Spiritual and Ideological Dynamics at the Cape (part 1, June 2010)

Spiritual and Ideological Dynamics at the Cape

PART 1

“Much more is wrought by prayer than this world dream of ...”
Alfred Tennyson



Content
1. Roots of Cape Social Evils
2. Cape Missionary Outreach under Dutch Rule
3. Evangelical Zeal confront colonial Policy
5. Early ‘Spiritual Warfare’ at the Cape
5. Cape Political Ferment
6. Great Cape Fighters of the early 20th Century
7. Diverse Spiritual Dynamics
8. Moves by Churches
9. Occult Roots of Religions at the Cape
10. Soweto and its Cape aftermath
11. Significant impact of Prayer
12. Churches involved in the Race Saga
13. Muslims join the Apartheid Debate
14. God at work behind the scenes
15. PAGAD and its Effects
16. Birth pangs of a new era?
Abbreviations
AE - Africa Enterprise
ACVV - Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouevereniging (Afrikaans Women’s Guild)
AEF - Africa Evangelical Fellowship
ANC - African National Congress
APO - African People’s Organisation
AWB – Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging
AZAPO - Azanian People’s Organisation
CAD – Coloured Affairs Department
CAFDA - Cape Flats Distress Association
CRC - Coloured Representative Council
CCM - Christian Concern for Muslims
CCFM - Cape Community FM (radio)
CSV - Christelike Studentevereniging
CPTA- Cape Professional Teachers Association
CPSA – Communist Party of South Africa
DEIC - Dutch East India Company
DRC - Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk)
Ds – Dominee (equivalent of Reverend)
DTS - Disciple Training School
GCOWE - Global Consultation for World Evangelisation
ICU - Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa
IDASA – Institute of Democratic Alternatives of South Africa
IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party
FSAW - Federation of South African Women
LMS - London Missionary Society
MECO - Middle East Christian Outreach
MERCSA Muslim Resource Centre of South Africa
MJC – Muslim Judicial Council
NEUF - Non European Unity Front
NEUM - Non-European Unity Movement
OM - Operation Mobilization
PAGAD - People against Gangsterism and Drugs
PAC – Pan African Congress
PCR - Programme to Combat Racism
RDP – Reconciliation Development Programme
SACC -South African Council of Churches
SABC - South African Broadcasting Association
SAMS - South African Missionary Society
SIM - Society of International Ministries
SPG - Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
TEAM - The Evangelical Alliance Mission
TEASA - The Evangelical Alliance of South Africa
TEPA - Teachers’ Educational and Professional Association
TLSA - Teachers’ League of South Africa
UDF - United Democratic Front
UNISA - University of South Africa
UCT - University of Cape Town
UWC - University of the Western Cape
V.O.C - Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagne = United East India Company
WCC - World Council of Churches
WEC -Worldwide Evangelization for Christ
YWAM - Youth with a Mission
YMCA - Young Men’s Christian Association
Z.A. Gesticht - Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht (South African Foundation)

Introduction
Some occurrences in life are not easily or rationally explained. Yet, man would like some understanding to vexing questions, for example why some saintly man had to die at a young age or why innocent people had to suffer under cruel governments. When our human mind is not able to fathom issues like these, we tend to look for answers in the supernatural. I suggest that a thorough study of aspects of history - in this case of spiritual forces operating at the Cape - could help us to ‘lift’ the veil of the supernatural somewhat. In this way we could get some notion of meta history – of things happening in the unseen world that influence our lives. I am quite aware that the material printed here may not convince everybody from an academic point of view. It was nevertheless a revelation to me as I studied the history of the Christian missionary outreach at the Cape, to discern that there have been other forces at work that are not so obvious to the naked eye.
I make no apology that we have included relatively much information about two spiritual giants who laboured here in our part of the world: Georg Schmidt, the first missionary to South Africa and Dr Helperus Ritzema van Lier, a Dutch Reformed minister, both of whom operated only for a short period at the Cape. Schmidt, innocently banished to the Cape and pushed from our region in a very unjust way by church people, influenced the origins of our country profoundly, although he was here for not even seven years. His life typifies in a powerful way that “Much more is wrought by prayer than this world dreams of...” It points us to the Lord Jesus whom Georg Schmidt served in such a committed way. The fairly unknown Van Lier has possibly influenced mission history world wide in a much bigger way than that for which he has received recognition.
Furthermore, it seems that very little has become known about the monumental work of another missionary Dr John Arnold, who also had a relative short stint at the Cape. I tried to highlight his contribution to some extent. In my view, he was not treated rather unfairly a few years ago because of a lapse. I deal with the accusation more fully in an unpublished manuscript called The Cinderella of Christian Missions at the Cape.
Tribute is due to two still living pioneers of the loving outreach to Muslims and Hindu’s at the Cape. We salute our own Ds Davie Pypers and the German SIM Life Challenge missionary Gerhard Nehls.
I am aware that the book in your hand is just a fraction of what God has been doing at the Cape through the centuries. Some of the information in the book has been based on the research done for The Cinderella of Christian Missions at the Cape - Efforts to reach the Cape Muslims with the Gospel. We do hope that this manuscript could also be published in due course.

Cape Town, August, 2007.



1. Roots of Cape Social Evils

Biblically speaking, the exodus experience of the Israelites - liberated from the bondage in Egypt - is the precursor of God’s people around the globe: to be led out of the bondage of sin into liberty. This freedom ushers in a new kind of slavery, when the doulos (slave and servant) gives his all in the voluntary committed service of his new Master, the Lord Jesus.
Paul, the apostle and prolific epistle writer of the early church, encourages the believer in Jesus not to be bonded in a yoke of legalistic slavery (Galatians 5:1). It is striking that Judas paid 30 pieces of silver, i.e. the price of a slave (Exodus 21:32). Paul summarized the issue at hand aptly, stating that it all revolves around the difference between the son of the bondswoman (Ishmael) and Isaac, the son of the promise (Galatians 4: 21-28). However, it is incorrect to project the Jewish-Muslim conflict on to the issue. It is much rather about faith in the promises of the unseen God versus performance-based efforts to please or to help God to get to his purposes. Our ‘adequacy’ – if one could call it as such - comes not from ourselves, it is solely from God (2 Corinthians 3:15,16).
In New Testament terms the optimal way to ‘assist’ God is through persevering prayer. In fact, the Father is ‘desperately’ expecting and hoping for our co-operation in this way. He seeks for such pray-ers, believers who worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23,24).

Providence at work
One senses indeed that Providence had a hand in the developments at the Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of the settlement. In fact, even before Jan van Riebeeck set his foot on our shores on 6 April 1652, God had intervened. The Dutch had already intended in 1619 to create a half-way station between Europe and the East and the British also had similar ideas in the interim. It was however the shipwreck of the Haarlem in 1647 which gave the decisive input. Significantly, in their memorandum to the East India Company in Amsterdam, Leendert Janzoon and Nicolaas Proot, two from the stranded crew, motivated the beginning of such a station with the need of bringing the Gospel to the indigenous Khoikhoi. These primal people made a very favourable impression on them. The ship-wrecked Dutch were forced to stay here for five months, until another homeward bound ship could pick them up. It is special how the Remonstrantie, which was written by the two, contradicted the common view of the indigenous people of their day and age, referring to ‘a popular error’: ‘Others will say that the natives are savages and cannibals, and that no good is to be expected from them.’ The Khoikhoi at the Cape impressed them as possible candidates for ‘the magnifying of God’s Holy Name and to the propagation of the Gospel.’ Not surprisingly, Willem Barentsz Wijlant, the zieketrooster (comforter of the sick), who came with Jan van Riebeeck’s group in 1652, endeavoured to reach out to the Khoikhoi. Botha (1999:10) describes Wijlant as the first missionary at the Cape.
In general however, the interest in the Khoi was completely mercantile, occurring at a time when spices and profits came before souls and patriotism. There was of course economic interests as well, especially when the Dutch discovered that the soil at the Cape was not infertile and that the indigenous people, because of the possession of cattle, could be an asset.

Prayer for the Sick, at the table and other occasions
The teaching of the zieketrooster, who was usually not theologically trained, was often problematic. They for instance made prayer at mealtimes compulsory and the neglect of it punishable. They admonished the people not to sit down to their meals ‘without asking a blessing from God before eating and returning thanks afterwards...’ (Theal, History..., Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]: 58). Those who disobeyed ‘were to be fined ...a shilling for the first offence... two shillings for the second offence and so on...’ Yet, the sick comforters did play a role in setting a standard at the Cape that would substantially influence the religious life at the Cape. Wijlant’s successor, Pieter van der Stael, who came in 1656, was described as ‘doing the work of an evangelist.’ Van der Stael was very zealous for the Gospel, opening a school for slave children. He also tried to explain the Christian faith to the indigenous beach rangers.
It is interesting that this sick comforter already introduced fasting and prayer during the winter of 1656. Such serious sickness abounded that ‘the council considered this being beyond doubt a punishment inflicted upon them for their sins’ (Theal, History..., Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]: 58). Thursday, 29 June 1656, was set aside as a day of prayerful fasting, where the early Cape inhabitants beseeched the Almighty to have mercy on them.
That a negative Calvinism developed in due course cannot be laid solely at the doorstep of the church of this time. The Dutch East India Company has to take at least a portion of the blame, for example when they sent ‘a pilloried black villain’, who was allowed to teach the slaves (Schutte, 1998/9:43).
The Afrikaner tradition ‘Boeke vat’, the reading of the Bible and prayer before or after supper, was a custom that the early colonists brought with them from Holland. In earlier centuries it was not unusual to hear in some houses the singing of psalms before daylight or in the evening. It is not clear when the habit started to deteriorate to such an extent that the farm workers were required to stand in the doorway leading to the voorkamer (the lounge) at these occasions.
Being agriculturalists from Holland, the absence of summer rains called for adjustments. Praying for rain would become a regular tenet of religious life at the Cape. Although the lives of their slaves were also influenced by the absence of rain, the farmers however probably hardly ever invited their workers to join in these prayers. The uncertainties of storms, plague and fires were calamities which could be attributed to sinfulness. Public days of prayer were held at such occurrences (Worden et al, 1998:75).

Slavery as an integral part of the spiritual battlefield of the Cape
It is no co-incidence that a meta-historical battle of unseen things was revolving around slaves at the Cape from the outset. The slaves - and their offspring who came to the Cape in the 17th century - turned out to be an important part of the ideological battleground of the forces in the unseen world. The VOC was concerned throughout its rule that religious instruction should be given to the slaves in the slave lodge. Initially the zieketrooster, the sick comforter, was entrusted with this task but later others like Jan Pasqual from Batavia and the freed slave Margaret continued with the ministry. From time to time the Political Council gave instructions to this effect. Thus they commanded that the sick comforter had to make sure that the young slave women attend church twice on a Sunday and that they must be taught to pray after the evening service. Governor Johan Bax gave instruction in the 1670s that slave children had to attend school and that adults had to learn prayers. Also Simon van der Stel ordered that children over twelve years of age had to be sent for Christian instruction on two afternoons per week.
The vast majority of the slaves seems originally to have been open to the Gospel, but sinful attitudes - including materialism on the part of the Dutch colonists and authoritarian denominationalism of the church – smothered good spirituality at the Cape.
The first known Muslims were brought to the Cape as slaves, political exiles and prisoners. The early history of Islam in the Cape runs parallel to slavery in the Cape and the Dutch extension of their commercial interests in the East.
While the churches were not even aware of the presence of these unseen occult forces, Islam gained ground. The spiritually dead church at the Cape had no credible message. The mystical Islamic Sufism could expand unchecked and was hardly detected.
A sore point, and consequently a matter for confession, is the effect of slavery on family life at the Cape. During the 15th to 18th century, very few people in Europe and North America had ethical problems with slavery. The inhuman practices of slavery were regarded as reconcilable with Christian norms in spite of the views of early critics, such as the Spanish priest Alfonso de Sandoval in 1627. Furthermore, influential high-ranking people like Queen Isabella of Spain and Queen Elisabeth I of England however had their reservations about the trade in human beings.
On the other hand, a Dutchman, the Reverend Godfried Udemans, wrote a theological justification for slavery, receiving payment from the West Indian slave trading company. This could thus be seen as an early variation of Prosperity Theology. This enabled the merchants to ride roughshod over the concerns about the negatives of the slave trade. The demonic teaching was so pervasive that a Black minister, Jacobus Capitein (1717-47), who had been abducted as a slave from West Africa and who thereafter studied at the renowned University of Leiden, defended slavery. Slavery also found other intellectual support. Thus Hugo de Groot declared in 1625 that, under certain conditions, the slave trade was not contrary to common law and human rights (Van der Ross, 2005:14)
Through the lack of international communications, the sensitivity to the inhumanity of slavery broke through only relatively slowly. The system of slavery at the Cape was similar to that practised in other colonial societies. It was part of the colonial economic and mercantile system, driven by forces outside the Colony. The slaves played a significant part in the internal economic development from a small refreshment station to a relatively established economy by 1795, when Britain became the colonial power.

Slaves and Religious Persecution
The early history of Islam in the Mother City of South Africa runs parallel to slavery in this part of the world and the extension of the Dutch commercial interests in the East. The first known Muslims were brought to the Cape as slaves in 1658, i.e. only six years after Jan van Riebeeck had landed here. These Muslims were called Mardyckers,1 indicating that they were free people, i.e. not slaves. Even before they left their home soil, many of them had turned to Islam in solidarity with their fellow Ambonese - in opposition to the oppressive Reformed (Dutch) colonizers. They were promptly discriminated against. As part of Dutch colonial policy their religious practices and activities were severely restricted. The threat of a death sentence hung over their head if they tried to convert anybody to Islam. The Cape Mardyckers, who came from the island of Ambon predominantly, worshipped with a very low profile.
The Dutch East India (trade) Company - backed by their rulers in Holland - fought Islam in the East with military means. When rebellious Muslim religious leaders offered stiff resistance in the Indonesian Archipelago, the developing refreshment post at the Southern tip of Africa provided a handy place for the banishment of political convicts. The first religious prisoners came with the batch of slaves from the East that arrived on the Polsbroek from Batavia on 13 May 1668. These Muslim leaders like Sayyid Mahmud and Sayyid Abdurahman Matebe Shah were not prepared to take the religious repression passively like the Mardyckers before them.

Spiritual occult Powers
The graves of the saints later developed into shrines and were given the name Kramats. A plaque at the Constantia Kramat reminds visitors that the leading men were Orang Cayen, i.e. ‘men of power and influence who were viewed as particularly dangerous to the interests of the Company.’ They immediately befriended the slave population at Constantia, teaching them the religion of Islam. Thereafter they held secret meetings in the Constantia forest and on the mountain slopes. The repression of Islam soon turned out to be counter-productive at the Cape, especially because the staunch Muslims from the Indonesian Archipelago brought with them special practices. Supernatural powers were at work through Sufism. This is a form of spiritism, during which prayers to the Muslim saints at the Kramats (shrines) became part and parcel of this variation of the religion. The Sufi leaders and doekums (witch-doctors) had spiritual occult powers at their disposal. The cold nominal Dutch Reformed brand of Christianity was no match in the battle for the hearts of the many slaves who were still open to the Gospel. The spiritually dead church had no credible message. In fact, as in Europe ‘a lingering belief in magical potions and witchcraft still existed at the beginning of the eighteenth century’ (Worden et al, 1998:75).
Shaykh Yusuf, an Islamic Sufi resistance leader whose real name was Abidin Tadia Tjoessoep, came to the Cape on the Voetboog in 1694. He was interned with his 49 followers on the farm Zandvliet that belonged to Petrus Kalden, the Dutch Reformed dominee (minister) of the Groote Kerk. After his noble resistance against the Dutch, Tjoessoep was regarded as a ‘kramat’ - a saint. It has been reported that an early imam at the Cape foresaw prophetically - soon after Shaykh Yusuf’s death in 1699 - that a ‘holy circle’ of shrines would come about (Lewis, 1949: 500).2 The prophecy stated that ‘all Muslims who live within the Holy Circle of tombs will be free of fire, famine, plague, earthquake and tidal wave.’

