On Thursday the 9^th of May 2024, Dr Lindie Koorts, lecturer in the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies at the University of Pretoria presented a seminar titled “From Grand Narratives to Complicated Subjects – A Biography in the Post-apartheid Era”. The seminar was presented in association with the University of Fort Hare. It was primarily concerned with Dr Koorts’ doctoral biography of D.F Malan, one of the first pieces of writing of an apartheid premier released under the post-1994 dispensation.

The seminar was nothing if not compelling. Dr Koorts’ passion for her craft enriched the seminar delightfully, and truly brought about some deserved appreciation from the audience around the importance of biography writing in broader historiographical study.  Dr Koorts indicated that when she began her journey into tertiary education, the biography was by no means a glamourous academic endeavour and seen as the “stepchild of history”. Dr Koorts emphasised the common misconceptions which surround biography writing, and often impede it from being an appreciated field of historical work. She made the point that biographies do not have to be written in admiration of an individual, nor do they have to be driven by trying to maximise profits off the back of a popular name. Instead, biographies should reflect an insatiable thirst to unlock the past through unlocking the mind of someone from years past.

Drawing on Charles van Onselen’s biography of sharecropper Kas Maine titled “The Seed is Mine”, Dr Koorts unpacked the importance of biographies in undermining the dominance of the colonial archive. She stated that whilst the historical catalogue of South African biographies is largely dominated by the “big white man”, centred around creating a heroic picture of great Afrikaner histories that underpinned the narratives of national politics at the time, it has the power to be so much more. Dr Koorts illustrated the power of biographies in writing the voices of the marginalised into South African history in their unique ability to weave the stories and lived experiences of someone into the fabric of time. Whether it be a biography centred on uncovering the gendered experience of a historical moment, or a biography that questions dominant narratives of struggle and success, biographical writing can and must be used to engage the past more holistically, and from a broader perspective.

The word ‘story’ is subsumed within the word ‘history’, so why should the art of story-writing not be woven into the historical academic discipline? The experiences of the past are reflected most powerfully through the lives of the people who breathed the moment themselves. Dr Koorts carefully unpacked the need for biography writing if we are to write more inclusive histories and engage the past poignantly through a lens, and through the eyes, of the people whose hands crafted it.