In conversation with Jane Raphaely

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“Any regrets?”

“That I didn’t persevere with my ballet dancing.”

This last line brought to a close an hour-long conversation that ran between trailblazing magazine editing and publishing mogul Jane Raphaely and her friend of fifteen years, author and editor Toni Younghusband.

Raphaely has recently released her autobiography, Jane Raphaely Unedited, which documents her beginnings in the north of England and her arrival by ship in Cape Town in January 1960 at the age of 23, to marry, as she put it, the one man who wasn’t afraid of sparring with her. The book takes its readers all the way to the woman who now, at the age of 76, still goes in to the office every day and serves as managing director of Associated Magazines.

Raphaely recalled her first attempt at an autobiography and the friend who sent it to publishers in London, only to receive a withering commentary in return and the following critique: “Why are you telling everyone else’s story and not your own?” A period of self-examination followed in which Raphaely came to the conclusion that the answer to this question was one that shackles many women: shame.

Following this criticism, which left her disinclined to try again, and discouraged, a period followed in which Raphaely ignored the prospect of once again trying to write her own story. However, the question she had been repeatedly asked and which had been on many women’s lips, “How did you do it?”, jolted her back into action. The realisation struck that perhaps hers was a story that women needed to hear. Over a period of four years she began to jot down notes and retell her story, the result of which is Jane Raphaely Unedited.

Raphaely discussed her humble, English beginnings and her struggle to assert her identity as a woman and a Jew in a society that was still licking its wounds from World War II and anti-Semitism. Raphaely believes that her resilient nature came from her Jewish and half-Irish background and, in addition, she was living in a country where she didn’t have the same attitude towards the upper classes that seemed to arrest her fellow countrymen. Raphaely remains decidedly grateful that she grew up working-class, and stated that any working-class individual can merge comfortably into any other social class, whereas the same cannot be said for the upper classes.

Touching on the topic of her work as a managing director, CEO, editor and publisher, among other positions, Raphaely believes that it was easier for her to juggle her family and her career three to four decades ago than it is for women today. The heavy influence of social media and the need to be connected have made it more difficult to keep one’s private life, private.

Professional anecdotes, her political views, admiration for Helen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko, as well as her sympathy for Margaret Thatcher flit into the conversation, while one story in particular evoked loud laughter. The time is apartheid South Africa and Raphaely and colleagues are having a business luncheon at The Hunting Pot in Cape Town, when a storm of police officers descends on the restaurant and hurtles into the kitchen looking for employees without passbooks. Raphaely happened to be heavily pregnant at the time and was adorned in what she refers to as a “tent dress”; she suddenly felt a slight movement under the table at her feet and realised that a kitchen worker had fled for safety and found refuge under the cover of her maternity outfit. Unperturbed, Raphaely continued the conversation at her table and once the police had left and her ward had wordlessly scuttled back to the kitchen to continue working, she too returned to the office and filled out the rest of her day without mentioning a word of the incident to anyone.

This last story in particular seemed to encapsulate the Jane Raphaely that sat before the audience in Franschhoek: a successful career woman, feminist activist, political commentator, mother and friend. A woman who, while pregnant and at a work lunch, hid a kitchen worker without a passbook under her dress, carried on with her working day without batting an eyelid and when asked whether she has any regrets, simply wishes that she had danced more.

This report was written by a member of the Contemporary Literary Practice (English) honours group at Stellenbosch University. The CLP module includes report-writing in the mould of literary journalism, along with other forms of writing and literary practitionership. The report was co-edited by group facilitator Leon de Kock.

 

 

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