Slaves and marriage
Slaves were not allowed to be legally married until 1823. Families were ripped apart at the whim of those in the slave trade, even though there was a clear preference for young males. Only two cases have been recorded of entire families that were imported to the Cape.
Most of the urban and Company slaves were accommodated in the slave lodge near to the Groote Kerk. The premises allotted to the slaves were very inadequate - a building with no windows and only a few slits in the walls with bars. To combat the promiscuity in the lodge, the authorities allowed slaves to get ‘married’. Although this bond did not have legal standing, adultery was severely punished. At the same time the authorities permitted the lodge to function as a brothel between eight and nine o’clock at night. Births from this practice were the ‘main source’ of Company slaves (Worden et al, 1998:74). According to some interpretations their ‘husbands’ forced them to sleep with male colonist visitors. The brewer Willem Menssink even attempted to persuade his wife that sex with slaves was the ‘Cape custom’ (Worden et al, 1998:79). It is difficult to discern how the women felt about their role in prostitution. These women were able to subsequently buy their freedom as well as that of their children, abusing the offspring of the sexual relationships with Whites in a subtle way.
Casual sexual contact between male burghers and female slave were not unusual. Against this background it is quite significant that the slave women as a rule appear not to have been cheap, for example by sleeping with everybody more or less as prostitutes. However, ‘they valued their freedom very highly, approaching men who were … permanently settled at the Cape’ (Shell, 1994:287). Racial origins were less significant than legal status. Thus they preferred to marry ‘Christians’ - as the European colonists were called, whether they believed in Christ or not. Marriage was thus ‘abused’ by them in this way to be set free.
Nevertheless, thousands - offspring of the Cape slaves - came into or remained in Islamic bondage by 1800. All the hallmarks of sects like Jehovah’s Witnesses and New Apostolics - whose members are also in bondage, not free to leave the group - are applicable to the religion that was founded by Muhammad. Those adherents, who wanted to break out into freedom, were held captive by fear of reprisals, ostracism and persecution.3

Other language and religious Groups
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Mother City was one of the most cosmopolitan towns in the world. In the streets visitors would hear comparatively little ‘High Dutch’, but rather a mixture of European languages and dialects, the distinctive Portuguese- and Malay-based creole languages, ‘together with smatterings of Chinese, Malagasy and occasional words from Khoi languages’ (Worden et al, 1998:71).
Although (Dutch) Reformed Christianity was enforced right from the beginning, other groups were practising their traditions secretly, some more and others less so. Being Europeans and White colonists, the German Lutherans had it of course much easier than the Indonesian slaves. Apart from significant numbers of Christians and Muslims, there were also always a few Jews around. Already at the beginning of the 18th century there were among Cape Town’s labouring classes those who adhered to other beliefs. In Worden et al (1998:76) Chinese inhabitants are quoted who bought a pig with some of the money they had stolen after a number of burglaries in and around 1705, ‘to offer as a thanksgiving to their so-named idol Joosje since their mission had turned out so successfully.’

Roots of Vice
Slavery would not be seen as vice to-day. Yet, I have no hesitation to put slavery at the top of the list. Slavery changed the face of the Cape from non-racialism to an early precursor of apartheid. Division of slave labour created three groups which have been still not been overcome in Cape society. ‘Africans’, i.e. slaves from Madagascar, Mozambique and West Africa were given the manual work. ‘Coloureds’, i.e. the slaves of mixed breed, were assigned the domestic work and the ‘Malays’, who brought with them some skills from the Indonesian Archipelago, did skilled work - carpentry, leatherwork, tailoring and building. Mnguni derives from r esearch that by 1743 the majority of farmers considered it ‘a shame to work with their hands.’ Van Schoor, a Cape ‘Coloured’ Socialist, who was banned under the apartheid government, suggested that the 1809 proclamation - whereby Khoikhoi were equated to the Whites, introducing pass laws. This ‘paved the way for the transition from chattel slavery to wage slavery’ (Van Schoor, 1952:10). The brutal treatment of slaves furthermore drove them to defensive acts of terror.
Expressions of violence can easily be deduced from conditions of slavery although various authors have tried to say that slavery at the Cape was not as bad as elsewhere. In this connection there are indeed extenuating factors, for example that excessive brutality was punished. Thus a colonist, Jean de Thuile, was sentenced to death for maltreatment of a servant. Knowing how the justice system was loaded against the slaves, one can just imagine how badly De Thuile must have treated the slave in question. That Khoikhoi were severely punished for harbouring a refugee slave, making common cause with them in revolt, indicate that slaves really did not see life on the farms as a paradise. In fact, already in 1686 the governor Simon van der Stel deemed it fit to forbid even the carrying of knives by slaves and Khoikhoi herdsmen.

Other Social evils
From 1673 to 1677 there was war with the Gonnema of Saldanha Bay. In 1707 the Dutch had taken land that originally belonged to Gunjema’s and Saldanhars. The Saldanhars owned large herds of cattle and some sheep. The debate whether the theft of cattle was retaliation or not, is actually irrelevant. However, the root of theft, where the perpetrator can use the argument of being duped, has a place in this equation. Throughout the 18th century the ‘trekboeren’ penetrated deeper into the interior, forcing the Khoikhoi to move ever further from the area of their early settlement, i.e. the immediate environs of the castle. What started as a hedge at Bosheuvel by Jan van Riebeeck, to close in his vrijburgers, became a calamatous Eastern Frontier a century and a half later. In the period between these events indigenous people were killed or driven away in their hundreds – in their thousands would possibly be more correct. The Dutch colonisers and the British Settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries were the perpetrators. Khoikhoi leaders in the grim, widespread and fierce resistance had names like Boesak and Klaas Stuurman. How sad that Christian missionaries were abused in the process to subdue the indigenous!
Theft became part and parcel of life at the Cape. Du Plessis refers to the ‘inveterate propensity of the Hottentots to steal and plunder’ (1911:38). However, in the primal Khoi society theft was severely punished. The thief would be beaten over the back till blood flowed down the body. Furthermore, Jan van Riebeeck also had no scruples to buy slaves with ‘valsch geld,’ to make ‘Hottentotten stomdronken’ and thereafter robbing them of their livestock.4 Thus Du Plessis’ statement that the Khoikhoi were ‘unmitigated thieves’ (1911: 26) becomes quite relative.
A century later, after a hundred Khoi had raided 200 cattle and 2,400 sheep at Piketberg in 1759, a circumstance arose which caused a nightmare for the Stellenbosch landdrost, but ‘tobacco and brandy, those two powerful agents, were enough to entice many Khoikhoi to sell their cattle and to accept service with farmers’ (Welsh, 2000:61). Du Plessis’ (1911: 36) hero-worship of the founder of the settlement is unacceptable: ‘Van Riebeeck distributed his brandy and tobacco with the same feeling of conscious kindliness as animates us when we dispense coffee and cake to the pupils of our mission schools’ .
Furthermore, this is only a part of the story. Spilhaus (1949:96f) points to the other half: Dutch inciting Khoi to steal from English ships and setting a bad example with bribery in bartering. Spilhaus concludes that it must have been difficult for Khoi to appreciate the enormity of theft as a crime in European eyes.
With regard to the problem of large-scale theft Jan van Riebeeck and his company had at least a significant part. As we pointed out, the commander himself boasted how he intoxicated the Khoikhoi and subsequently robbed them of their cattle and their land. It seems thus that it was nowhere such an ‘inveterate propensity’ on the side of the Khoi, but rather that they could have regarded it as revenge if they found that their countrymen had been stealing cattle from the Dutch. It is known that the various Khoi tribes at the Cape had the same language. It was thus quite easy for the word to go round to regard the Dutch as intruders, as the enemy after the atrocities of van Riebeeck and his men. Theft through bartering happened everywhere by people in high places. Nachtigal (1893:68) recorded how Willem Adriaen van der Stel and Stellenbosch landdrost (magistrate) Starrenberg robbed poor natives ‘simply in a rough way, forcing them to barter their cattle for tobacco, copper and pearls’ - albeit that Starrenberg was a puppet, a mere tool of Willem Adriaen van der Stel. To W. A. van der Stel’s credit is that he wrote down for the benefit of others his knowledge of agriculture as the Almanach der Afrikaanse Hoveniers en Landbouwers. The very same Starrenberg shoed some regret when he recorded the result of the process: ‘I have realised with regret how the whole country has been spoilt by the recent freedom of bartering, and the atrocities committed by the vagabonds … and so from men who sustained themselves quietly by cattle-breeding, living in peace and contentment divided under their chief and kraals, they have nearly all become Bushmen, hunters and brigands, dispersed everywhere between and in the mountains’ (Cited by Nigel Penn in ‘Land and labour in the Eighteenth century’, James and Symons, 1989:5).
Land grabbing was condoned already when the Cape grain and wine farmers gradually extended their territory at the expense of the indigenous Khoikhoi people. It is interesting how Western historians have been writing euphemistically about this process. Du Plessis (1911:38) did however also give a reason for the suspicion and dislike of Dutch by the indigenous people: ‘the manner in which the Dutch were quietly acquiring territory, by an act of finesse, if not of positive injustice.’ (Yet, what is positive injustice?) This seems indeed to be the clue, because Janssen and Proot had found amicable Khoikhoi during their enforced stint of ‘five of the pleasantest months’ at the Cape after the Haarlem shipwreck in 1648. At that time the Khoikhoi had come ‘daily with perfect amity … in order to trade, and brought cattle and sheep in quantities.’5
Du Plessis’s euphemism of the land grabbing is inexcusable, even if he had not been aware of the writings about the early Khoi, which were already in existence. In a similar way, his repetition of the myth that the Khoi were thieves almost by nature, displays bad taste. He was definitely aware of the text of the Remonstrance of Janssens and Proot, who had put the blame of the cycle of thieving and plundering squarely on their Dutch countrymen. The Council took possession of the whole tract of country bordering on Table Bay, Hout Bay and Saldanha Bay. The vrijburgers had taken the bushy area which was named Rondebosch by 1657. The region that was called the Holland of the Khoikhoi, Hottentots-Holland, was annexed in 1678. The forest area nearby got a village, which was named Stellenbosch after the governor Simon van der Stel who came in 1679, fairly soon after his arrival.
Spurious legislation led to a cycle of violence and repression. By 1808 it was easy for James Hooper, an Irish labourer and Michael Kelly, an Irish sailor - along with two slaves Abraham and Louis - to incite slaves of the Swartland wheat farms for a protest. According to Van der Ross, the slave Louis, who originated from Mauiotius, actually led the revolt. The light-skinnned mulatto slave Louis, who hadalready been a mulatto at time of his enslavement, was accepted as a leader by other slaves. He purportedly pretended to be a Spanish sea captain, promising freedom to all when they incited other slaves and Khoi.
Hooper and Kelly deserted the group on 24 October 1808. The march to the Mother City, demanding emancipation from the governor, seems to have been the first of its kind (worldwide?). Unfortunately, also the pattern of government oppression in later centuries took shape when the British arrested 326 men. Louis, Abraham and Hooper were hanged.
In a fairly simple liberatory uprising in Worcester in 1825, two rebel leaders were hanged - others were sentenced to life imprisonment. What was their offence? They merely wanted to be set free from the yoke of slavery.
A rather one-sided tradition found its way into South African history books about the laziness and loitering of the indigenous Khoisan. With the lack of coffee houses, newspapers or public amusement in the Mother City at the end of the 18th century, the behaviour of the colonists was hardly any better. Cornelis de Jong, a Dutch traveller, complained that he had never known any people to eat more heartily, drink more heartily and sleep so much, even though some room may have to be given for exagerration: ‘In the morning the men visit each other for a glass of wine, at midday they eat until 1.30 p.m, they go to sleep at 2.30 p.m, not just a little nap but completely undressed and they stay in bed until 4, sometimes 5, during which time no-one may speak a word…’ (Cited in Worden, 1998:142).
Drug related problems in Cape society have a long history. That drugs and other vice have their roots in the earliest beginnings of our country is not generally known. Even before Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival rumours found its way to Europe about the cultivation of cannabis (dagga) by the Khoi in order to get drugged.6 Before long, Van Riebeeck reportedly sent an expedition to the Outeniqua Mountains to fetch a stock of the drug for himself. One of the early political exiles to the Cape from Batavia (the former name of the Island of Java) was Soera Dioromo. He was banished to Robben Island because he had been running an opium den in the town.
Drink played a central part in the popular culture and leisure of the working population of the Mother City. Dutch sailors had a reputation in Europe for being heavy drinkers (Worden et al, 1998:78). The widespread alcoholism in ‘Coloured’ society has its early roots not only on the wine farms of the free burghers and other colonists, but even further back. Jan van Riebeeck cannot be blamed that he introduced the vine to the Cape, but he was guilty in other ways. He would for instance intoxicate Khoi and rob them of their land under the guise of ‘bartering’. Furthermore, at the Castle itself drinking ‘appeared to be the most dominant for of recreation’ (Wayne Dooling in Van Heyningen, 1994:16) of its inhabitants.
Commissionaer van den Broeck found already in 1670 that the numer of canteens at the Cape was ‘wholly in excess of the needs of the little community’ (Du Plessis, 1911:37). Using liquor to ensure complacency among VOC soldiers was an example which colonists would use in later years to keep their workers subservient. By 1699 the members of the garrison became so much ‘slaves of drink that they even sold the clothing off their backs to satisfy their ruling passion’ (Cited by Wayne Dooling in Van Heyningen, 1994:17). By 1717 it was noted that ‘… all workmen, drivers, and the lower classes are addicted to drink’
Yet, one must ask why the Khoikhoi could often be induced to undertake manual labour only by the offer of brandy or tobacco. It is strange that the early rulers at the Cape thought it feasible that incentives could be used to stimulate the pupils at the slave school, ‘om die leerlinge tot leeslus en ywer te prikkel’ (Coetzee, 1975:5).7 The method to this effect was however problematic, to say the least. Gerdener (1937:18) in his booklet Two Centuries of Grace referred to increasing alcoholism among the indigenous people and slaves as ‘far more serious than the language problem.’ They were becoming ‘extremely addicted to strong drink, which they obtained from the surrounding colonists.’
Furthermore, rations in kind soon formed part of the wages almost everywhere at the Cape. Lady Anne Barnard wrote in the 19th century that bread and melons were the normal fare of the Khoisan nearest to Cape Town. However, not only did it become customary to give one or two sheep per annum; alcohol as (part) payment was in vogue on many a wine farm. Many a colonist was ‘none too chary about satisfying the appetites of their dependants with these stimulants,’ which led to addiction sooner rather than later.8
The origins of the shebeens, the illegal 20th century alcohol outlets of the townships, can be found in a precedent of 1699 when individuals who had been granted liquor licences were complaining that their profits were being undermined by smugglers ‘who did not hesitate to convey their contraband liquor even into the castle itself, and sell it their to the garrison and others’ (Cited by Wayne Dooling in Van Heyningen, 1994:16). On top of this, wine farmers who had urban properties ran wine shops from their homes, stocked with their own produce. Thus alcoholism became one of the reasons why the colonists preferred Muslim slaves and encouraged Islam because these workers could be trusted in the wine cellars.
A related practice in the city was that labourers were often paid at drinking places, to the extent that Ordinance 93 of 1832 had to forbid this practice (Worden et al, 1998:147). The missionary Hans-Peter Hallbeck, who became the Genadendal superintendent in 1817, notes in a report to the Government how the unstable character of the Khoi was exploited. Farmers kept ‘Hottentots on the farms, for instance by giving them credit for labour in the form of wine’ (In Krüger, 1966:159).
Gambling and cockfighting were favourite pastimes, especially of slaves (Worden et al, 1998:79). Cockfighting was a part of Javanese and Balinese popular culture and its presence amongst Cape Town slaves. The heritage of the Chinese lived on in the lottery-type game called ‘fafie’, which was still practised in District Six well into the 20th century with the ‘chinaman’ as the central figure. This was possibly practised until the 1970s when the area was bulldozed down in the wake of Group Areas legislation.
Rangton van Bali, a free black, had eight packs of cards among his possessions and there are many cases in the Cape criminal records of slaves who stole money for gambling (Worden et al, 1998:79). When the British took over at the Cape, betting at horse racing became a new gambling ‘sport’. British army officers introduced horse-racing to Cape Town (Worden et al, 1998:141).9

