![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
As the Scottish missionary Robert Moffat retired in Britain after a long career working among the Tswana in southern Africa, the London Missionary Society decided to found a seminary in his name for training African evangelists. The Moffat Institution at Kuruman was completed in 1879, but within only 20 years its classrooms were mostly empty and crumbling. The brief life of the Moffat Institution demonstrates the constraints under which European missionaries operated in the borderland region north of the Cape Colony. While British missionaries within the Cape Colony promoted the liberal ideal of equality for Africans through their Anglicisation, founding English-medium schools that focused on study of European culture, British missionaries in areas still governed by Tswana rulers laboured instead to translate Christianity into Tswana terms, presenting the gospel in ways that might appear less threatening, attract the interest of potential converts and gain the assistance of local evangelists. During the height of Tswana resistance to colonisation, however, neither model of mission education proved viable at the remote location of Kuruman, and it would be left to a new generation of missionaries and Africans to develop schools more practically suited for life under colonialism.
Notes
1. This study's emphasis on the agency of Tswana rulers echoes that of some others such as O. Gulbrandsen, ‘Missionaries and Northern Tswana Rulers: Who Used Whom?’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 23, 1 (1993), 44–83; P. Landau, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995); and R. Beck, ‘Monarchs and Missionaries among the Tswana and Sotho’, in R. Elphick and R. Davenport, eds, Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 107–120, but it differs from the focus on gradual European domination in J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vols 1 and 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; 1997).
2. For a more detailed history of how Tswana appropriated Christianity during the nineteenth century, see S. Volz, African Teachers on the Colonial Frontier (New York: Peter Lang, 2011). R. Elphick describes the influence of Cape liberalism on mission-educated Africans in The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
3. For an overview of the ‘colonial frontier’ in South African history, see N. Penn, ‘The Northern Cape Frontier Zone in South African Frontier Historiography’, in L. Russell, ed., Colonial Frontiers: Indigenous-European Encounters in Settler Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 19–46. For more on the central role played by Khoe-European ‘Griqua’ in that borderland, see M. Legassick, The Politics of a South Africa Frontier: The Griqua, the Sotho-Tswana and the Missionaries, 1780–1840 (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2011).
4. For more on the history of Tswana schools during the colonial era, see P. Mgadla, A History of Education in the Bechuanaland Protectorate to 1965 (Lanham: University Press of America, 2003). There is some congruence between this study and Mgadla's, but his discussion of education during the nineteenth century serves more as prelude to the colonial era, anticipating increased European control, and provides only a few details about the Moffat Institution at pp. 53–63.
5. Although their analysis differs from my emphasis on the early oralisation and Tswana-isation of ‘the word of God’, the role of literacy in colonisation is discussed in more detail by Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1, 213–230, and L. de Kock, Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1996).
6. Council for World Mission archives at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (hereafter CWM), South African incoming correspondence (hereafter SAI) box 22/folder 1/jacket, B Hamilton, Moffat and Edwards, 18 November 1846.
7. See for example CWM Matebele incoming correspondence (hereafter MI) 1/1/D, Sykes, 20 September 1861.
8. Some samples of basic lesson sheets and posters from Kuruman can be found in National Library of South Africa in Cape Town (hereafter SLC) MSB 899/1.
9. 26 March 1838, Methodist Missionary Society archives at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (hereafter MMS), South Africa microfiche set (hereafter SA) 315/ microfiche number 115, 26 March 1838. Missionary reports during this period usually list the number of students at each school according to what book they are in the process of reading.
10. Cory Library at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (hereafter RUC) MS 15001. Thaba Nchu's report for the WMS Bechuanaland District Committee, 12 December 1843.
