Turning Points: Olive Schreiner Changing Her Mind About Race Matters

In her middle years a number of transition points occurred that helped to change how Olive Schreiner thought and wrote about race matters. This chapter explores three such turning points or ‘epiphanies’, their reverberations in Schreiner’s writing and political activities, and the importance of networks in facilitating them. The first is Schreiner’s association with some Matjiesfontein workmen she met in 1890 when spending lengthy periods in this small railway village, feeling an affinity with them and their relationship with the karoo landscape. The second is Schreiner’s meeting in early 1893 with Eliza Brown, wife of missionary John Brown, in Taungs when visiting with her sister Ettie Stakesby Lewis. The third is the effects on Schreiner in her later 1905 of reading WEB Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, given to her by Frederick and Adela Pethick Lawrence, which she described as ‘a book I have long been seeking & waiting for’. From 1905 onwards, Schreiner became more involved with members of the black intelligentsia and political elite, including such figures as John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana, Abdullah Abdurahman, and later Solomon Plaatje. Regarding her writing, the reverberations can be glimpsed in network terms, in particular her uses of letter-writing to challenge the retrograde political views of white politicians, and support for black organisations, including trades union activities in railways, docks and mines.