Disturbed patterns of behaviour
The lack of family structures in the Cape and the imbalance of the male to female ratio led to disturbed patterns of behaviour such as, sexual loneliness and misery, gambling, drinking, little regard for human life and a low self esteem. It is not difficult to discern the roots of the present vice in the Cape Flats (The sad heritage of the abuse of females has been perpetrated through the centuries. Farmers and bosses in the city alike abused their female servants sexually). All around the slave society one could find fair and blond-haired children from mothers who clearly did not have those features.
With the shortage of women at the Cape, it is not surprising that homosexuality thrived at the slave lodge adjacent to the Groote Kerk. The location of the venue between the Groote Kerk and St George’s Cathedral is significant.10 In primal Khoi society homosexuality appears to have been an unknown quantity. Adultery and fornication were punished. Both parties were whipped, but in premarital relations the lovers were permitted to marry if they were of similar status in rank and wealth. In the case of pregnancy resulting from premarital sexual intercourse, the marriage was enforced to protect the honour of the girl.
Prostitution was apparently condoned at the slave residence on condition that the (White) men left before nine o’clock. This was another case of vice which developed from slavery. It was definitely a travesty of justice that Prince Angenata of Ternate, one of the political-religious convicts from the Indonesian Archipelago, was imprisoned on Robben Island for many years11 on account of a relatively flimsy offence. The prince admitted that he had harboured Europeans as well as slaves of both sexes in his house day and night for ‘gambling, whoring and other irregularities’. Thus the abuse of Robben Island, as a glorified prison for inconvenient leaders of the opposition to the government of the day, was perpetuated.
The raping of female slaves from the earliest times at the Cape - by colonists and male slaves - likewise gave birth to a practice, which has caused extreme trauma down the ages. In oral tradition the ancestral roots of the Cape ‘Coloured’ are found nine months after the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck.. Yvette Abrahams has shown strikingly, albeit that she conceded to have written speculative history, why this presupposition may not be that far off the mark. The Khoisan domestic worker Krotoa – who got the name Eva - was probably brought into the van Riebeeck family possibly involuntarily as a child (Abrahams, 1996:12). Eva, who served as interpreter to the Khoi, had two children before her marriage to Pieter van Meerhoff, a colonist.
In the original Khoi culture rape was regarded as an extremely serious offence. The guilty man was held down while the husband or father could stab or beat the perpetrator to death. For incest there was no less than the death penalty awaiting the perpetrator.
Yvette Abrahams implies that Krotoa, alias Eva - who became an alcoholic before her death during Robben Island imprisonment - showed all the signs of having being raped, possibly already sexually abused as a child (Abrahams, 1996:20). This suggests that child abuse might be having very deep roots. The country experienced its most wicked expression in November 2001 with the gang raping of an infant. Patricia van der Spuy (1996:47) suggested that rape and other related crimes by slave men was more about attempting to exert and assert dominance than sexual need. In 2005 the raping of infants was not occurring incidentally anymore as the myth gained momentum that sexual intercourse with a virgin was a cure for HIV/Aids.
Eva van Meerhof symbolizes also the cultural uprooting of especially the ‘Coloured’ people at the Cape. The Dutch colonizers speedily sunk into grave moral degradation, which was only checked to a great extent by the pious French Huguenots who arrived from 1688. Du Plessis (1911:??) described it picturesquely: ‘During the dark days of spiritual declension… deeds of individual charity on the part of the pious Huguenots towards the stricken natives stand out in bold relief.’
Adultery became part of the culture with the odd farmer making even a virtue out of his infidelity: ‘Many a farmer was the father of his slave children, whom he could sell’ (Krüger, 1966:158). Light-complexioned slaves even got a better price!

Racial discrimination can be traced to the earliest years. After the sermon in the old fort before the Groote Kerk had been built, a European child was offered for baptism and thereafter a slave woman went to the baptismal font to present her own infant during the ceremony. But before the presiding minister (Rev. Johannes de Voocht) could continue, a visiting minister from Holland, Phillipus Baldaeus, the chaplain of the ship Weenenburgh, stopped the rite.12 He exclaimed that the practice at the Cape was decidedly wrong. Sexual discrimination was introduced by an early Cape administrator, Baron Von Rheede. In 1685 he forbade extra-marital intercourse between European males and female slaves or natives. Marriage of ‘Nederlanders’ to freed slave women was also prohibited. The discrimination became really ridiculous when Von Rheede allowed ‘Europeans’ to marry freed slaves of mixed blood, i.e. a mixture of ‘European’ and ‘non-European’. Von Rheede also started segregation in schools when he decreed that no white children were to attend slave schools and no slaves were allowed in ‘mixed schools’, whatever that meant. Even the dead slaves were discriminated against. In 1718 they were permitted to bury their dead outside the wall of the new cemetery.
Sometimes it is forgotten that the so-called enlightened Ordinance 28 of 1828 was basically still discriminatory. Only Khoikhoi and freed slaves were regarded as equals to the colonists. Other slaves were still a separate inferior class. Even the emancipation was not completely indiscriminate. The notorious early company official van Rheede had a very discriminatory decree: ‘half-caste’ males could request to be emancipated at the age of 25, female half-caste at age 22. Only those were emancipated though whose behaviour was satisfactory. Emancipation thus also represented a set of actions, which was detrimental to race relationships at the Cape.
In the 1830s there was a hardening of racial attitudes. The frontier wars, the struggle for representative government and the anti-convict crises of the 1840s and 1850s contributed to further polarisation of Cape society.
The reputable and devout Swedish Moravian missionary Bishop Peter Hallbeck gave a critical but honest summary of the early 19th century Khoi and the influence on them of Western culture. ‘Some bad habits, such as stealing, adultery and lying, had been unknown to their forefathers, and had developed only from their contact with the Colonists’ (Krüger, 1966:158).

Hypocracy by people in government became ingrained in the South African life-style. As early as 1658, burghers were prohibited from bartering with Khoikhoi. Yet, Van Riebeeck himself did not refrain from the practice. Theal commented that the trade which continued could often hardly be distinguished from outright theft. Similarly, Willem Adriaen van der Stel ordered at the re-opening of trade with the Khoikhoi that no advantage was to be taken of the Khoikhoi. Yet, he himself – along with Starrenberg, the landdrost of Stellenbosch – became notorious for their dishonest bartering practices. (A classic example of hypocracy and dishonesty in recent years was Peter Marais, the Premier of the Western Cape at the time, who defended his lies as ‘just having stretched the truth a little bit.’)
In later years the racial prejudice shifted to the ‘Malays.’ It was conveniently forgotten that the materialist colonists themselves contributed to the expansion of Islam after 1770. When the Cape Muslims were by far not the only drivers of the new cabs, the bi-weekly Argus which had just been introduced in 1857 reported, spreading the prejudice: ‘Those Malayan coachmen drive too fast. Almost every week one reads of accidents. They are also too cheeky and overcharge.’ Yet, some root could perhaps be detected of the dangerous driving habits of taxi drivers and their using two tariff scales on some routes, one for locals and another one for foreigners.

Evangelistic Neglect
With Shaykh Yusuf the battle in the spiritual realms started to heat up. There is no evidence that Rev. Kalden made any attempt to share the Gospel with the Muslim community on his farm (Haasbroek, 1955:54), which was located at the present-day Macassar near Somerset West. This was thus at quite a distance from the city, with only 18th century transport at Kalden’s disposal.
Nevertheless, Reverend Kalden basically had a heart for missions. He was probably the first European who tried to learn the difficult Khoi language with the avowed object to be ‘of service to this heathen nation who still abide in such dark ignorance’ (Du Plessis, 1955 [1911]:47). In fact, he wanted to study the language for a year or more ‘om dit volkome te bemeester’, to master it fully (Hopkins, 1965: 31)
We should bear in mind that his farm was merely used as a glorified prison. Politically and denominationally it would have been very difficult for Kalden to try and show compassion to a Muslim leader who had been banished to his farm.

Materialism as the Vogue
In New Testament times Paul, the prolific epistle writer, had already discerned that materialism is idolatrous by stating that greed is a form of idolatry (Colossians 3:5). The Dutch started the refreshment post at the Cape out of economic considerations. Profit was the big word and materialism was the vogue.
Already from the very early pioneering days the colonists and their clergy who came here, had only material gain in mind. Thus one finds a school for slaves five years before there was one for the colonist’s children, although there was no lack of children of schoolgoing age. The explanation has to be sought in the ‘kapitalistiese of materialistiese politiek van die bewindhebbers’ (Coetzee, 1975:3). For the same reason, the slave children at the school, which was started in 1658 by the ziekentrooster, were taught ‘…om die meeste diens uit hulle te kry.’13 Already in 1709 the Danish missionary Johann Georg Böving, who, on his way from the East, spent three weeks at the Cape. He discerned how materialism operated like the thorns of Jesus’ parable, choking the gospel seed. ‘The greatest hindrance … he believes to be the … colonists, who oppose the evangelisation of their slaves on the ground that those who have received Christian baptism, cannot thereafter be bought and sold’ (Cited in du Plessis, 1911:48). The motives of slave mothers for the christening of their babies were hardly ever spiritual. The overriding motive was often that this meant that they would have to be freed later and could not be separated from their mothers in a re-sale (Van der Ross, 2005:35).
Fraud was very much a part of their practice. In fact, it was regarded as no sin and it entailed no disgrace to rob the East India Company. The leader of the settlement at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck, was found guilty in this regard before he came to the Cape. One could grant the founder some clemency – as did Du Plessis, the very reliable Stellenbosch church historian – that van Riebeeck used brandy and tobacco to lure slaves to attend the first school, which he started a few years after their arrival. The teaching of the slave children was however also expedient, because they had to be taught at least some Dutch, to be of better service to their masters. The Indonesian slaves were only of limited use because they did not understand Dutch. Van Riebeeck probably knew that children pick up a language more readily.
Slavery seems to have exacerbated the materialism, which was already present among the early colonists. The ambivalant example set by Jan Van Riebeeck was quite pervasive. A student of his diary noted that he was quite devout. ‘Op elke onderneming word Gods seën gevra en vir elke geslaagde werk word Hom lof gebring.’14 On the other hand, Van Riebeeck was unscrupulous and dishonest. This ambivalence was passed on through the generations. In the 20th century many a South African farmer would be attending church regularly, giving his tithes and gifts for mission work generously, while his workers were paid starvation wages at the same time. Even more bizarre is the 21st century variation. In churches where ‘Prosperity Theology’ is taught and practised, money is occasionally thrown on to the stage, but in the same congregation there are poor people who might not have a meal the very same day – with little hope that the church would care for them.
Fraudulent and materialistic Ambition
Fraud belonged very much to the accepted practice. In fact, it was regarded as ‘no sin and entailed no disgrace to rob the East India Company’ (Theal, Vol. 3, p.386). The founder of the settlement at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck was found guilty in this regard before he came to the Cape and even here he had no scruples to use ‘valsch geld’. The bartering practices that he applied to acquire land and livestock from the indigenous population were ethically very problematic. Materialistic ambition was part and parcel of the cultural baggage that was imported from Holland. Thus someone no less than the influential early Cape governor Simon van der Stel, who came to the Cape in 1679, probably only married his wife Johanna Six to pursue a career in the V.O.C, the trade company which governed the Cape Colony from 1652 (Picard, 1968:13).
Materialistic ambition was part and parcel of the cultural baggage that was imported from Holland. Simon van der Stel, who came to the Cape Colony in 1679, treasured profit and ambition. This was demonstrated in the wish, which he expressed in a letter to his son, Willem Adriaen, the incoming governor. Simon van der Stel invoked divine grace not only to the glorification of God, but also to the enhancement of the new governor’s reputation, ‘for the directing of Church and politics to the benefit of the Company’s profit …’15 Through their attitude to the indigenous people, along with the example of malpractices, the Van der Stels – father and son - made a mockery of the Gospel. Simultaneously, the Van der Stels personified the increasing distance of the Europeans from the people of colour like no other.
Yet, Willem Adriaen van der Stel was merely perpetuating a sad heritage. When he became governor, ‘avarice was the prevalent vice of men in high places and corruption in order to acquire wealth, affected an official’s character but lightly.’ In due course ‘cuning and cheating were looked upon as virtues rather than vices’ (Krüger, 1966:158) among the colonists.
Concern for the spiritually lost substituted by Materialism
It is especially tragic that Ds Petrus Kalden, who started off with a vision to reach the Khoikhoi with the Gospel, was later accused of running a plantation rather than a parish (Shell, 1994:367). When he started to farm to augment his salary, the pervasive influence of materialism seems to have replaced his first love for the spiritually lost. Although the accusation against Kalden was not sufficiently substantiated, he was one of very few clergymen at the Cape who had to be recalled for neglecting his duties as a pastor. (He was subsequently dismissed by the DEIC, although he received two ‘baie eervolle getuigskrifte’ 16 from the Cape Church Council). Kalden had become the victim of a sad smear campaign by his ‘strydlustige kollega’ - his belligerent colleague - Ds Engelbertus Franciscus Le Boucq (Hopkins, 1965:31). The latter was not positive towards evangelistic and missionary work any way.
Be it as it may, Kalden was not the last cleric at the Cape to succumb to the snares of greed. The clear demonstration of materialism - both by the DEIC and Kalden - is a sad heritage which is still plaguing our country. Kalden was a product of the society from which he came. It seems as if he got entangled to some extent in the malpractices of Willem Adriaen van der Stel. He apparently proved to the satisfaction of the authorities that the object of his farming engagement was ‘mainly a wish to acquire a perfect knowledge of the Khoikhoi language in order to reach them with the Gospel’. Back in Holland Reverend Kalden succeeded in redeeming himself, after defending himself in writing in a dignified way against the accusations. He regained his missionary zeal, asking to be sent to India. He retired in Ceylon in 1737, with full honours bestowed on him.
Materialism also influenced Islam. The sacrificial life of Muhammad, who definitely did not live in riches, although he became a prominent statesman in Medina, never broke though to the rank and file Cape Muslim community. Those who made it to attain wealth were not always generous. In the twentieth century this would develop into great extremes at the Cape. In the small Bo-Kaap community the poor and the rich of the Schotsche Kloof flats and Upper Longmarket Street inhabitants respectively, are a stone’s throw apart from each other, but worlds apart in terms of communication, although they share the same religion.
Similarly, the teachings of sacrificial sharing of New Testament Christianity - as it was practiced by the first community in Jerusalem - disappeared into oblivion. In the 21st century, Christianity is dwarfed by unbiblical prosperity teachings which make a mockery of the simple life-style and example of Jesus with regard to material possessions. The European import succeeded to replace ubuntu, the communal African attribute, in which sharing was part and part of the life-style throughout South Africa.17 Corruption and Bribes almost appeared to become a part of the new life-style in government departments, notably at Home Affairs and in the police force.

