Arts Event

Kagiso Lesego Molope's book 'We Inherit the Fire' is a gorgeously rendered, unflinching portrait of the fractured relationship between a mother and her daughter, set against the tumultuous end of apartheid in South Africa.

In late-1980s South Africa, teenager Kelelo is forced to leave her mountain school for a newly desegregated school in town, where her identity as the daughter of celebrated freedom fighter Kewame 'Dolly' Malaka makes her an instant curiosity. While her classmates see her as a symbol of progress, at home she struggles with a mother who is emotionally unreachable, still haunted by the violence and deprivation she endured as a political prisoner under apartheid.

Kewame, now living in material comfort, hides a growing inner collapse as memories of prison life and the women who sustained her resurface, stirred by her grandmother’s illness and the pressure of maintaining a facade of perfection. As mother and daughter navigate a shifting political landscape, 'We Inherit the Fire' interlaces their voices to reveal the unspoken wounds, buried histories and complex inheritance of resilience, pain and responsibility that bind and divide generations of Black South African women.

This event is presented in partnership with the Ottawa Public Library and Library and Archives Canada.