Friends or enemies?

Abstract

This article investigates how Africans in Zululand, South Africa, viewed Lutheran missionaries in the 1950's. The main source is a thorough report Zulu pastor S. A. Mbatha gave in answer to a survey initiated by the Swedish missionary Helge Fosseus in 1957. Fosseus wanted to find out more about the causes of increasing African resistance to mission, church and Christianity. Mbatha replied that missionaries were seen by Africans as enemies in that they shared white South African society's prevailing attitude toward blacks. Missionaries were characterized as exploiters and betrayers. This negative image contrasts strongly with the picture the missionaries painted of themselves as Africans' friends and allies in the struggle against increasing discrimination. The last part of the article discusses possible causes for the large difference between the missionaries' self-understanding and the Africans' image of the missionaries.

Notes

1. In this article, “South African” refers to people who speak one of the Bantu languages, and who in South Africa today used the word “black” to describe themselves. The Zulu are one of these ethnic groups. The words black, Zulu and African are therefore often used as synonyms in this article.

2. Jan Egil Ofstad, Vi besøker Sør-Afrika (Stavanger: Misjonsselskapets forlag, 1959), 44f.

3. I happened upon this document in a file of miscellaneous documents in the archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa at Umpumulo. A copy of the document is given to the Mission Archives, Stavanger; MHS/A 1339.

4. I have earlier used this source and elements of the discussion in a recently published article in a South-African journal: Odd Magne Bakke, “Black Critics of Lutheran Mission in Zululand and Natal in the 1950s, with particular Emphasis on Socio-political issues,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 38 (2012), 75–94.

5. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978). Some examples of such studies are Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 68–75; Paul Jenkins, “The Earliest Generation of Missionary Photographers in West Africa and the Portrayal of Indigenous People and Culture,” History in Africa 20 (1993), 89–118; Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘Native’ People and the Making of the European Identities (London: Leicester University Press, 1999); Jarle Simensen, “The Image of Africa in Norwegian Missionary Opinion, 1850–1900,” in Revolusjon og resonnement (eds. Ø. Rian et al; Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995), 137–150; Gustav Jahoda, Images of Savages: Ancients Roots of Modern Prejudice in Western Culture (London: Routledge, 1999), 141–148; Mai Palmberg, ed., Encounter Images in the Meetings between Africa and Europe (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2001); Marianne Gullestad, Picturing Pity: Pitfalls and Pleasures in Crosscultural Communication: Images and Word in a North Cameroon Mission (New York: Berghan, 2007).

6. Jean and John Comaroff, Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1 of Of Revelation and Revolution, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); idem, The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, vol. 2 of Of Revelation and Revolution, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997).

7. Comaroffs, Revelation, 251.

8. Comaroffs, Revelation, 251.

9. Comaroffs, Revelation, 248–251.

10. The most recent study on Norwegian mission in South Africa, and that also has a thorough overview of the research on the topic in the bibliography is Kristin Fjelde Tjelle, Missionary Masculinity: The case of the Norwegian Lutheran Missionaries to the Zulus, 1870–1930 (Ph.D. diss., The School of Mission and Theology, 2011). There are also good overviews of research on Swedish mission in South Africa in Lars Berge, The Bambatha Watershed: Swedish Missionaries, African Christians and an Evolving Zulu Church in Rural Natal and Zululand 1902–1910 (Uppsala: Studia Missionalia Upsaliensia, 2000); Karin Sarja,“Ännu en syster till Afrika:” Trettiosex kvinnliga missionärer i Natal och Zululand 1876–1902 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2002).

11. For a brief overview of the Lutheran mission in South Africa, see Georg Scriba and Gunnar Lislerud, “Lutheran Missions and Churches in South Africa,” in Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History (ed. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport; Cape Town: David Philip, 1997), 173–194; Gunnar Lislerud, “Luthersk kirkedannelse i Sør-Afrika,” Norsk Tidsskrift for Misjon 52 (1998), 81–96; Helge Fosseus, Mission blir kyrka: Luthersk kyrkobildning i södra Afrika 1957–1961 (Stocholm:Verbum, 1974).

12. Berit Hagen Agøy, “Norske misjonærer, lutherske kirker og apartheid i Sør-Afrika,” Historisk Tidsskrift 72 (1993), 145–180.

13. The Hermannsburg Mission did not join the co-operation before 1938 because it at the time of the establishment of the Co-operating Lutheran Missions had no fellowship with the Berlin Mission, Ingolf Edw. Hodne, Missionary Enterprise in African Education: The Co-operating Lutheran Missions in Natal, South Africa, 1912–1953 (Stavanger: Misjonshøgskolens forlag, 1977), 41f. For a brief general history of the cooperation, see Herman Schlyter, The History of the Co-Operating Lutheran Missions in Natal 1912–1951 (Durban: Lutheran Publishing House, 1953); and for the cooperation of educational work, see Hodne, Missionary Enterprise.

