Women's Day; an ode from Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner a celebrated South African novelist was a radical feminist, and at one time a resident of Matjiesfontein, too.
“The woman wanderer goes forth to seek the Land of Freedom.
“How am I to get there?” Reason answers: “here is one way, and one only. Down the banks of Labour, through the water of suffering. There is no other.”
The woman cries out: “For what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? Oh, I am alone! I am utterly alone!”
But soon she hears the sounds of feet, ‘a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way!’
“They are the feet of those who shall follow you. Lead on.”
― Olive Schreiner
Tip: Stay in The Olive Schreiner Cottage: Olive Schreiner—one of the first voices of literature and feminism in South Africa—lived in Matjiesfontein for a number of years.
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