The strange colonial View on Baptism
It became theologically very problematic when other issues like citizenship and right of inheritance were linked to baptism. In fact, as early as March 1666 a sad incident had taken place. After the sermon in the old fort before the Groote Kerk had been built, a European child was offered for baptism and thereafter a slave woman went to the baptismal font to present her own infant during the ceremony. But before the presiding minister (Rev. Johannes de Voocht) could continue, a visiting minister from Holland, Phillipus Baldaeus, the chaplain of the ship Weenenburgh, stopped the rite. He exclaimed that the practice at the Cape was decidedly wrong (Böeseken, 1977:27). According to him - doctrinally he surely had a point to make - that they were ‘disregarding the holiness of the sacrament as the mother was not Christian’ (Davids, 1984:178).18
The Commander at the Cape, Wagenaer, was enfuriated and immediately called a meeting of the Politieke Raad the next day. Hereafter it was decided that the slave child should be christened the very next Sunday. Achmat Davids, an influential Cape Muslim author, surmises that the main motive for Wagenaer’s ‘altruism’ was the attempt to swell the ranks of the Christians in this way, by getting as many children baptized before they could be reared as Muslims. Davids’ theory is not supported by the facts. As an indirect result of the Dordt synod in 1618, the opposite happened at the Cape. Slaves were not baptized because of fear that they would have to be set free.
The Rev. Overneij, a Dutch Reformed Minister who was at the Cape from 1678 until his death in 1687, seems to have had the spiritual well being of the slaves at heart, but he had a problem on his hands when the question arose whether the children of slaves could be baptized. The matter did not rest there however. The baptism of slaves’ children was referred to Amsterdam. The negative advice from there - on racial rather than doctrinal grounds - militated against every effort to evangelize the slaves. Apart from the efforts of Pieter van der Stael, the second zieketrooster and the teacher who had a heart for the slaves, it does not seem as if serious attempts were made to communicate the Gospel to slaves at all in the early days of the Cape Colony, let alone to the Muslim slaves.. The strange colonial view on baptism continued to haunt evangelism to the indigenous people well into the next century.
2. Cape Missionary outreach under Dutch Rule

The link between baptism and manumission - the setting free of slaves - had been clearly expressed at the international Synod of Dordt (1618). In the early beginnings of the Cape Colony VOC officials practised this. Thus Catharina, a Bengalese slave, was freed soon after she had been baptized (Theal, Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]: 60).
Interesting was also the increase in status which was linked to baptism at this time. The view was theologically basically sound that ‘Christians could not be kept in bondage’ (Theal, Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]: 59), especially when one keeps in mind Bible verses like ‘If the the son sets you free, you are free indeed’ (John 8:36) and ‘it is for freedom that Christ set you free...’ (Galatians 5:1). Against this background it was quite natural that Catharina, the Bengalese slave was styled ‘de eerbare jonge dochter’19 after her baptism, on par with the niece of the commander, Jan van Riebeeck (Theal, Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]: 60).
Unfortunately the situation changed at the Cape already after a few decades. Efforts to christianitze both slaves and natives became feebler. The contemporary traveller Kolbe noted that the slaves of the D.E.I.C (Dutch East India Company) were baptized but that the colonists did not follow suit (Nachtigal, 1893:91). Another minister at the Cape, Le Boucq (1707-8), criticised his colleagues saying: ‘baptized slaves were not set free’ (Cruse, 1947:226). Sentiments like this would not have encouraged the rank and file colonist to Christianize the slaves. In fact, the love and zeal for Christianity among them became in course of time ‘zeer lauw en flauw’, (very lukewarm and timid), also because the clergymen were giving such a bad example to them (Nachtigal, 1893: 65). A ‘grave moral deterioration soon became apparent in the Table Valley settlers’ (Du Plessis, 1911: 36). Nachtigal summarized the period 1685 until 1736, aptly using the phrase ‘the estrangement between colonists and Coloureds’ as a hindrance to further mission work. It appears that the churches on the countryside, Roodezand (Tulbagh), Drakenstein (Paarl), Stellenbosch and Zwartland (Malmesbury) baptized ‘Coloured’ people much longer - and admitted them to communion.
Start of a prayer Chain in Europe
Seen against the background of the religious intolerance of the time, the first missionary enterprise by the Moravians was a miracle. The start of their endeavour occurred as a direct result of prayer. It developed out of the revival in the German village of Herrnhut in August 1727, after the laborious counselling and prayers of Count Zinzendorf. He had talked and prayed at length with the quarrelling role players in the village who came from different church backgrounds. The infighting brought the village Christians to the brink of open confrontation and a split was imminent when divine intervention set in. The Holy Spirit prepared the hearts of estranged believers from the different factions in the church of Berthelsdorf (the village adjacent to Herrnhut) on August 13, 1727 where they went for Holy Communion. Tears of remorse and repentance were streaming freely in the service. Two weeks later, on August 27, a few revived members of the congregation started a remarkable ‘hourly intercession.’ Forty eight believers committed themselves to pray every day in pairs for an hour apiece. That developed into a prayer chain, setting an unparalleled world record of 120 years. After a few years the focus of this prayer movement became missions.
A Slave as God’s divine Instrument
The cause for the start of the missionary movement was Count Zinzendorf’s encounter with a Christian slave at the coronation of Denmark’s King Christian VI in 1731. The Holy Spirit was evidently at work when the Count did the very unconventional thing of speaking to Anton, a slave from the Caribbean island of St Thomas, who came for the occasion with his owner, the aristocrat Von Pless. Anton immediately challenged the Count, mentioning his slave compatriots who had not yet heard the Gospel. Zinzendorf, the leader of the Herrnhut community, invited Anton to repeat the challenge in his home congregation. There Anton appealed to the Moravian believers to help liberate those who were in double bondage, and to take the Gospel to his Caribbean relatives and countrymen. Anton warned the committed believers however, that his slave countrymen were so overloaded with work that there would be no time for sharing the Gospel except during working hours.
In the revived Herrnhut congregation the believers were touched by his appeal. Not even the awesome suggestion that potential missionaries would have to share the slave life-style could hold the eager congregation back. The very next year, in 1732, the first two missionaries left for St Thomas. They were the first of many from the village of Herrnhut to different parts of the world during the following decades - backed by the 24-hour prayer chain at home.
Count Zinzendorf’s encounter with a Christian slave was thus the cause of the greatest missionary movement the world since the times of the apostles - and coming from a single congregation at that! The evangelical awakening in England that came about through John Wesley and George Whitefield from around 1740 was a direct result of the Moravians’ endeavours, as they left Germany to spread the Gospel in the New World. In North America the movement coincided with the first Great Awakening. This itself was the result of a wave of prayer.
A Missionary ‘banished’ to the Cape
Georg Schmidt, a Moravian missionary, was ‘banished’ to the Cape in 1737 as punishment for a perceived serious misdemeanor. Schmidt had been imprisoned in Moravia because of his faith. After his release he was smeared and slandered. A rumour was hereafter spread - which the Count Zinzendorf believed as the truth - that Schmidt signed a document in which he was supposed to have recanted his faith to regain his freedom. Some even asserted that Schmidt returned to Catholicism. At any rate, Schmidt was hardly back in Herrnhut when he returned to the Roman Catholic areas to encourage the Protestants there, risking a new imprisonment or even worse.
Without any apparent grudge, Schmidt accepted the unfair punishment to be ‘banished’ innocently to go to the distant Cape of Good Hope, to minister to the ‘Wilden’, to the resistant ‘Hottentotten’. In the spiritual realm this could be seen as a divine response to the Islamic foundations laid by the exiled Shayk Yusuf who had likewise been banished to the Cape in 1694. (Schmidt was ‘banished’ by Count Zinzendorf to work amongst the primal Cape ‘Hottentots’ to compensate for the perceived damage he had done to the cause of the Gospel.
We can hardly comprehend the thinking, which brought a government to forbid missionaries to baptize their indigenous converts. This is exactly what happened to Georg Schmidt, the first missionary to the Cape Colony. He was promptly called to book because he did not heed the warning, albeit that the Calvinists had a convenient formal excuse: Schmidt was not properly ordained. The Count Zinzendorf, had only ordained Schmidt by letter.
Reasons for the Excesses
Thompson (1827:87), an early 19th century traveller, gave candid and honest excuses for the behaviour of the colonists. He pointed to the ‘vicious and corrupt character of the Dutch government by which the interests of the community were constantly sacrificed for those of the company and its servants’. Then the colonists were out of reach of religious instruction or moral restraint. Add to that inefficient law enforcement which ‘encouraged and abetted a system of unrighteous aggression against the native tribes,’ then the recipe was prepared for a violent society, supplying a precursor of apartheid atrocities. Last not least, the influence of slavery is mentioned. Thompson discerned that this ‘inevitably deteriorates and pollutes the whole mass of society’. The traveller Thompson interestingly compared the Cape colonists with White settlers elsewhere: ‘the very rudest class seem to be in many respects superior to the half-savage …settlers in the Spanish or anglo-American colonies.’ Interesting is also how he saw the Khoikhoi labourer as a commodity, ‘hired at a rate much below its comparative value…’
The Bible – for Whites only
Already quite early the slaves were sitting separately in the church, e.g. next to the pulpit on the sides or at the back of the church - not in the pews among the Colonists. The reason for the practise might have been that the separate pews were 'for free', but the bottom line still is that this was indicative of a lower status of the slaves.
There was also quite a strong undercurrent developing over the years: colonists believed that the Bible was not meant for the Khoisan and slaves. The historian Elisabeth Elbourne suggests that the ‘doors to family prayer were more often than not firmly barred against slaves and Khoisan in the 1790s and early 1800’ (Elbourne, 1992:6). In substantiation she quotes an example in the parish of the evangelical and mission-minded Ds Michiel Vos of Tulbagh. Barnabas Shaw, a Methodist missionary, wrote about Diana, a Khoikhoi woman who was illegally held as a slave. When the slave woman Diana shrewdly contrived to wash the feet of family members just as they were about to have the Bible reading, she was forbidden to enter the room at this particular time.
Worse was the distorted interpretation of Calvinism that took root at the Cape. The colonists’ faith drew much of its inspiration from the Old Testament, but they did not see their presence at the Cape as an opportunity to serve the indigenous population and the Muslim slaves. These Europeans derived from Scripture a special destiny as a people with their model being the Israelites. They had to conquer the land – at the expense of the indigenous Khoi who were the descendants of Ham, who were cursed and in their unbiblical interpretation the Hamites were destined to be only drawers of water and hewers of wood. In their view the Muslim slaves had a pagan creed, which they as good Calvinists despised. On that score that religion was fit for slaves and men of colour. On the other hand - in the words of Van Imhoff, a Governor-general, on behalf of the Dutch India company in 1743 - as Europeans they preferred to be served rather than to serve, considering it debasing to work with their own hands.
The customs seem to have been relaxed hereafter. Tulbagh had decreed in the 1750s that slaves should not be found around the church at the closing of services. Indicative of the attitude of colonists was an example how the wife of a company official, the Fiscal Johannes Truter (who later became the Chief Justice) used her household slaves. They had to ‘carry her holy book and footstool to the door of God’s house, but when they arrive, their load is taken from them, the door is shut upon them, and they are bound to wait in the street until the service is concluded: then they bear back the proud mistress’ stool and the blessed book...’ The case of Truter is especially very sad if one considers that he had close links to the Z.A. Gesticht.
Origins of institutionalised segregation
It is sad that the earliest traces of institutionalised segregation can be found in the confines of the church. Dutch Calvinist settlers believed themselves to be saved and the heathen to be pre-destined to ‘another place’. It has been suggested that the doors to family prayer were more often than not firmly barred against slaves and Khoisan in the 1790s and early 1800s.
In 1721 it was forbidden for slaves to become god-parents at the christening of babies. It is ironical that Ryk Tulbagh (1751-71), who was known as a father figure - who fought corruption so vehemently and led by example - seems to have been the first governor to legislate institutionised segregation and discrimination. In 1754 he issued a placaat to forbid slaves singing or whistling at night. In the earliest known curfew at the Cape, slaves had to carry a light and a special permit after 10 p.m. In the same year Tulbagh forbade slaves from wearing special mourning clothes at funerals. It was also he who instituted a precursor of another apartheid law when slaves were not allowed to gather in a group of more than 200 – at a funeral at that. The following year Tulbagh started with separate hospitals after a smallpox epidemic and the outbreak of scarlet fever.
In 1780 it was stated that it was undesireable for Black police to arrest White people. This became standard practice in South Africa, long before the Masters and Servants Act and the prescriptions of job reservation.
Repressive Denominationalism
Protestant missionaries were expediently abused to oppose Roman Catholicism in different parts of the world. The V.O.C. (Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagne = United East India Company), the trade company that governed the Cape from 1652, regarded Dutch Reformed Calvinism to be the obvious guarantee that this would also happen at the Cape. An agreement had been reached after the 30 years war, which ended in Europe in 1648: cuius regio, eius religio. This implied that colonial powers could enforce their national religion on the areas that they ‘possessed’. Therefore no other churches except the Dutch Reformed denomination were allowed to operate at the Cape. Thus it would be ensured that the Catholics would not have any pretext to come and join the fray.
One of the worst examples of denominational discrimination worldwide was practiced at the Cape in respect of Catholics. Around 1800 local inhabitants from this church ‘did not have liberty’ to attend mass with one of their clergymen on one of the ships in the port (Du Plessis, 1911:368). This is a polite way of saying that the Catholics were not allowed to visit their cleric on the ship. The three Catholic priests, the first of whom arrived in October 1805, were requested to leave the Cape at the British re-conquest of the colony the following year.
Other religions were even worst off. Muslims were merely tolerated and Judaism was trampled upon. The Dutch Reformed Church saw itself as the new Israel that replaced the nation, which the Bible described as the ‘apple of God’s eye.’
The Dutch Reformed Church and other mainline Protestants
The French Huguenots, who arrived at the Cape after 1688 were spiritual relatives of the ruling church but even they were not allowed to use their home language for worship. In France the Huguenots had been persecuted. They could thus be seen as the spiritual counterparts of the Mardyckers and other Muslims who came to the Cape before them. After the Huguenot pastor Pierre Simond had protested successfully against the language ruling, Simon van der Stel, the Cape governor, branded him a rebel. At this time missionary work among the Muslims was prohibited, also by other colonial powers.20
It has furthermore been reported that although there were many Germans at the Cape by 1700, they were not permitted to have their own church. It took the Lutherans almost 40 years of petitioning until they were finally allowed to bring their own minister to the Cape and to have their own worship in 1779. Georg Schmidt, the Moravian missionary, was the first cleric outside of the Reformed ranks to operate at the Cape. Theal (Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]:59) notes that Schmidt initially experienced ‘nothing but kindness’ from the government at the Cape. However, he was seriously handicapped after Ds G.Kulenkamp, an Amsterdam minister, issued a pastoral letter of warning against the ‘extreme views’ expressed by the Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravian Church movement at the time. The letter branded the Moravians a mystical society, spreading dangerous opinions detrimental to the pure doctrine under the cover of pure simplicity (Kulenkamp was actually erring, referring to the ‘Blut und Wunden’ [blood and wounds] theology of Zinzendorf’s son Christiaan Renatus, but the warning was now understood to be against the Moravians as such). But also later there was a basic clash with Reformed teaching. The Moravians embraced the Arminian doctrine of universal atonement, which held that in converting to Jesus Christ, the individual accepted the salvation that had been achieved for everyone by his death on the Cross. This teaching was condemned by the Reformed Synod of Dort in 1618-19, flying in the face of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. Furthermore, the free attitude of the Moravians towards the various confessions caused offence. Count Zinzendorf endeavoured to form a fellowship of all who accepted the salvation through Christ as the main point of their faith.
A basic objection against the German missionary was that he had no relationship to the Dutch Reformed Church. Gerdener (1937:20) highlighted Schmidt’s reactions to these ‘whisperings’ that were intended to halt his work, a reaction that was so typical of that generation of Moravians: ‘More than ever Schmidt sought the guidance of the Lord of the harvest and declared that this guidance demanded that he should not only continue but renew his efforts with even greater vigour.’
At Baviaanskloof Georg Schmidt was expected to refrain from starting a new church through his mission work, although the colonial church officials believed ‘less in the possible conversion of the Khoi than in the conversion of the devil’, to quote Schmidt’s own words (Bredekamp et al, 1981:43). Schmidt was merely tolerated as long as he worked far away from company settlements. Worldwide the Moravians were operating with a low profile in remote places. It is quite telling of the religious intolerance that this church group was nevertheless ‘treated as criminals for attempting to reach the blacks’ (Cited in Du Plessis, 1955:419 from the Missionary Review of the World, July 1908). It did not begin like that though.

