The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

they have generated have been taken into even further realms of circulation and
consequence, even where biographic contests have formed part of enquiries into the
appropriate otherworldly status of persons after their death. Such was the case with
Mother Teresa who had been the subject of public biographical critique and contestation
a few years before her death in 1997. 34 Two critical biographies were drawn into a
posthumous biographic enquiry and evaluation by the Vatican into whether or not
Mother Teresa should be placed on an accelerated path to sainthood. 35
The sequence of biographic exposés of the “old, wrinkled and kindly nun”, which began
with Christopher Hitchens’ 1992 article, and which was taken further in Channel 4’s
Hell’s Angel documentary, culminated in Hitchens’ 1995 book, The Missionary Position.
This sequence of public biographical assessments represented the first time that the
‘living saint’ had been subjected to systematic biographic criticism. Among the main
arguments Hitchens put forward was that Mother Teresa had spent “a great deal of time
not on her knees washing the feet of the poor, but licking the feet of the rich”. 36
Missionaries of Charity, he argued, accepted donations from ‘ruthless’ dictators, and
business leaders convicted of fraud, while acting as their ‘spiritual camouflage’. Mother
Teresa was accused of preaching a message of surrender and prostration to the poor,
while lending spiritual solace to dictators and wealthy exploiters.
Hitchens questioned the quality of medical care provided at the Order’s Home for the
Dying, suggesting that the dying were not provided with pain‐killing drugs. Mother
Teresa, he argued, also blindly opposed birth control and abortion. Hitchens also
34 Christopher Hitchens, ‘Ghoul of Calcutta’, The Nation, April 1992; Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of
Calcutta (Bandung, written and narrated by Christopher Hitchens; produced by Tariq Ali, 1994),
screened on Channel 4 on 8 November 1994; Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother
Teresa in Theory and Practice (London: Verso, 1995). To my great disappointment, since this period
of critical journalism in the early and mid‐1990s, Hitchens’ journalism went on to become
decidedly right wing.
35 John Follain ‘Mother Teresa “failed to give painkillers to the very ill”’, Sunday Independent, 1
August 1999; the two critical biographies were Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position and
Anne Sebba, Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), which was
published shortly after Mother Teresa’s death.
36 Interview with Christopher Hitchens by Stephen Capen, 24/12/95, .
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