14. Hodne, Missionary Enterprise, 43.

15. Schlyter, The History, 68.

16. Hodne, Missionary Enterprise, 17.

17. Schlyter, The History, 82.

18. The examples represent the attitude toward the Bambatha rebellion (cf. Berge, The Bambatha Watershed; P. Hærnes, “Lydighet mot øvrigheten:” Norske misjonærer i Syd Afrika under Bambatha-oppstanden i 1906 (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Centre for African Studies, 1988), the attitude toward the establishment of the ELCSA (cf. Berit Hagen Agøy, Den tvetydige protesten: Norske misjonærer, kirker og apartheid i Sør-Afrika, 1948-ca. 1970 [Master's thesis, Universitetet i Oslo, 1987], 69–87), and the attitude toward apartheid (cf. Fredrick Hale, “The Church of Sweden Mission and Apartheid, 1948–1960,” Missionalia 29 (2001), 21–42; Agøy, “Norske misjonærer.”

19. Cf. e.g. Conference Report, South Africa 1962, 16f.; 1964, 31; Mission Archives, Stavanger; Gunnar Lislerud “Luthersk kirkedannelse i Sør-Afrika: Del 2: Apartheid og kirkens enhet,” Norsk Tidsskrift for Misjon 52 (1988), 131–146, 133.

20. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer of Studia Theologica for clearly pointing this out.

21. Both the retired Zulu pastor, R. E. Nxele, and the retired missionary, A. I. Berglund, emphasized this fact in interviews with the author in Durban (November 2008) and in Uppsala (October 2010), respectively.

22. For an introduction to Berglund's biography, see the interview held by Bertil Högberg on 13 September 2005, n.p. [cited 24 September 2012]. Online http://www.liberationafrica.se/intervstories/interviews/berglund/.

23. Uppsala, October 2010.

24. Interview in S. P Zulu's home, Escort, November 10, 2008.

25. Mission pastor Per Kørner in Norsk Misjonstidene 30 (1971), 14; Conference Report, South Africa, 1971, 36; Mission Archives, Stavanger.

26. Dissatisfaction with white leadership and guardianship was one of the leading forces in the so-called Ethiopian movement emerging at the beginning of the 20thest century, cf. Bent Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (2nd ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Hanna Mellemsether, Misjonærer, Settlerrsamfunn og afrikansk opposisjon: Striden om selvstendiggjøring i den norske Zulukirken, Sør-Afrika ca 1920–1939 (Ph.D. diss., Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelig universitet, 2001), 49–53. Whether it was the political or religious motives that were the driving forces in the Ethiopian movement is still being questioned. See, e.g., Jean and John Comaroff, Dialectics, 102–104; Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion: The 1906–8 Disturbances in Natal (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 60.

27. Annual Report for Imfule, Mission Archives; Stavanger, SA-A 99-16.

28. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika.

29. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 42.

30. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 44.

31. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 44.

32. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 44f.

33. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 45.

34. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 52. In 1953, the NMS ran in all 111 elementary schools with economic support from the authorities. These schools had 8395 students and employed 253 teachers (NMS Årbok 1951–54, 193).

35. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 164.

36. Conference Report, South Africa, 1953, 6, Mission Archives; Stavanger.

37. Letter to Skauge from Follesøe, 22 December 1952 (Mission Archives; Stavanger, SA-A 5-6).

38. Agøy, Den tvetydige protesten, 258.

39. Conference Report, South Africa, 1960, 19 (Mission Archives; Stavanger).

40. See Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 162–173.

41. Swedish missionaries had already in 1949 been threatened with visa application denial because CSM was willing to participate in a protest against the authorities organized by Christian Council of South Africa, cf. letter from South Africa's Christian Council to Follesøe, 25 January 1949 (Mission Archive; Stavanger, SA-A 185-5). See further Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 170f.

42. The following statement in the Conference Report from 1957, p.63, is a characteristic statement in this regard: “We feel a strong need to help also by letting our voice be powerfully heard by the state, as other churches have done, to protest against the laws that aim to hold the natives down and deny them ordinary human rights. But we mustn't risk coming into conflict with the missionary instruction by getting involved in politics. Then we could be thrown out of the state! Paul's principle, “A Jew to Jews …,” would for us probably be synonymous with deportation.” (Mission Archives; Stavanger).

43. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,”165f.

44. Norsk Misjonstidene 23 (1957), 8.

45. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 163f.

46. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 165.

47. This was also emphasized by Fosseus in a statement in 1963. “… so many churches have protested and published this in newspapers that it is now rather common in South Africa to look upon the Lutheran church as being closely related to the government for not having protested,” according to Carl-J. Hellberg, A Voice of the Voiceless: The Involvement of the Lutheran World Federation in Southern Africa 1947–1977 (Lund: Verbum, 1979), 65–66.

48. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 176–177.

49. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 151.

50. From 1900 to 1940, the number of these district stations increased from about 50 to over 120, see Torstein Jørgensen, ed., Tro og tjeneste: Det Norske Misjonsselskap 1842–1992 (vol. 1; Stavanger: The School of Mission and Theology, 1992), 117.

51. Interview with bishop L. Sibya, Umpumolo, 3 October 2008; Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 172.

52. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 163; 172.

53. Agøy, “Norske misjonærer,” 163.

54. Ofstad, Sør-Afrika, 45.