11. Moffat describes such an instance of preaching in 14 June 1845, Bible Society collection at Cambridge University (hereafter BSC) foreign correspondence (hereafter FC) during the year 1845, item 4, which was also published in Monthly Extracts from the Correspondence of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 9 (1846), 92–94. Hughes describes the extensive use of scripture in prayers by another evangelist, Makami, in CWM SAI 23/1/A, 10 July 1847. Hughes also preached only on passages for which Batswana had acquired translations, as indicated by his list of sermon texts in CWM SAI 29/3/A, 8 May 1855.
12. Most likely Molala, who was a member of the congregation at Bodigelong, as quoted in BSC FC 1838/4, Moffat, 3 July 1838. This letter was also published in Reports of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 35 (1839), 55.
13. Edwards reports the arrival of 5000 New Testaments from the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1843, most of which were sold within a few years, in BSC FC 1843/4, 21 March 1843; and Giddy reports the printing of 1000 catechisms in 1849, with a copy included, in MMS SA315/mf128, 16 April 1849.
14. Tlhaping rulers continued to claim control over the mission and appointed a representative headman for its community of migrants and traders, but the closest chiefly capitals were those of Batlharo to the north and west.
15. For recent studies that emphasise the role of Africans in the development of mission schools in the Cape Colony, see for example E. Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002), and F. Vernal, The Farmerfield Mission: A Christian Community in South Africa, 1838–2008 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For more detailed description of two leading early Xhosa Christians and their thoughts, see D. Williams, ed., The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga (Cape Town: Balkema, 1983), and R. Levine, A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).
16. The early history of Christian missions in areas under Boer rule is described in works such as K. Rüther, The Power Beyond: Mission Strategies, African Conversion, and the Development of Christian Culture in the Transvaal (Munster: Lit. Verlag, 2002), and A. Kirkaldy, Capturing the Soul: The Vhavenda and the Missionaries, 1870–1900 (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2005).
17. S. Volz, ‘Them Who Kill the Body: Christian Ideals and Political Realities in the Interior of Southern Africa during the 1850s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36, 1 (2010), 41–56.
18. CWM SAI 35/1/A, Brown, 23 April 1868; CWM SAI 35/2/D, Brown, August 1869.
19. CWM SAI 35/1/A, Brown, 23 April 1868; CWM SAI 35/2/D, Brown, August 1869. Brown later identified a crippled man named ‘Molao’ as his first enquirer at Taung rather than the existing members of the congregation, and he fondly remembered him for his devotion and willingness to work, in CWM SAI 37/3/B, 26 December 1874.
20. J. Moffat, BDC minutes, 20 January 1869, CWM SAI 35/2/C, J. Moffat, BDC minutes, 20 January 1869. See also Ashton, 17 May 1866, Cullen Library at University of the Witwatersrand (hereafter UWC) A75/A/87 and 28 December 1866, CWM, South African Reports (hereafter SAR) 1/1. J. Scott expressed the same concerns about WMS Tswana evangelists in MMS SA316/mf140, 20 February 1869.
21. CWM SAI 35/2/D, 27 November 1869.
22. CWM SAR 1/4, 26 December 1869. For a similar opinion in the WMS, see MMS SA325/mf172, J. Scott, 14 August 1865.
23. Some documents on the history of the school at Zonnenbloem can be found in UWC AB 364f, and a basic overview of the school at Grahamstown during the 1860s is provided by Rhodes House Library at Oxford University (hereafter RHO), archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (hereafter SPG) E24, J. Mullins, 23 October 1869. Short biographies of Lovedale's graduates appear in Lovedale: Past and Present (Lovedale: Mission Press, 1887), and Lovedale's history is well chronicled in works such as R. Shepherd, Lovedale South Africa, 1824–1955 (Alice: Lovedale Press, 1971).
