The Revd Canon Nancy Charton, who died this week aged 95, will be remembered by many people in all parts of Grahamstown as a lecturer in the Rhodes politics department during the toughest apartheid years, as a Black Sash activist, and, above all, as the first woman to be ordained a priest in the Anglican church in South Africa.
The Revd Canon Nancy Charton, who died this week aged 95, will be remembered by many people in all parts of Grahamstown as a lecturer in the Rhodes politics department during the toughest apartheid years, as a Black Sash activist, and, above all, as the first woman to be ordained a priest in the Anglican church in South Africa.
She would prefer to be remembered as a person who responded wholeheartedly to a call to the Christian ministry, as a loyal wife and devoted mother, and one who had the strength and faith to pursue her calling.
Grahamstown became the place where her academic training, partly in political studies at the University of Pretoria, bore fruit in the Politics Department at Rhodes under Terence Beard – who was “banned” for several of the years that they worked together.
Her political involvement was largely mediated through her work in the Black Sash, where a team of volunteers sought to master the intricacies of government policies whose main intent was to remove all its “black” citizens across the Great Fish River to the “homelands”.
Her home became a place of comfort – even refuge – for students and others who did not want to be “endorsed out”.
At the same time, Nancy's involvement with the Anglican church deepened, as an active lay minister and latterly as an ordained priest. She led a very active group of volunteers who conducted services every Saturday at Fort England – initially in each ward – where she was much appreciated by both patients and staff.
Initially, the Cathedral was her spiritual home, where, in addition to her lay minister's services, she was vigorous in promoting outreach to the segregated and outcast communities.
While adamant in her view that gender should be irrelevant to ordination, and sensitive to her own calling to the priesthood which was denied her for most of her active career, she did not allow her convictions to be soured by the chauvinist rules of the Anglican Church.
With her ordination to the priesthood, she was able to take charge of St Bartholomew's Parish until her retirement to Graaf Reinet, where she was an active assistant priest for as long as she was able to conduct a service.
Her memoir, “The Calling” (Cluster Publications 2009) is more than a straightforward autobiography. It puts into context the life of a woman who did not allow the inhibitions and dictats of the society in which she spent her life to drag her down into conformity.
Instead, she laboured, cheerfully and with remarkable energy, to respond to the “calling” which she experienced as a five year old child, and Grahamstown in particular is all the better for the years that she spent in the struggles we've experienced over the past half century.
