Book Review: Rise up and Go: Recovering the Untold Story of the Holy  Cross Sisters in South Africa

 By Daluxolo Moloantoa – Rise up and Go, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Southern African Province –  An Account of their Communities and Ministries – 1980–2022 by Sr Maureen Rooney invites  readers into the long, complex, and often heroic story of a religious  congregation whose life and mission have been deeply entwined with South  Africa’s history, from mission stations to urban townships, from schools  to hospitals, from colonial times through apartheid to democracy.

The Sisters of the Holy Cross are part of a global congregation founded  in Switzerland. Their charism from the start was “to bring education and  care to the poor and vulnerable wherever the need exists.” According to  their historical records, on 9 June 1883, under the guidance of the  missionary Abbot Franz Pfanner of Mariannhill, a group of five Holy  Cross Sisters left Southampton, England and arrived in Durban on 12 July  1883. After a long ox‑wagon journey, they reached Umtata (Mthatha) on 24  July 1883, where they settled in three huts, their first convent.

From those humble beginnings, the Sisters embarked on expansive  missionary work. Over decades, they established schools, orphanages,  hospitals, convents, elderly‑care homes across the country, responding  to needs in education, health, social welfare and community development.

One vivid chapter of this work unfolded in the early 20th century under  the pastoral leadership of Fr Camillus De Hovre OMI, a Belgian‑born  Oblate priest who arrived in South Africa in 1912. He became a key  church‑builder in what is now Gauteng. Among his early projects was the  founding of the St Hubert parish in Alexandra township, north of  Johannesburg. In 1920, he established, with small resources, a modest  church and a two‑roomed primary school. Recognising the need for  qualified, committed teachers, he invited the Holy Cross Sisters to  staff the convent and the school.

Not long after, noticing serious social and pastoral needs in Pretoria, especially among poor and black communities in townships and  “locations,” Fr De Hovre again called on the Sisters. In 1929, he and  the Sisters established a mission in what was then the area of Lady  Selborne, north of Pretoria, starting with a corrugated‑hut classroom  that had 43 pupils, swelling to 220 before the end of the first term.  More land was bought, and by 1930 a double‑storey convent was built,  with classrooms on the ground floor and Sisters’ quarters above. This  mission became known as Little Flower Mission.

Their role in founding schools and hospitals, most notably the Holy  Cross Nursing Home at Little Flower Mission, illustrates how faith and  service can challenge injustice, provide stability, and nurture hope. In  1932, they opened a modest “tin‑shack clinic” to serve the township and  surrounding areas, anticipating more than just schooling but holistic  care for a vulnerable population. Over the years, this clinic developed  into the much‑loved Holy Cross Nursing Home, a maternity hospital where  thousands of Pretoria-area babies were born, and where midwives and  obstetric trainees, even from the University of Pretoria (UP), were  trained.

“Holy Cross Nursing Home was more than a clinic, it was a beacon of  dignity and hope for communities often marginalised.”

Among those whose lives reportedly began under the roof of Holy Cross  Nursing Home are people remembered in national life. Many stories remain  unrecorded, but among names frequently associated with the Nursing Home  are Jody Kollapen, appointed in 2022 to South Africa’s highest court,  and Bob Mabena, the renowned radio and media personality. Their  inclusion reminds us that from those maternity wards emerged citizens,  future leaders, public figures, ordinary lives, shaped, perhaps  unconsciously, by the quiet care, dignity and solidarity practiced by  the Sisters.

At the same time, the educational mission of the Sisters spread across  the country. Their schools were often founded where state provision was  lacking, in remote areas, in townships, in communities affected by  poverty or neglect. In Cape Town, for example, Holy Cross High School  (Maitland) stands as a testament to their commitment to quality,  inclusive Catholic education. The congregation opened that school to  offer primary and high school education, especially for girls, during a  time when many lacked access to schooling. Their work sometimes survived  tremendous challenges, including during apartheid when funding was cut.  Even then, the Sisters kept the school running by relying on their own  resources until eventually, due to declining numbers of Sisters,  boarding closures and staff changes required lay leadership.