24. The reference to being ‘intangled’ is from CWM SAI 35/2/D, Ashton, 27 November 1869. For the founding of the Hermannsburg seminary, see C. Müller, 10 January 1875, Hermannsburger Missionsblatt (hereafter HMB), 22 (1875), 43–45. St Cyprian's Theological College in Bloemfontein included both European and African students, with English as the main language of instruction, while the French school at Morija was the most developed, built on a boys secondary school founded in 1866. The Wesleyan ‘Training Institution’ at Bloemfontein apparently only operated for two or three years, as indicated in minutes of BDC meetings held between 1874 and 1877, in RUC MS 15619. For a useful overview of these institutions, particularly those established later in the nineteenth century, see E.P. Lekhela, ‘The Origin, Development and Role of Missionary Teacher-Training Institutions for the Africans of the North-Western Cape: An Historical-Critical Survey of the Period 1850–1954’ (PhD thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 1970).
25. CWM, Southern Outgoing correspondence (hereafter SO) box 13/ page 275 (copy also in CWM Personal [hereafter P] box 2/ item 2), Mullens, 23 March 1872.
26. CWM SAI 36/3/D, J. Moffat, BDC minutes, 18 September 1871. For early failed LMS attempts to institute a ‘British system’ with English-medium instruction, see CWM SAI 17/3/D, Hamilton and Edwards, 12 September 1840.
27. CWM SO 13/264, Mullens, 9 March 1872.
28. CWM SAI 36/3/D, J. Moffat, BDC minutes, 18 September 1871.
29. The examination of LMS students, like their appointments, usually took place at the annual BDC meeting, as recorded, for example, in Wookey's report with CWM SAI 38/1/B, Ashton, 27 October 1875; and CWM SAI 40/1/A (copy also in CWM P 2/4), Sykes and Hepburn, January 1879.
30. Mackenzie's translations of their application letters are in UWC A75/A/278 to 282.
31. CWM SAI 37/1/A, Mackenzie, 15 April 1872.
32. CWM SAI 37/1/A, Mackenzie, 10 July 1872.
33. CWM MI 1/2/D, Mackenzie, 13 May 1872.
34. As reported in CWM SAI 37/3/A by Mackenzie on 1 May 1874.
35. CWM MI 1/2/D, BDC minutes, Ashton, 21 June 1873 (copy also in UWC A75/D/6).
36. See for example CWM P 2/4, Roger Price, 5 October and 13 December 1876, and CWM P 2/4, Mackenzie, 15 November 1876. The letter from the residents of Kuruman is CWM SAI 38/3/D, 4 December 1876.
37. The cost of construction is mentioned in Whitehouse, 26 June 1879, LMS Foreign Dept. correspondence #955, as found in CWM P 2/4.
38. CWM SAR 1/12, 2 January 1877. John Moffat earlier suggested locating the seminary at Molepolole, in CWM SAI 36/1/A, 18 January 1870, and he opposes plans for the Kuruman school in 19 August 1874 (CWM SAI 37/3/A); 9 January 1875 (CWM SAR 1/10); and 7 September 1876 (CWM SAI 38/3/C).
39. A drawing of the Moffat Institution appears as the masthead for Mahoko a Becwana in October 1883 to February 1885 (issues 10 to 26) and September 1889 to December 1892 (issues 56 to 90).
40. CWM SAI 40/1/B, Mackenzie, 1 March 1879.
41. Radikgole's case is mentioned in CWM SAI 40/2/A, Mackenzie, November 1879.
42. CWM P 2/3, Mackenzie, 1 July 1875, and P 2/4, 28 June 1877. Mackenzie describes the first ‘Union’ meeting in a letter accompanying the minutes of a BDC meeting, CWM SAI 39/3/A, 26 February 1878.
43. For evaluations of the seminary students' exams, see for example CWM P 2/4, Sykes and Hepburn, January 1879.
44. CWM SAI 35/2/D, 19 October 1869.
45. CWM MI 1/2/D, Mackenzie, 13 May 1873.
46. CWM SAI 37/3/A, 19 August 1874. Moffat was equally critical of new missionaries who did not yet know Setswana preaching ‘vast amount of unmeaning sounds; interspersed with bits of sentences of the most astounding character’, in CWM SAR 1/4, 26 December 1869.