Early evangelical beginnings in the Mother City
The first serious effort in the 18th century to evangelize the Muslims at the Cape is said to be that of the Dutch Reformed Ds Henricus Beck, a Groote Kerk minister, after his retirement in 1731 (Haasbroek, 1955:58),21 i.e. the same year in which the Count Zinzendorf had his encounter with the Caribbean slave Anton in Denmark. Nevertheless, a group of evangelical Christians gathered around Ds Beck. His pioneering labour provided the spade work for the dynamic Georg Schmidt to start lively Christian groups in due course.
The widow Aaltje van den Heyden, one of Beck’s church members, played an important part in the mission work to the slaves after the death of her husband in 1740 by supplying the bulk of the funds for what became known as the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht (Haasbroek, 1955:58) in Long Street. This would influence the religious life at the Cape for the next decades decisively. It has been reported that Schmidt had a small congregation of 47 and that he was in contact with 39 Whites (Schmidt, Afrika en die Evangelie [pamphlet], Genadendal, 1937). The evangelical group in the Mother City laid the foundation of what became the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht (Z.A. Gesticht) on the corner of Long and Hout Street.
A few years later in 1742, Cape residents described the impact of Schmidt’s ministry to Nitschmann and Eller, two Moravian missionaries en route from Ceylon (the modern-day Sri Lanka), from where they had been deported. In their assessment they stated that Schmidt had accomplished in three and a half years ‘what others would not have affected in thirty years’ (Du Plessis, 1911:56).
The first Converts of Georg Schmidt
Georg Schmidt was a powerful evangelist. Various sailors on his voyage to the Cape were touched and converted. Both corporal Kampen and his successor at the military base at Zoetemelksvlei described Schmidt as their spiritual father (Cruse, 1947:147). His sense of purpose is demonstrated by the fact that Schmidt moved on from Zoetemelksvlei to the Sergeants River soon after the conversion of Kampen, to get to the original reason for his coming - to evangelise the Khoi.
Schmidt gradually overcame the ‘apathy of his flock’ with ‘labour of love and patience of hope’ (Du Plessis, 1911:54). It was however no cakewalk in the light of the growing opposition against his work. In the beginning of 1742 Schmidt was very frustrated and despondent after long years of toil and little to show for it. He wrote to Zinzendorf that he intended to return to Europe, partly because of the indolence of his folk, partly because he did not receive helpers. But then the fruit came in the form of the first converts. Schmidt came to the Mother City to greet his friend and benefactor, Captain Rhenius, who was about to leave the country for his retirement. On his arrival, he heard that his compatriots Nitschmann and Eller, two Moravian missionaries were on the ship ‘Marquetta’, which was expected shortly en route from Ceylon (the modern-day Sri Lanka), from where they had been deported. The visit to the Mother City with Willem, a convert, resulted in an unprecedented interest among colonists and officials. During this visit to the Cape Schmidt picked up the letter of ordination from Count Zinzendorf. In March 1742 he thus at last had the ordination to baptize suitable candidates in his possession. The Count encouraged him in the same letter to baptize his converts ‘where you shot the rhino’, i.e. at the river.
In the conversion and baptism of the female Vehettge Tikkuie, one of Schmidt’s converts, there was a clear supernatural element. He initially only attended to males. At first he found only three men suitable for baptism. Schmidt only proceeded to test Vehettge Tikkuie’s Bible knowledge on 4 April 1742. Quite prejudiced against females, he did not expect much, but Schmidt was very surprised by her answers. He had little choice than to baptize the intelligent Khoi woman, giving her the name Magdalena, surely hoping that she would spread the news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ like her biblical namesake. She had been exceptional any way, progressing quickly from the Dutch ABC manual, to read the New Testament in that language (Bredekamp, 1987:138).
Schmidt thus succeeded - against all odds and contrary to all expectations - to convert Khoi, baptizing them in or at the Sergeant’s River. To the church authorities this was unacceptable, the ordination having being signed by a foreign denomination. After the baptism of five converts in 1742, he was forbidden to baptize more Khoi. We can hardly comprehend the thinking that caused a government to forbid missionaries to baptize their indigenous converts. This is exactly what happened to Georg Schmidt. He heard that a new pamphlet against the Moravians had arrived at the Cape and that people expected him to be banished like the brethren from Ceylon. Much too carelessly he shared with the believers at the military post that he baptised the five. He was promptly called to book because he had not heeded the warning, albeit that the Calvinists had a convenient formal excuse: Schmidt was regarded as ‘not properly ordained’. Count Zinzendorf, the leader of their church, had only ordained Schmidt by letter.
A Threat to the colonial Church?
Schmidt was hereafter regarded as a threat to the colonial church. The three Dutch Reformed dominees at the Cape, Le Seur (Groote Kerk), van Gendt (Stellenbosch) and van Echten (Drakenstein) referred to Schmidt unbecomingly in a letter to their church authorities as ‘deeze zoogenaamde hottentots- bekeerder’ (so-called hottentot converter), who pretended to convert ‘de blinde Hottentotten’ (Dreyer, 1936:196f). They complained that the converts were not sufficiently instructed and that Schmidt was not ordained. They referred to Zinzendorf’s letter of ordination in very disparaging terms. Their real problem comes through in the sentence ‘ook mogen geen bejaarden worden gedoopt, dan in de kerken voor de gantsche gemeente’ (my italics, Dreyer, 1936:196f). They could not pallate it that Schmidt baptized in the river and not in a church. Their letter of September 1742 arrived too late in Amsterdam for a reply, which could have changed the situation.
Pressure was successfully exerted by the three ministers to get Schmidt sent back to Germany. Nevertheless, the Cape ministers were reprimanded by the Amsterdam classis: ‘men had niet mogen aandringen op Schmidt’s vertrek doch eerst met hem te confereren.’22 When this letter, dated 5 December 1743, was still on the sailing-vessel to the Cape, Schmidt was already waiting in the Mother City for transport to take him back to Europe. It looked as if Schmidt’s work in Baviaanskloof was doomed, a complete failure.
Schmidt’s position had become extremely unpleasant ‘if not untenable’ (Theal, Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]:61). But even as he was waiting for a ship to take him to Europe, Schmidt evangelised among the colonists at the Cape. He hoped for many years that he could return to Baviaanskloof. It has been reported that Schmidt continued to pray for his flock in Africa until old age in the East German village of Niesky where he died in 1785.
Furthermore, neighbouring farmers instigated the indigenous Khoi of Baviaanskloof and surroundings successfully so that many of them left the mission post. The letter of the three Cape clergymen spread like a wildfire in Europe. At this time the Moravians had been banished from Saxony, in which Herrnhut was situated. This coincided with the Count Zinzendorf’s absence from Herrnhaag where the revolutionary church had found a refuge. Doctrinal excesses by his son Christian Renatus exagerrated the problem. The Moravians were hereafter villified and branded as fanatics, who held wild views of Christianity.
The Seed of Schmidt germinates
The seed that Schmidt had sown at the Cape during his stint of not even seven years germinated, both at the Cape and in Baviaanskloof, the later Genadendal. Schmidt was said to have been ‘n man van sterk geloof en ‘n bidder (Schmidt, Afrika en die Evangelie [pamphlet], Genadendal, 1937), a man of great faith and a prayer warrior. In fact, colonists told his two colleagues Nitchmann and Eller admiringly during their stay in Cape Town en route from Ceylon, how Schmidt succeeded ‘to teach a Hottentot to pray as he has done. They actually retire from time to time to pray in solitude’ (Kaapsche Cyclopedie, nr.48). Apparently, this example rubbed off on Vehettge Tikkuie, who got the name Magdalena at her baptism. Khoi Christians, with whom later missionaries had interaction, reported that she was found ‘dikwels biddend in ‘n knielende posisie’, often in prayer on her knees. The intelligent Magdalena was urged to lead the saddened flock without a shepherd by Hanna, the daughter of Joshua, Schmidt’s first convert.
Many years later ‘de oude Lena’ had the New Testament on hand that she received from Georg Schmidt, the pioneer missionary, when three new Moravian missionaries arrived in 1792. Lena herself could no longer read, due to failing eyesight, but the woman whom she had taught ‘opened the sacred volume and read the second chapter of Matthews’s gospel with considerable fluency’ (Du Plessis, 1911:73). Even though she could not remember anything Georg Schmidt had taught her, his example and teaching was evidently still operating. Andreas Sparrman, a Swedish traveller in the Cape Colony 1775-6, reported how he heard of an aged Khoi lady who was building on the foundations laid by a German missionary (Bredekamp, 1987:139). On Sundays ‘de oude Lena’ would walk to the pear tree where Georg Schmidt had preached, to read the New Testament and pray with her folk (Bredekamp, 1987:139). Almost 50 years after Schmidt had left, Khoi witnesses said that they came together at her home every evening where she prayed with them. If one takes the finance minister of Ethiopia mentioned in Acts 8 as the absolute first indigenous evangelist, we can now say that Magdalena was definitely the first one of Sub Saharan Africa. But she was also the first known indigenous female church planting evangelist of all time.
When Magdalena was already quite old she also impacted Mechteld Smit(h) when the committed missionary helper accompanied Ds. Vos to Baviaanskloof in 1797. Mechteld Smit(h) was to become a powerful instrument in God’s hand at the Cape and at Berthelsdorp, the mission station of the LMS where Dr Johannes van der Kemp and others did phenomenal work, although this was berated and unfairly usually compared with the exceptional model, the mission station Genadendal. Another convert of Schmidt impacted Van Lier, a young dominee from Holland who would have a worldwide influence from the Cape by his peaceful departure from the earthly realm.

The Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam dreaded Schmidt’s possible return, ‘lest another Church than the Reformed should be established at the Cape’ (Du Plessis, 1911:59). How powerfully Schmidt had evangelized, is further evidenced by the actions of Hendrik Cloete, the owner of Groot Constantia, who had been impacted as a juvenile under Schmidt’s ministry in 1738 (Kruger, 1966:51). When three new Moravian missionaries arrived in 1792, Cloete supported them against the Cape church people when they used flimsy reasons to attack the mission endeavour - like the assertion that the bell of the church in Genadendal was being heard in Stellenbosch, probably initially jokingly, more than 50 kilometres away. Kruger (1966:62) wrote how the bell gave offense immediately after it had been bought at an auction by Theunissen, a farmer from the Baviaanskloof district. It was said that the Moravians needed permission from the government to ring the bell. It was surely ironical that a government official on an inspection to Baviaanskloof, John Barrow, saw the bell stored in one of the visitors’ rooms. At Easter 1798, the bell was reportedly rung for the first time once again.

An Islamic Response
In 1744, the same year in which Georg Schmidt left for Europe, Tuan Said (his real name was Said Aloewie of Mocca in Yemen) was brought to the Cape. Tuan Said was listed as a ‘Mohammedaanse priester’ who had been sentenced to life in chains. He served a sentence of 11 years on Robben Island before being brought to Cape Town where he became a policeman. It was this job that allowed him to visit the slave quarters to propagandise Islam. Along with the other imams, he apparently countered the effects of South Africa’s first missionary effectively. Tuan Said was reported to be part of a general Sufi tradition in Cape Town. His reputation to have commanded the power to disappear was not proved at all. Yet, he possessed ‘the fame of Sufi miracles (karamats)’ (Tayob, 1995:41). Thought to have originated from Yemen, Tuan Said worked as a caffer, a job which gave him access to the slave quarters (Worden et al, 1998:77). This accounts for the reputation he acquired for entering locked doors at night.
When the sentences of the religious and other convicts expired, a few of them returned to Indonesia. But the majority stayed on at the Cape. When freed, these convicts formed part of the ‘Vrijezwarten’ (free Blacks) community. They were the people - apart from the religious convicts – who were greatly responsible for the consolidation of Islam at the Cape of Good Hope (Davids, 1980:42). Together with other slaves they met in homes for Islamic prayer meetings. Several of them possessed property and were financially independent and formed a small Muslim clerical class. The ‘ulemma’ (clergy), made up of imams (priests) and shaykhs (learned men) was led by the Tuans (Malay word for teacher). Davids (1980: 43) refers to: ‘...the verve and enthusiasm, with which they propagandized the religion...their patience, perseverance and hope in adverse conditions at a time when only the Dutch Reformed Church was officially allowed to propagate and worship freely.’ Muslims were worshipping privately in houses as early as 1777, possibly even earlier (Bradlow/Cairns, 1978:19).
On the other hand, the general neglect of the spiritual care of the slaves seems to have continued at the Cape after the arrival of a second batch of slaves from Batavia in 1743. This group consisted mainly of normal convicts from the East brought in to work on a breakwater in Table Bay where many ships went aground. A majority of them would probably have been Muslim.