On the social‑welfare side, the Sisters’ legacy continued beyond  maternity and education. When the Holy Cross Nursing Home closed as a  maternity hospital in 1984, they responded to new needs by converting it  into a frail‑care centre, now known as Holy Cross Home, to care for the  elderly, the sick, those affected by destitution, and later, in the face  of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, offering hospice and home‑based care. The  facility opened its doors to all races and people of all denominations.  From 1994, it admitted its first Black resident as apartheid ended, and  thereafter committed itself to providing holistic, compassionate care to  the vulnerable, irrespective of race or background, including our aging  clergy.

Yet despite the breadth and depth of their ministries, much remains  untold. Institutional archives and book‑length accounts, like Rise up  and Go …, document convents, schools, hospitals, closures, transfers,  but often omit the human, intimate stories: the births, the baptisms,  the first days of life, the children educated in rough, early  classrooms, the midwives trained, the elderly cared for, the displaced  families, the parents who lost homes, the students who opened new  chapters for their families. The institutional skeleton exists, but the  flesh of lived experience remains largely invisible.

This absence is not trivial. It represents lost memory, uncelebrated  lives, fading dignity. For every Jody Kollapen or Bob Mabena we might  name, there were thousands more: mothers whose labour‑room prayers  remain unknown, children whose names are long forgotten, families  uprooted by forced removals, elders given dignity in their last years,  young girls given hope through education, communities lifted by care and  solidarity.

The story of the old maternity hospital, in particular, from its  beginnings as a tin‑shack clinic in 1932, through decades of birth and  hope, through apartheid, forced removals, social upheaval, to its  transformation into a frail‑care home and hospice, is a richly layered  saga. It intersects with the history of apartheid’s spatial injustices,  of black, coloured and Indian South Africans’ struggle, of Church and  mission response, and of human dignity sustained in hardship. That alone  merits a book of its own, a “people’s history” of Holy Cross Nursing  Home / Little Flower Mission, not just institutional history, but a  deeply human and personal history of birth, life, removal and  resilience; a social‑historical work rooted in oral histories, personal  testimonies, photographs, archival records etc. A book that situates the  Sisters’ work within the heart of South Africa’s history of  dispossession, resistance, and renewal.

In recent years, that legacy has found new life in Alexandra township.  On the grounds of St Hubert’s Church, the building of the old Holy Cross  School has been revitalized and transformed into the Alexandra campus of  St David’s Marist Inanda School, located in nearby Sandton. The St  David’s Marist Inanda Alexandra Campus opened its doors in January 2023  with a pioneer Grade 8 class, reviving the commitment to Catholic  education in Alexandra that the Holy Cross Sisters had once begun.

This reopening was not simply logistical, but symbolic: a restoration of  heritage, an act of restorative justice for a community long subjected  to the injustices of apartheid and neglect. The project had been in  discussion for years, since 2014, before the school community and church  parish finally secured the title deeds of the property and committed to  renovating the derelict campus. The first group of boys, mainly from  Alexandra, arrived, full of hope, marking a new chapter in the  community’s history.

But even as the old school building takes on new purpose, the grander  story remains: the network of ministries, of service, care, education,  hope, anchored in faith and compassion, that the Holy Cross Sisters  began more than a century ago.

As the book shows, their work extends far beyond bricks and mortar. It  is found in the lives shaped, the families supported, the communities  uplifted, and the countless acts of quiet devotion that transformed  ordinary spaces into places of dignity, learning, and care. From the  classrooms of Alexandra to the wards of the Nursing Home and everywhere  else were they toiled, the Holy Cross Sisters’ legacy is lived in human  stories of resilience, courage, and hope that no single history can  fully capture. This book offers a foundation, yet also points clearly to  the deeper narratives that await full recognition and celebration.

Rise up and Go, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Southern African Province, An  Account of their Communities and Ministries, 1980–2022 can, and should,  be the foundation, but not the conclusion. What remains to be done is  deeper, to recover, remember, record, and celebrate the lives lived, the  births, the education, the care, the service. A commemoration not just  of institutions, but of people, ordinary, humble, resilient. May the  compassion, faith and commitment of the Sisters, and the countless lives  they touched, continue to inspire, and may those whose lives were  changed by their ministry receive the honour of being remembered.