willingness to be interviewed and on their availability. Elsewhere, this author discusses the reasons why some interviewees were eager to be interviewed.³⁰ Some of them like Dierks, Schiele and Sommerfeld

29 Philipe Denis, “Ethics of Oral History” in P. Denis and R. Ntsimane (eds.) Oral History in a Wounded Country: Interactive Interviewing in South Africa. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press:

Pietermaritzburg. 2008, p. 74.

30 Radikobo Ntsimane, “Why Should I tell my story: Culture and Gender in Oral History” in Denis and Ntsimane (eds.) Oral History in a Wounded Country: Interactive Interviewing in South Africa.

Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2008, pp.124-126.

also made more information available by means of letters to supplement on the interviews.

I chose the interviewees based on my prior knowledge of the four hospitals under research. The newsletter Molaetsa/Umlayeza published in both Zulu and Setswana was issued four times a year and reported among other things, stories about the Itshelejuba Mission Hospital. As a church newsletter it reported summarized news on hospitals, often when there were church-related functions taking place there. When I studied for the Ministry in the Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (LCSA) in Enhlanhleni in Natal the rector of the seminary Dr. Wilhelm Weber made frequent references to that mission station as the place where he was born. Both from Weber and from reading the newsletters I managed to get prior knowledge of that hospital.

All the medical missions’ interviewees mentioned have dedicated their lives to the development of the health institutions. The evidence that they gave about the institutions in which they worked can be biased. The interviewees may want to portray one side in a better light and others may want to portray their opponents in a negative manner. As for medical missionaries like Kurt Bergter, Ulrich Schmidt, Ruth Bauseneick, Evelyn Sommerfeld, and children of missionaries like Bishop Richard Schiele, Dr. Wilhelm Weber and Ms. Solveig Otte, the closeness to the mission hospitals makes them vulnerable to subjectivity. These interviewees have either dedicated a great part of their prime lives to medical mission work or have ancestors who have risked life and limb providing medical care in the mission field.

Although they were prone to bias as a result of their connection to medical mission work, the information provided by the interviewees cannot be discarded. All sources, both written and oral, have a bias; they are written from a particular angle chosen by the author and they are told from a particular angle narrated by the interviewee. That does not suggest that we should discard the stories that sources provide. As Paul Ricoeur wrote, the historian is the judge whose role in the reconstruction of the past is

to discern what is plausible and what is not. To use Ricoeur’s direct sentence, “The criterion of his (sic) judgement is the coherence of his construction.”³¹

As shall be seen in the following chapters, it would not have been possible to reconstruct the story of the four mission hospitals without their contribution. The fact that the interviewees worked in mission hospitals makes them a source of information of great value, especially with regard to names and dates. Mr. Jabulani Mdluli of Itshelejuba remembered names of the army doctors who served in Itshelejuba as well as the financial details³² as he worked as an administrator during the transitional period of the takeover of the hospital. While such closeness of the interviewee to the institution can be of importance, it can also cloud the judgment of the interviewee.

The interviewees tell only about those things that they can relate to. They relate to things that give meaning to their lives. I want to give a few examples to show how the close proximity of the interviewee to the institution in which they served can influence the manner in which their stories are narrated. How the interviewees tell their stories will help the author judge the value of their evidence, in the reconstruction of the history of the role of the Lutheran medical missions in the development of indigenous people through the mission hospitals.

Dr. Friedrich Dierks worked as the chairperson of the Mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Free Churches (MELFC) hospital committee that oversaw the medical work in Itshelejuba Mission Hospital, Botshabelo Clinic near Lichtenberg in the North West Province and the Dirkiesdorp Clinic in Mpumalanga Province. He told me before the interview that the time he always waited for had come. He said that he knew that one day a Black person from the former mission field would come to seek answers in order to understand how the missionaries worked among the people. It showed a feeling of obligation on his part.

Dierks saw the interview encounter between him and the author as a debt to be paid.

He thought that the missionaries from Europe owed to the black people of southern Africa the stories of their experiences during their time as missionaries. As with the

31 Paul Ricoeur, “The Reality of the Historical past” in Adam Budd (ed.), The Modern Historiography

Reader: Western Sources. Routledge: New York, 2008, p.367.

32 Jabulani Mdluli interviewed by Radikobo Ntsimane at Itshelejuba Hospital on 06 July 2000.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, Dierks and other missionaries interviewed saw the interview as a way to deal with their past. Referring to the value of telling one’s story Denis wrote, “In terms of this perspective, telling the story is more than simply producing knowledge about the past. It is—or at least has the potential to be—a life-changing experience.”³³ Dierks was so committed to the interview that he ended up replying later to the remaining questions through a letter, as mentioned above. In the conclusion of the interview, Dierks apologetically mentioned that the information he gave during the interview might be biased because he looked at things on their bright side. Speaking in the Afrikaans language Dierks said that he was a sunflower, ‘n sonneblom.³⁴

Sister Solveig Otte, a daughter of a missionary nurse of Untunjambili Mission Hospital near Kranskop, who herself worked in Hlabisa Mission Hospital as a medical technologist for the American Lutheran Mission society, lamented the fact that the contributions of her parents and other missionaries were not appreciated. She would have liked that the Black people for whose benefit the mission hospitals were established, had nothing but praises for the work of the missionaries:

And you know it is very touching to me because who were any better than anybody else? They were doing their duty as called people. They were doing their duty. And it heartens me to know that the Gospels was ... they were channels and now other people are channels, are continuing the channels of the good news.³⁵