Christian slaves not to be sold
Approximately half of the 1775 Cape colony population of 12000 at the Cape were slaves of whom the bulk was Muslims. This was a matter of concern for the Dutch authorities who tried at this time to control their numbers through legislation. In fact, many of the colonists actively encouraged slaves to become Muslims as a direct result of the ‘placaat’ (decree), which prohibited the sale of Christian slaves.
In India legislation had been passed that they drew upon at the Cape. In the Chapter on ‘Slaves’ in the Statutes of 10 April 1770 of that country, Article nine reads:
The Christians are held bound to instruct their slaves... without compulsion in the
Christian Religion, and have them baptized, … and such as may have been
confirmed in the Christian Religion, shall never be sold...
This decree was also applied at the Cape. The slave owners at the Cape interpreted the ‘placaat’ (decree) as a threat, believing that their slaves would become free if they were baptized. On top of it, Muslim slaves could be entrusted to the wine cellars on religious grounds, a bonus in trade terms.

A spiritual giant: Ds Helperus Ritzema van Lier
Officially Van Lier was appointed as the third minister (also in rank) of the Groote Kerk. He had already been impacted spiritually in a deep way before his departure from Holland. The evangelical revival which started in England under John Wesley, had swept into the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia.
Van Lier found fertile ground among a group of Christians at the Cape, including a group of pietistic Lutherans, the spiritual descendants of those believers who had been impacted by the short stint of Georg Schmidt, more than 40 years before Van Lier’s arrival. Quite soon after his arrival at the Cape, the legacy of Schmidt worked through into Van Lier’s life when he was present at the deathbed of one of the missionary pioneer’s converts. He saw how the Khoi believer died ‘in volkome rus en vrede van sy siel en in vertroue op die Here.’23 It made such a deep impression on Van Lier that he mentioned this in one of his letters to his uncle Professor Petrus Hofstede, an influential academic in Rotterdam, who was at that stage still an opponent of the Moravian brethren. Van Lier had been unsuccessful initially to convince his learned uncle to use his influence to get the Moravians resuming their mission work in Baviaanskloof.
Van Lier was encouraged and inspired in another way. In 1787 the boat carrying the Moravian Bishop J.F. Reichel en route to Germany from India made a stop at the Cape. It would have been natural for Reichel not only to share something of the Moravians’ passion for the lost but also about the 24 hour prayer watch that was still going strong in Herrnhut after 60 years. Van Lier was already deeply moved that so many ‘heathens fell victim to the Muslims’ (Gerdener, 1951:19), a direct consequence of a 1770 decree. Many colonists actively encouraged slaves to become Muslims as a direct result of the ‘placaat’, which prohibited the sale of Christian slaves. Reichel’s visit spurred Van Lier and all his followers on to do something about the spiritual welfare of the Khoi and the slaves (Nachtigal, 1893:121). Conversely, Reichel took the challenge of the resumption of the mission work in the Cape Colony back to Herrnhut.

Local Influence of the prayerful Van Lier
As early as 1788 various people in Cape Town and its surroundings set aside one day in the week for the religious teaching of ‘the heathen’. Cape Town evangelicals were among the worldwide leaders in this regard at that time - not far behind the Moravians of Herrnhut in Germany and Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, USA). A local newspaper, the Zuid-Afrikaansche Tijdschrift, Vol.1 (1824) wrote at this time ‘...toen men in veele delen van Europa nog bezig was te beredeneren of de slaven en heidenen wel moesten (geloven) en of het mogelijk ware dat zij konden onderwezen worden, had men met dat werk in deze Kolonie eenen aanvang gemaakt’.24 The church members met on certain days of the week for prayer and mutual edification, also giving religious teaching to the slaves and Khoikhoi in their service.
That he was only the third pastor (in rank) at the Groote Kerk gave Van Lier opportunity to do the spadework for what later became known as the South African Mission Society (SAMS). The Lord used Van Lier to bring about an ‘omwenteling’ (revolution) in the attitude of many White believers towards slaves and other people of colour (Botha, 1999:18). In those days slaves were initially not allowed near the entrance of the church after the closing of services and they were punished if they dared to attend the funeral of one of the colonists. The prejudice against missionaries was still prevalent when Van Lier arrived, but the youthful minister dared to challenge the church through his fiery sermons and personal example. The young dominee literally caused a spiritual revolution at the Cape, shortening the duration of sermons and prayers during church services. He also increased house visitation. Believers were encouraged to get involved with the spreading of the Gospel. The historian Theal reports that when Van Lier was in the pulpit, people hardly dared to sleep in church because ‘at times it seemed as if he would jump from the pulpit’ (??). Furthermore, his preaching was full of earnest appeals and ‘…women were often moved to tears, and sometimes fell into hysterics’. Van Lier was very zealous, spending much of his time visiting people from door to door ‘...holding prayer meetings and encouraging works of benevolence.’
Van Lier was a world Christian. When he heard in 1790 that the Dutch East India Company contemplated attempting to Christianize the various races in their vast possessions, he immediately wrote once more to his uncle, Petrus Hofstede, offering to collect 50,000 guilders in South Africa towards the capital required (Theal, Vol. 3, 1964 [1907]:378). That speaks a lot for Van Lier’s confidence in the sacrificial giving potential of the Christians of his era at the Cape.
Quite a few Christians who later became prominent in evangelistic outreach got their training under Van Lier. Thus there was for instance Jan Jakob van Zulch, who later laboured among slaves and other ‘heathen’ in Wagenmakersvallei (later Wellington). Then there was Machteld Smit(h), the pioneer of the first Sunday School for slave children and later co-worker of Ds M.C. Vos in Tulbagh (Botha, 1999:18).25 The education of the youth was dear to Van Lier’s heart. He started classes for Latin and French in 1791 to prepare young men for theological studies in Holland. Jan Christoffel Berrange had already left in 1788 for Leiden to be trained as minister. Many followed him, including Jacobus Henricus Beck, who became the first pastor of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht.
Van Lier was a great visionary, seeing the need for learning the heart language of the people to be reached with the Gospel. He was one of the first Dutchmen to start learning Malayu, the trade language, with the object of reaching out to the Cape Muslim slaves. Ds George Thom, another mission-minded Dutch Reformed Church minister, used the example of Van Lier a few decades later to convince the General Meeting of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) as a matter of urgency to get a missionary, who knew the trade language. It was reported ‘dat hy hom op die aanleer van die Maleise taal toegelê het’26 (Botha, 1999:29).

The international Impact of Van Lier
The young preacher Van Lier almost single-handedly set the evangelical world ablaze. His letters from the Cape to Europe were very influential indeed. His testimony - in the form of six letters to Rev. John Newton - was originally written in Latin and translated by the well-known poet William Cowper. The title of the booklet in English is The Power of Grace, illustrated in six letters from a Minister of the Reformed church to the Rev John Newton. Van Lier’s story of the influence of divine grace in his life seems to have made a lasting impression on Newton who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists.27 Van Lier’s humility came through when he insisted that a pseudonym Christodulus (slave of Christ), and not his own name, should be used on the publication of his letters to Rev. Newton. (It was published in Edinburgh by Campbell and Wallace, 1792). Van Lier’s story about the influence of divine grace in his life seems to have made a lasting impression on Newton, who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists - especially when one considers that the famous hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ came from Newton’s pen. Van Lier’s humility came through when he insisted that a pseudonym Christodulus, (slave of Christ) and not his own name would be used with the publication.28 Although he was not outspoken on the issue, it can be taken for granted that ‘van Lier nie veel ten gunste van die stelsel te sê sou gehad het nie’29 (Hanekom, 1959:193), even though he possessed slaves himself.
Various letters of Van Lier had the goal of getting the Moravians back to the Cape. After initially failing to sway his uncle, the Rotterdam clergyman and academic Petrus Hofstede (1716-1803) into action on this score, van Lier wrote to Ds Hubert in Amsterdam. Van Lier’s letter of 6 September 1791 to the Moravian Jan Swertner in Fairfield, England might have been ‘too late’ to have any direct effect. A decision had already been taken when his letter arrived, to send three missionaries to Baviaanskloof. In a letter to his uncle, Petrus Hofstede, he wrote about the Khoi believer whose death he witnessed, that the native believer was putting other Christians to shame (Schmidt, 1937:6).
It is only natural that the prayer chain – 24 hours a day seven days a week - at Herrnhut would have included intercession for their Bishop Reichel on his trip to the East. But no one probably have envisaged that this would lead so soon to the resumption of their missionary work at Baviaanskloof. This was partly due to the mission-minded new dominee whom Reichel had met at the Cape.
Van Lier’s correspondence continued to have an impact in Europe. Through his evangelical zeal Van Lier, along with William Carey’s 1792 book An enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathens, definitely laid the foundations for a Cape missionary society. Van Lier’s correspondence may have influenced his uncle not only to attack the internal ‘onverdraagzaamheid’ (intolerance) in the church in Holland, but also to challenge the general arrogant attitude towards ‘de heidenen’ (the pagans). God used Hofstede to such an extent that religious tolerance increased significantly in the Netherlands towards the end of the 18th century.
Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the SAMS in April 1799. He had died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only twenty eight. Ds. Vos, who was later to become the first foreign missionary of South African origin, took up where Dr van Lier had left off. 30

The Pervasive influence of the 1770 decree
How pervasive the implementation and effect of the 1770 decree was on the prohibition of the sale of Christian slaves, is demonstrated by the Rev. Michiel Christiaan Vos, who has been described - definitely not unrightly so - as one of the pioneers of missions at the Cape. Vos possessed at least one committed Christian slave, one who hailed from Mozambique, named Maart. But Vos did not baptize Maart.
Instead of swimming against the stream to baptize Maart van Mozambiek, Vos sold him to the LMS when he left the Cape for preparation in Europe to become a missionary in India. Sadly there was no move to baptize or set Maart free, neither by Vos nor the LMS in whose service Maart worked as an associate evangelist for a further seven years (Schoeman, March 1995:145). He was only baptized after the missionary Dr Johannes Van der Kemp had intervened. Were Vos and the LMS dictated to by the force of the general custom, an earlier version of South African way of life? Marsveld, a Moravian missionary who arrived in 1792, referred to the ‘atmosphere of mutual distrust’ between missionaries and colonists. It does however convey a message if we consider that Marsveld was reported to have said that Vos was ‘too condescending, too official, too much of the predikant’ (Du Plessis, 1911:78f). Confirmation of this attitude occurred when Maart refused to meet his former slave owner when Vos visited the Cape en route to India from Holland in 1804 (Schoeman, March 1995:144).

The advent of Tuan Guru
If Reverend Vos was a child of his time in respect of the ownership of slaves, so was Tuan Guru. The latter was one of the prominent Muslim leaders whose shrine can be found at the Tana Baru cemetery in Bo-Kaap. Tuan Guru was brought to Robben Island as a State prisoner in 1780 from Tidore, which was a flourishing Muslim Sultanate in the Moluccas. Tuan Guru had a thorough understanding of Islam, in contrast to other Capetonians who hailed from Indonesia. One of his first accomplishments was the writing of the Qur’an from memory for the use of the Cape Muslims. Tuan Guru also wrote M’arifatul Islami wal Imani (Manifestations of Islam and faith) - an Islamic manual for day-to-day living, which he had written in 1781 while he was imprisoned on Robben Island.
To the influential Tuan Guru has been attributed a (renewed) prophecy of a ‘holy circle’ of shrines about this time. The grave of Shaykh Mattara, who died on Robben Island in 1754, was one of the first kramats (shrines) of the circle. By 1788 the Orang Cayen of Constantia (i.e. ‘men of power and influence’), Sayyid Mahmud and Sayyid Abdul Rahman, ‘who were viewed as particularly dangerous to the interests of the company’, had long been buried.
Tuan Guru had a few slaves but they did not provide a secure income for his children. Davids blasted the popular notion apart that Imams bought slaves merely to set them free. Just like the colonists, they purchased slaves ‘for security and as a means of investment’ (Davids, 1995:58). Davids pointed out that Tuan Guru found it necesary in 1806 to purchase a fisherman slave ‘to improve his property value’ (Davids, 1995:57).

Impact of Prayer in Europe and America
In Europe there was a significant increase in missionary zeal at the end of the 18th century. The 24-hour prayer chain of the Moravians in Herrnhut that started in 1728, was definitely still going strong. In England evangelicalism was gaining ground. The effect of William Carey’s book, An enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathens (1792) was quite pervasive in Britain and North America. Patrick Johnstone (1998:129) pointed out that intensive prayer preceded the revival of 1792-1820 when no less than 12 mission agencies came into being. In London and Rotterdam two interdenominational missionary societies were founded in 1795 and 1797 respectively. Both of them had links to the Cape. Terhoven (1989:153) attributes the spiritual hunger of the Khoi at Genadendal, the new name of Baviaanskloof, to the prayers of the Americans during the second great awakening there. I suggest that the 24-hour prayer watch of the Moravians in Europe and America, plus the faithful prayer of Georg Schmidt until his death - along with those of his converts in Baviaanskloof - would have been even more contributory.
It is interesting to note that the three Genadendal missionaries who arrived in 1792 - Kühnel, Marsveld and Schwinn - recorded the instance of a man who dreamt that three men would come to teach them. ‘They (the Khoi) say that they spoke about it often because they very much wished for it to happen.’ (Bredekamp and Plüddeman, 1992:134) In the diaries of these three missionaries one reads again and again of Khoi coming to them, desiring to know more, wanting to accept the Lord into their lives and wishing to be baptized. Evidently the Holy Spirit had prepared these people. On a daily basis the Genadendal missionaries were overwhelmed by questions such as ‘What must I do to be saved?’ (Viljoen, 1993:221). It is striking that those who came to faith in Christ also sought protection against satanic forces (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:155). The Holy Spirit, e.g. through dreams and visions, prepared the Khoi. However, the rational European missionaries were not ready for that. Thus the Moravian Johann P. Kohrhammer complained in 1799: ‘The Hottentots are great dreamers and we have much trouble to direct their minds from many deep-seated prejudices, that they have imbibed concerning the interpretation of dreams and visions.’31
But even if these missionaries had been trained along these lines, it would have been difficult to implement the teaching of biblical checks to see whether the dreams and visions were in accordance with Scripture. Only very few of the Khoisan could read the Bible in the early days of the Moravian ministry in Genadendal.

Genadendal impacts the Western Cape
People came to Genadendal from everywhere, almost drawn to the mission station like by a magnet. Some of those from the Cape testified to the obvious: ‘...this is God’s work, no one can hinder it though many are trying’ (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:252). Amongst those who were trying to hinder the mission endeavour at Genadendal were the government at the Cape and the church people in Stellenbosch.
The arrival of the three new missionaries in 1792 was the signal for opposition of colonists. Abraham Sluysken, who tried to keep together a very fragile government at the Cape, continued in the same vein of opposing the Moravians, by refusing the new missionaries permission to build a church in 1794 (Giliomee, 1975:235). This was followed by a petition of racist colonists of the Overberg region who called themselves Nationalists, to prohibit the Moravian missionaries from further instruction to the Khoi. Because many colonists were ‘van onderwijs... verstoken’ (had been debarred from education, were more or less illiterate), it was regarded as ‘...niet billijk dat de Hottentotten wijzer werden gemaakt dan zij’.32
The conscription of the indigenous pandoere, who fought in the battle of Muizenberg in 1795, cannot be described as a deliberate attempt to hinder the missionary work. However, the prior threat of expropriation of their farm - which sent Marsveld scurrying to the Cape - definitely was. The reply to Marsveld surely led to much prayer in Genadendal: ‘The Company in the Fatherland (wanted the missionaries) to go to the Bosjesmans to make peace’.33 Marsveld returned to Genadendal far from reassured. The authorities would not even enter into negotiations so that the mission could buy the land. God sovereignly over-ruled, when the Moravians were allowed to keep their property and more important: they could continue their mission work in Genadendal.
From another side the mission station was threatened at that time. While the Genadendal pandoere were absent - and engaged in the military defence of the colony at Muizenberg - colonists of the area, the Overberg, were conspiring under the banner of the Nationalists to invade and destroy the mission station. By 18 July 1795, by which time Baviaanskloof started to resemble a European village, the situation had become very tense. Because of rumours of an imminent raid the missionaries were ‘seriously comtemplating to abandon the station’ (Bredekamp, 1995:47).
A Pisani, one of the colonists, put force to their petition, giving the missionaries three days to vacate Baviaanskloof. On 3 August 1795 they fled to Cape Town. The missionaries returned when it seemed as if the danger had abated, but in February 1796 there was another threat of an attack and a rumour that the Khoi would be driven from Baviaanskloof. Firm reassurances from Major-General James Craig, the British military Commander, who appeared not to back down from using force, kept the colonists at bay. Ds Michiel Christiaan Vos, who became the minister for Swartberg (Caledon), brought about some change in the views and attitudes of the colonists of the vicinity.