47. CWM SAI 41/1/A, 15 January 1881. See also CWM SAI 41/3/B, Ashton, 19 May 1882.
48. Wookey, editorial published in Mahoko a Becwana, 11 (November 1883), 4.
49. CWM SAI 39/1/B, Mackenzie, 22 June 1877.
50. CWM SAI 39/3/B, Brown, 29 July 1878. Details of the European campaign to defeat the Tswana ‘rebels’ can be found in the papers of the commanding officer William Owen Lanyon in collection A596 at the State Archive of South Africa in Pretoria (hereafter SAP), and the war is described by Kevin Shillington in The Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, 1870–1900 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), 74–83.
51. The activities of several students during the war are described in CWM SAI 40/1/A, Ashton, 6 February 1879.
52. For records of land court hearings on Kuruman, see for example Botswana National Archives (hereafter BNA) HC 38/53 and published reports located in the State Archive of South Africa in Cape Town (hereafter SAC) CCP 1/2/1/58 and SAC OPP 1/40. Brown mentions the quartering of troops at the Moffat Institution in CWM SAI 54/1/D, 25 May 1897.
53. CWM SAI 46/1/B, BDC Minutes, Ashton, 30 March 1889, and CWM SAI 47/1/B, 22 March 1890.
54. For more detailed descriptions of participation by these and other Tswana evangelists in resistance to European control and the rise of separatist ‘Ethiopian’ churches during 1880–1910, see J. Mutero Chirenje, A History of Northern Botswana, 1850–1910 (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1977), 201–228; Don Boschman, The Conflict Between New Religious Movements and the State in the Bechuanaland Protectorate Prior to 1949 (Gaborone: University of Botswana, 1994); and Volz, African Teachers, 229–256.
55. CWM SAI 50/1/A, 10 January 1893. The value of schooling was also a topic of some debate in Mahoko, as shown by the missionary articles ‘Dikole’, 11 (November 1883), 4; ‘Thuto’, 51 (March 1887), 17–18, and ‘Dikwalo’, 52 (April 1887), 25; and the letters of O. Motsisi, 66 (July 1890), 50; and M. Tshabayagae, 94 (April 1893), 77.
56. The report was published in the Kimberley newspaper Diamond News, 8 September 1877, 2–3.
57. CWM MI 1/3/A, Wookey, 2 October 1873.
58. CWM P 2/3, 1 July 1875.
59. Price is quoted in CWM SAI 54/1/D, BDC Minutes by Brown, 25 May 1897; RHO SPG E35a31, March 1880.
60. 13 July 1886, in Mahoko, 45 (September 1886), 71–2, as translated by P. Mgadla and S. Volz.
61. O. Motsisi laments the lack of local students at the Moffat Institution in 3 June 1890, Mahoko, 66 (July 1890), 50. In Realm of the Word, Landau describes the importance of thuto for Khama's government in the Ngwato kingdom.
62. Some early discussions about the new school can be found in CWM SAI 53/2/A, BDC Minutes, Ashton, 18 May 1896, and CWM SAI 53/2/C, Willoughby, 29 June 1896.
63. CWM SAR 2/31, 12 December 1896.
64. The BDC recommends closing the seminary in CWM SAI 54/1/D, Brown, BDC Minutes, 25 May 1897.
65. A critical assessment of LMS Tswana schools was conducted by James Richardson in 25 September 1899: CWM SAI 56/3/B; and John Brown expresses opposition to English-medium schooling in CWM SAI 56/3/B, 20 September 1899.
66. Correspondence and other documents regarding LMS efforts to sell the property can be found in the archives of the Robert Moffat Library in Kuruman, S1/F1 in the J. Tom Brown Series.
67. On a visit to the schools on 18 April 2012, I was given a copy of a booklet describing their origins and published on the occasion of their 25th anniversary, Kwarteeufees Gedenkboek: Laer-en Hoërskool (1946).