The Counter Attack of the Colonial Church
The majority of the materialistic colonists sadly countered through outright rejection of slaves, even in the Groote Kerk and the Lutheran church. Just as bad was what was going on at the farms. The workers who came to Genadendal had been told by some of the farmers that they were not equal to them and that it was therefore impossible for them to enter heaven (Viljoen, 1993:221). The negative attitude of the farmers however made the Khoi inquisitive. In the Genadendal Diaries one reads in the entry for 5 September 1794: ‘...they have heard the farmers say many bad things about us... So they wanted to come and see and hear for themselves’ (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:235).
With labour at a premium, the farmers were of course quite concerned when they saw Khoi departing for Baviaanskloof. The prejudice was easily fed that the mission station ‘was fast becoming a refuge for the idle, the discontented and the thieving’ (Du Plessis, 1911:78). At the same time it appears that the missionaries did very little to remove the distrust with which they were regarded. To get the record straight, it should also be mentioned that the missionaries had ‘a host of well-wishers’ in Cape Town. There was for instance Hendrik Cloete from the farm Constantia, who travelled all the way to Baviaanskloof ‘and by his kind mediation procures some relief for the Brethren from obnoxious Government regulations’ (Du Plessis, 1911:71).
The South African Mission Society (SAMS), which was started on 22 April 1799, had the authorities and conservative Christians at the Cape against them from the outset. Article 12 of its constitution - according to which membership was open to non-reformed believers and women - rubbed conservative church elements up the wrong way. That article 11 even made provision for the involvement of women at policy level enraged many colonists (Botha, 1999:19). Ma(a)nenberg and the directors were careful not to organize meetings for ‘heathen slaves’ on Sundays because it could clash with the other church services or it could inconvenience the slave owners. The charismatic-energetic Henricus Ma(a)nenberg, the first missionary of the SAMS - though sent by the London Missionary Society - could build on the sound foundation laid by the believers who were influenced by Ds van Lier.

Towards the end of the 18th century the Dutch Reformed minister of Stellenbosch at this time, Meent Borcherds, made no secret of his resentment of missionary work within the boundaries of his parish. Of course, this situation was nothing new. Years before him, Borcherds’ predecessors at the Cape had applied pressure, forcing Georg Schmidt to leave the Cape. And after the new Moravian missioanries, Van der Kemp and Dr Philip were vilified by the Whites – albeit not completely without reason. (Some LMS missionaries, including Van der Kemp, who married a slave woman, were accused of immorality because of that and others of treason for standing up for the rights of the Khoi and slaves. The missionaries on the other hand ‘regarded themselves as the conscience of the settlers and the protectors of the “natives”’. (De Gruchy, 1979:13)
The complaint about the ringing of the bell was ludicrous in the extreme. The missionaries ‘had to construct ... (it) in three sections to get it round and shaped like a bell’ (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:93). The brethren themselves were not very much impressed by the bell. It was merely an instrument to call the people of the village together because the indigenous people had no watches.

Change of Attitudes
The January 1797 visit to Baviaanskloof by Ds Vos with Machteld Smith, J.J. van Zulch and other mission friends for a few days caused a marked changed of public opinion. A few weeks later, farmers told the brethren of a revival among them, caused by this visit. The colonist farmers who a few years prior to this had been ready to attack and destroy the mission institution now asked for permission to attend the worship at Baviaanskloof. They even requested that one of the missionaries should come and live among them. Twenty five years later this was fulfilled, leading to the establishment of the mission station Elim that became the southernmost village of the continent in due course. Some farmers introduced family prayers for the whole community on their farms, which caused the Khoi to prefer them to other employers. The attitude and stance of Ds Meent Borcherds, once a fierce opponent of the Moravian brethren, changed after his study of the Moravian Bishop Spangenberg’s doctrinal exposition Idea Fidei Fratrum, even to the extent of apologizing to a visiting Moravian brother for his earlier behaviour.
The Governor granted permission to cut 20 wagon loads of timber in the State forests for the building of a church. The feelings between colonists and missionaries became so harmonious that 100 Whites from the neighbourhood were present in the church of Baviaanskloof on Christmas Day 1799, many of them together with their slaves. On 8 January 1800 the sanctuary was formally opened. Soon large numbers of colonists were attending services there habitually.

It is all the more special how the co-operation of the mission agencies impacted the church life. Thus one finds the same Ds Borcherds who had been so negative to missions, opening up to other denominations a few years later. In the pastoral letter of the Dutch Reformed synod of 1826, of which Borcherds was the secretary, one discerns remorse over the earlier period in which there had been ‘zorgvuldige bekommering eene heerschende kerk te willen zijn en blijven.’34 He regarded it as ‘better days’ that they were (i.e. in 1826) preaching in each other’s churches (Dreyer, 1936:255). This formed the basis for the theologically sound synod decision three years later not to divide the church on racial grounds. It was even regarded as ‘een onwrikbaar stelregel’, a steadfast rule based on the Word of God (Dreyer, 1936:316).
A supernatural element can hardly be denied when a spiritual revival ensued. On 15 June 1801 - only two weeks after Maanenberg’s appointment - he informed the directors that he needed a bigger place for the services. The ‘oefeningshuis’ had become too small for the great number of listeners and that it would be almost impossible to have services there in the summer (Botrha, 1999:16). A zealous mission-minded group of believers rallied around the SAMS missionaries Maanenberg and Tromp, supporting Maanenberg’s suggestion for a bigger building where they could have prayer meetings, place for teaching of the ‘heathen’ and a residence for the missionary. Already on 5 August 1801 the building commission reported that they had bought a plot of ground in Long Street with a house en ‘pakhuis’ for 50,000 guilders. To prevent provocation the directors of the SAMS decided on 2 March 1802 to refrain from the traditional ceremony of laying the corner stone (Botrha, 1999:19).
Some missionaries who came out to work among the slaves (including the Muslims) often left after a short period. Henricus Maanenberg was one of them. Bastiaan Tromp was another, ‘die hier en daar was en niet standvastig op een plaats bleef’35 (Cited in South African Libraray Quarterly Bulletin, December 1992). Du Plessis (1911:105) reported about another Dutchmen of the first LMS generation: ‘Johannes Kicherer was a restless person, who found it difficult to continue to toil steadfastly at an uncongenial task, for we find him constantly moving from place to place.’ The leader of the first group Ds Johannes van der Kemp needed a Pauline conversion before he came to the Cape. He had first been – in his own words – ‘a slave to vice and ungodliness’ And thereafter he was a ‘deist, who conceived it to be his duty strenuously to deny the divinity of Christ and the authority of Holy Scripture; and he beleived, like Saul of old, that he was thereby doing God a service’ (Du Plessis (1911:100f). The biblical truth was nowhere possibly seen to come into play than at the Cape from 1799-1803) that God often uses the foolish and imperfect to confound the wise.
Yet, within a short space of time the SAMS had not only enough resources to be able to start building a place where religious practices for slaves could be held, but also a strong force of missionaries on the Cape fields. Wisely, the directors decided on 2 March 1802 to have no foundation stone ceremony (Botha, 1999:19). Thus the ceremony took place without freemason ritual as was the custom. Apart from this fringe group of Christians, the Gospel outreach to slaves figured very low on the list of priorities of the first Cape churches.
3. Evangelical Zeal confront Colonial Policy


The arrival of four LMS missionaries at the Cape on 31 March 1799 and especially the reading of the letter they brought with them, created great enthusiasm for missionary work in Christian circles. The letter from London challenged them as follows: ‘and to invite you brethren, to become sharers in the mercy shown to us, and to unite yourselves zealously in the difficult undertaking of sending forth men filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost, in order to carry the tidings of Him who was crucified, and to announce His victory over the god of this world’ (Cited in Du Plessis, 1911:92). It was soon enough generally felt that something practical had to be done. Subscription lists were distributed and funds began to flow. After several preliminary meetings a new mission agency was founded already three weeks later on 22 April 2005, Het Zuid Afrikaansche Genootschap ter bevordering van de Uitbreiding van Christus Koningrijk (ZAG), later called the South African Missionary Society (SAMS). The group of four consisted of two Dutchmen and two British missionaries.
The respective governments at the Cape had one thing in common - to oppose mission work. Missionaries were meant to serve the state, full stop. The South African Missionary Society had naively and well-intended included an article in their constitution which was tobind them hand and foot. The fifth article sought to define their attitude towards the government: ‘… to render all submission and reverence to the temporal Power, for the Lord’s sake, and carefully to refrain from anything which may be repugnant to the rules that have been promulgated …’ (Cited in Du Plessis, 1911:93).
The newly appointed directors of the SAMS set off to work with verve. Copies of the letter of the LMS were printed and distributed to all parts of the country. In the Mother City measures were adopted for extending the work that was done quietly like a lay brother, Pieter Kuypers, who had started a sucessful work in the slums near to the sea-shore. The missionaries Bastiaan Tromp and Anthoneij van der Lingen, who belonged to the second party of LMS missionaries, soon proceeded to places further afield. The ardent Hendricus Maanenberg laboured with such devotion that he was soon added to the Directorate, and acted for a time as its chairman.
Opposition to Missionary work during the first British Occupation
It is sad to read that under the first British occupation the Fiscal refused permission to the SAM Directors to take a collection in aid of their work at the weekly prayer meeting. Mr Van Ryneveld, the Fiscal, had promised the first four missionaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS) after their arrival ‘all possible aid and protection.’ In the view of the authorities misionary work was to be done as far distant as possible from any colonial settlement. When leave was asked to send Jan M. Kok as a missionary to the Bushmen, as the San were called, the reply of the Fiscal was that it was against the law to proceed beyond the boundaries of the Colony (Gerdener, 1937:32). It was only after several attempts that Kok obtained permission to accompany the British missionary Edward Edwards.
The mixed-bred missionary displayed tenacity and perseverance. It would seem that he had decided anyway to embark on the mission without waiting any longer for authorisation from the SAMS or official permission to cross the colonial boundary (Schoeman, 2005:45). Mr Truter, a DRC church elder for many years, admired ‘such extempore expounding of the Gospel in the desert from an illiterate man.’
The case of Truter, a successor as Fiscal, is especially very sad if one considers that he had close links to the Z.A. Gesticht. The connection of Truter to the Zuid Afrikaanse Gesticht is quite problematic. It seems as if his Freemason connections clashed with the influence of Dr van Lier on his life. In his capacity as Fiscal and Chief Judge, Truter’s record has been seriously blemished at least once. But this seems not to have been generally discovered. Professor C.R. Kotze was still referring to him in Historia, September 1968 as ‘‘n eerbare man,’ for hisrole in securing the acquittal of the racist Slagternek rebels. This was cited by the otherwise critical Dr J.A. Heese, who saw Truter’s contribution as a figure of reconciliation between Afrikaner and British.
In a case which can be regarded as an early precursor of the Steve Biko trial, Spadille, a Muslim slave, was sent to prison - accused of stealing some of Truter’s shirts. Spadille was flogged so terribly that he died in police custody. Truter abused his authority to get the jail surgeon to declare that Spadille died a natural death. Thereafter he was buried ‘in the darkness of the night, and silently put into the ground.’ (Theal, Records of the Cape Colony, XX1X:222).
The Opposition of the ‘Batavian’ Dutch Authorities
Jacob Abraham De Mist arrived in February 1803 as governor of the ‘Batavian Republic’, clearly seeing a threat in the expanding missionary activities. Subsequent opposition by De Mist turned out to be a blessing in disguise. First of all, directors of the SAMS opened their homes for the teaching of slaves. The directors and members led in religious services. The directors also started to collate Christian books and Bible commentaries, establishing a library for the use of the workers. Some of them, like P. le Roux, got involved personally and finally they started to train slaves for missionary work. Maart, the slave of Ds Vos, was one of the most able ones to be used.
Yet, De Mist and Jan Willem Janssens, the Batavian governors, appeared quite ‘tolerant’ in religious matters. In fact, De Mist jotted down some progressive notions before he took office in his Memorie over de Caab, 1802. Thus he suggested that the ‘aborigines’ of the Cape, should be employed on a voluntary basis and paid a good wage.
However, already on 7 July 1803 De Mist founded a Masonic lodge under the aegis of the mother lodge of the Netherlands. He called the lodge De Goede Hoop, with himself as the Grand Master Spilhaus, 1966:350). It is not surprising that he simultaneously opposed evangelistic activity in the city. In a special paragraph on the Herrnhutters (the Moravians) his idea comes through how religion had to be abused: first of all the Khoi must be happy, then they must be taught to be dutiful but then his true colours come out – the Khoi had to become ‘gehoorzaam aan het Gouverment’, loyal to the government. De Mist expected the Moravian missionaries to subdue the Khoi, to make them subservient citizens.
The Cross of Jesus is the common enemy in many religious movements. (Whoever was responsible for the plaque36 placed in the Constantia kramat, was possibly not aware of these links when among other things the Nazi swastika was included, which is basically a caricature of the tree on which Jesus died, a deformed cross). De Mist insisted that the true work of a missionary was among the heathen far beyond the borders of settled congregations. He had no objection against meetings in private homes but he could not permit worship in a sacred building. He promptly decreed that no missionary should be allowed to operate at a site less than three days’ journey from an established congregation. Du Plessis (1911:95) suggested that ‘the spirit of antipathy displayed by the Government could not but âct as a wet-blanket upon the earnest aspirations of the Directors…’
A Blessing in Disguise
Maart, a slave from Mozambique, was blessed ‘with strong intellectual endowments’. He responded so well to the five years of Christian teaching under Ds M.C. Vos that the LMS thought of educating him ‘... to qualify him to accompany some other missionaries to... introduce into his native country ...that gospel which brings healing and salvation in its wings’. The missionary Henricus Maanenberg was forced however to suspend instruction to Maart because of a ban on teaching reading and writing to ‘heathen’. The blame for the ban should possibly not be laid solely at the feet of the secular authorities. It is reported that Ds Christiaan Fleck, one of the Groote Kerk ministers, also complained that Maanenberg wanted to teach slaves: ‘want daartoe hebben we hier geen afzonderlike zendelingen nodig... terwijl van kerkenraadswege daartoe perzonen zijn aangesteld’ (Hofmeyr, Pillay 1994:199).37 One suspects sour grapes at Maanenberg’s success. De Mist’s reaction to the memorandum handed to him by the directors of the SAMS may have influenced Maanenberg to resign. He was so discouraged by the antagonistic attitude of De Mist that he withdrew from the work to live outside the city. Furthermore, Maanenberg and some of his Cape missionary colleagues were not blameless either. The respected colonist Daniel Krynauw, who ostensibly had difficulties with writing, took the trouble to put thoughts on paper. In the vein of Paul’s letter to the first century Christians. Krynauw made it clear that he intended ‘niet om de Broeders te bedroeven … alleen ten uwer leeringen’ (Schoeman, 1996:183), not to sadden them but to teach them. He singled out Smit, Tromp and Maanenberg, contrasting them to Kicherer, although he that there was not enough work for three missionaries at the Zak River, where Kicherer was labouring.
Maart and other slaves from his native country Mozambique pose a historical guilt, a challenge to South African Christians. A small start has been made to train refugees from that country and sending them back to help their own people, including taking the Gospel to the unreached.
The SAMS directors were however so eager to get the Gospel to the slaves that they appointed Aart Antonij van der Lingen as the new missionary to the slaves already on 6 April 1803. He was however promptly forbidden by De Mist to preach and to give teaching to the slaves. De Mist said that he feared a split in the Christian community. A memorandum by the directors of the SAMS could not move De Mist. Missionaries were only allowed to operate three dagreizen (days of travelling) from existing churches and congregations. At this time Stellenbosch, Drakenstein (Paarl), Zwartland (Malmesbury), Wagenmagersvallei (Wellington) and Roodezand (Tulbagh) were already flourishing congregations. Three days of travelling from all these places would have taken Van der Lingen deep into the interior.
While De Mist was on an official journey into the interior, the SAMS directors approached his colleague Janssens about the consecration of the new sanctuary. The Z.A. Gesticht, the inter-denominational sanctuary in Long Street, was formally taken into use on 15 March 1804. It is said that when De Mist heard of the ZA Gesticht church building erected in his absence, he cried in fury: ‘May fire from heaven consume it.’ A colonist responded in 1824 in the Nederlandsch-Zuid Afrikaansche Tijdschrift: ‘But what he wished as an evil has come upon us for good. The fire of God has indeed descended and (as we trust) has melted many sinners’ hearts’ (Cited in Du Plessis, 1911:95)
The work of the Moravians at Baviaanskloof continued to impact the Cape. The critical De Mist appears to have gradually become a quiet supporter of the Moravian mission work after his visit to the Overberg. After seeing the orderly village with over 200 houses, he spontaneously renamed it Genadendal.38 It was much more fitting to be known as a valley of grace than as a glen for baboons.39 The Moravians were asked to send a chaplain to work among the Khoikhoi corps at Wynberg. Johan Philipp Kohrhammer,40 a milliner from Schwabia and the new leader at Genadendal, was appointed to this task, albeit that he worked in the army camp for eight months not as a chaplain but as a missionary. At the military post he improvised in one of the very early versions of contextualising the Gospel on African soil. Drums were used to call the congregants for the first open air service prayer. The soldiers marched behind Kohrhammer to the chosen spot, where three drums under a tent served as a pulpit (Krüger, 1966:97)

Influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau
One of the reasons for the negative view of the government and colonists was the overdrawn uncritical acceptance of the unbiblical ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Penetrated with the doctrine that the Khoikhoi were free men, with all the rights and privileges of free citizens, Dr Johannes van der Kemp, the first superintendent of the London Missionary Society, refused to use compulsion in his dealings with the Khoikhoi. Both van der Kemp and his colleague at Bethelsdorp, James Read, married Khoikhoi women, to the chagrin not only of the rank and file colonist. Dr. George Thom, the immediate predecessor of Dr. Philip at the Cape, became an important adversary, with little sympathy of the work in Bethelsdorp, regarding the station to be a ‘nursery of indolence and filth.’ In a problematic interpretation of the teachings of Rousseau, van der Kemp – decades before Hudson Taylor made contextualisation known by wearing the clothing of the Chinese – would discard hat, shoes and stockings, frequently returning from some journey to a distant village with all feet lacerated and bleeding.
Yet, indirectly van der Kemp blazed a trail for a better understanding between the Dutch Reformed Church and the missionaries when he stuck to his calling to the indigenous, refusing to become the pastor of Graaff-Reinet. In a compromise, his colleague Aart A. van der Lingen, who had once started at the Cape and who had been refused permission by De Mist to work among the slaves there - became the Graaff-Reinet minister as a compromise. Hereafter not a few of the earliest missionaries sent out by the London and Rotterdam Missionary societies ended their days as pastors of Dutch Reformed congregations, blessing that church with an evangelical stamp of commitment to the Word of God. At the same time the gulf between the pastor of the White church and the mission churches was somewhat was lessened and the negative vibes of the colonists towards the missionary from abroad decreased.
More British Opposition to Missionary work
The Earl of Caledon, the first Governor of the Cape in 1806, appeared quite concerned that the ignorance of the slaves could leave them a ‘prey... to the missionary zeal of the Mohammedan priests’ (Horrel, 1970:10). But hardly anything was done to counter this in a loving way. The same Earl of Caledon was quoted in concern about the spread of Islam at the Cape: ‘Many of the slaves... having no access to Christian worship, took the faith over from the Malay population’ (Krüger, 1966:101).
Allowing for the luxury of criticizing people who lived in a completely different era, the real concern of Caledon however has to be questioned. When the rumour did the rounds in December 1807 that the new government planned to start a school for the ‘heathen youth’ in one of the two establishments’, the South African Missionary Society SAMS directors decided to apply again for permission to appoint a missionary to teach the ‘heathen.’ The original education scheme that had been turned down by Janssens, requested for permission to call a missionary, ‘ten einde de Heidensche Jeugd in de kennis van den Christelyke Godsdienst op te leyden, en ten einde de Mahomidaansche Godsdienst dat alhier in deze stad zo veel beld begint te winnen, meer en meer in desselfs voortgang te vertragen en waar’t mogelyk geheel te doen ophouden’ (Cited in Botha, 1999:20)
Caledon replied that the SAMS would be better advised to put its strength into mission undertakings at a distance from Cape Town. What was his logic? He did seem to redeem himself quite substantially on this score though, because already in 1807 he offered to the Moravians the government farm Groene Kloof, a mere 50 Km from the city. (Later) Bishop Bernhard Krüger points out that Caledon had been instructed to promote the work of the Moravians. The missionaries doubted his motives, suspecting that the government intended to harness them before its own carriage. The conference at Genadendal submitted a number of conditions before accepting the offer. This demonstrates their reservations. Amongst other things, it asked for freedom of worship and the right to eject people who were unwilling to submit to their discipline.
Johan Philipp Kohrhammer was placed at Groene Kloof. He had brought with him from Europe a very remarkable woman. Eva Dorothea Lundberg, born Lehmann, was allotted to accompany him to the Cape as wife after she had become a widow after 10 years of service in the West Indies. She served at the Cape without interruption for fourteen years at the side of her husband and another twenty-eight years as a widow (Krüger, 1966:81). The political independence of the Moravians – but submission to biblical and moral injunctions – was demonstrated when two slaves were offered to them after the prohibition of the slave trade in 1807. They refused to keep someone who might be unwilling to become a Christian. Their aim was to ‘gather a congregation of voluntary followers of the Saviour, not to make a profit out of slaves’ (Krüger 1966: 104). What a powerful testimony this must have been in those days.

The spiritual death of the Cape Church
The opposition of the rulers was in my opinion one of the lesser causes for missionary interest to wane. This could have functioned as a challenge, to cement the believers into even greater commitment for the cause of the Gospel. But this did not happen. Even at the Z.A. Gesticht, the cradle of missionary activity at the Cape, there seemed to have developed a lull in the outreach to the (Muslim) slaves after 1805.
The attraction of Islam was also at work at this time, especially with regard to marital relations. It appears that the attraction of polygamous relations was not so strong, but the Islamic religion was perceived to possess easier divorce possibilities. The Christian religion was thus regarded in a sense as continuation of slavery in another form. Referring to the records of the Cape colony (RCC, Vol. XIV: 477), Adil Barlow wrote with regard to this preference: ‘(Islam) ... prevents the female slave from being inseparably bound to her husband, as she would by the Christian rule of wedlock. ’
A strong British force comprising the 72nd and 83rd regiments garrisoned in the Cape. However, the soldiers John Kendrick and George Middlemiss couldn’t find a serious Christian among the 1,000 men.41 They were mocked for their seriousness as Middlemiss became Cape Methodism’s ‘first leader and exhorter-preacher’ (Mears, 1973:7). At that stage Cape Town was given over to wickedness and immorality and nick-named as the ‘Paris of the South’.
One wonders how the spiritual deterioration was possible when only half a generation earlier the result of the work of Ds. van Lier was referred to as little short of a revival. It is hard to believe that Kendrick and Middlemis were merely looking at the wrong places.
Other spiritual forces possibly also affected the dearth of biblical faith. Carnality and doctrinal bickering helped to nip revival seed in the bud. Mears (1973:6) reports how division ‘unhappily arose through disputes with the Calvinists’ after Methodists and Presbyterian believers had actually built a small stone sanctuary. Traditionalism may also have already been introduced, something which was to bringing many a denomination to its knees in the 20th century. Thus we read how the Methodist Society under George Middlemess ‘kept the usual observance of the Methodist Evangelical Revival, such as love feasts, class and band meetings, and watch night Services’ Mears (1973:6). This would have been an exact copy of the Moravianism established by Count Zinzendorf.
The pastors neglected to challenge the colonists with the Pauline teaching that they had to see believers among the slaves as family in Christ. In fact, the slaves experienced rejection also at the church. The conversion to Islam was greatly encouraged by their almost entire exclusion from Christianity. By 1800, those benches in the back corner of the Groote Kerk (the major Capetonian church at that time), which had been reserved traditionally for the use of slaves, were empty (Marais, 1957:168). The saying soon went around ‘De zwarte kerk is de slamse kerk.’
As a prominent Freemason, De Mist also laid the foundation stone of the Cape Lodge, which served as House of Parliament till the 1870s when the present building was built over the lodge. The link between lodge and the Cape churches at this time was laying a dubious foundation. Simultaneously, the witness of the church in South Africa with regard to secretive societies was effectively blunted through this link.
That Janssen and De Mist later also allowed three Roman Catholic priests to operate at the Cape was on the one hand a breakthrough for religious tolerance, but on the other hand occult practices in Roman Catholicism are also quite common. The links of Freemasonry to Satanism have become known in recent years and it has also been reported that Tuan Guru revived the Islamic prayers at the holy circle of shrines. Surely the ruling in the Church Order of De Mist was progressive that the church doors had to be open for all races, for slave and free alike. But he went too far, introducing the spiritual death of the Church at the Cape. A humanist liberal spirit was prevalent with the name of God not even mentioned in the Church Order of 25 July 1804.

Unwitting government Aid to Islam
It is striking that the very same De Mist promulgated an ordinance, decreeing tolerance for all religions on 25 July 1804, thus allowing the Muslims to start a new mosque, possibly the Palm Tree mosque in Long Street. However, those clerics who preached the message of the Cross, soon experienced the brunt of De Mist’s real spiritual source. He was a grand master freemason. Seen from that viewpoint, it was thus not really surprisingly that Rev. van der Lingen - the Dutch missionary linked to the Z.A. Gesticht - was forbidden by De Mist to preach and to give teaching to the slaves. His governor colleague Janssens, though more sympathetic to the mission cause, issued a proclamation on 20 February 1805 along similar lines ‘for the work of missionaries ... to proceed into the interior... at such a distance beyond the boundaries of this colony... that their schools have no communication with the inhabitants... either Christians or Heathens’ (Cited in J.W. Hofmeyr et al 1991:71). In the same proclamation, Janssens articulated how the missionaries were regarded, or shall we say labelled? In the terms of reference for their work among the Khoi, the Moravians were told specifically ‘not to seduce any Native or Bastard from the service of their master to their institution’ (Du Plessis, 1911: 427). Bradlow (1988:192), referring to the Records of the Cape Colony (Vol. XII), mentioned several paid clerics under state control as ‘an effort to co-ordinate and intensify the missionary thrust of colonisation’, but these officials never seemed to have made any impact on the Gospel front.
Islam had been spreading at quite a rapid pace at the turn of the 19th century. In 1793, soon after Tuan Guru’s release from Robben Island, a madressa (Qur’an school) was started in Dorp Street, Bo-Kaap. A year later the first mosque was a fact. The efforts of the Islamic religious school at the Cape and the missionary endeavours of the Imams did not go unnoticed. The need for a missionary among the slaves at the Z.A. Gesticht in the city was felt as a pressing need. The hopes were high for a change in fortunes with the second military occupation by the British in 1806. The SAMS decided to put before the new government their plan to call a missionary. It was totake fifteen years after the opening of the Z.A. Gesticht building before its pulpit was supplied with a regular missionary, Rev. Jacobus Henricus Beck.

Supernatural Intervention
We have seen how Khoi were supernaturally called to Baviaanskloof after the arrival of the three Moravian missionaries in 1792. In the case of the other indigenous Cape people group, the San, called the Bosjesmannetjes, divine intervention was no less spectacular. In order to reach the people described as ‘a race that stood at a lower stage socially and religiously than any other race upon the surface of the globe’ (Du Plessis, 1911:104), God initially used a devout colonist, Floris Visser, the excellent field-cornet. He was described by Du Plessis (1911:102) as ‘a man of character and piety, whose custom it was, even when journeying, to gather his companions and then to offer prayer and sing a psalm both morning and night.’
Even the San people were deeply impressed by the devotion of Visser and his fellow Boers. Soon they expressed an earnest desire to get to know the God of the Dutchmen. Visser promised to assist them, suggesting that they go to Cape Town to present their request there for a teacher or missionary. Two ‘Bushmen’ and a Koranna two of whom had been given the rather derogatory Dutch names Oorlams and Slaparm, arrived in Cape Town at the very time when the first four missionaries of the LMS set foot on the shores of Table Bay (Du Plessis, 1911:102). This can be regarded as the pristine beginning of the significant work for which Robert Moffat was to become known throughout the British Empire.
When the Church and the colonists at the Cape started becoming disinterested in reaching out in love to the slaves yet again, God intervened - surely because of the prayers of the faithful few elsewhere, probably evangelicals in England, in Germany and the USA.
God sometimes appears to supernaturally use natural disasters to shake people out of their indifference and lethargy. An earthquake on 4 December 1809 at the Cape caused not only an 8-day revival and a significant increase in evangelicals (Terhoven, 1989:60), but it also imparted a new urge towards missionary work among the slaves.
During the earthquake, not a single person was killed, but the people fled in fear and watched horrified as the city was shaken as if by the fury of a giant hand. Kendrick wrote in 20 November 1810 that it was the greatest thing that could have happened as soldiers and civilians turned to God in prayer and pleaded for mercy. Many persons were led to think seriously about the salvation of their souls. A weekly prayer meeting was started every Saturday evening in addition to the monthly one, which continued for many years. The Methodist military officer Kendrick mentions revivals at Cape Town and at Wynberg at this time. By 1812 there were 142 men in the Methodist Society ‘all of whom experience the Love of God shed abroad in their hearts’ (Mears, 1973:8).
It is interesting that an earthquake had this effect. In the Islamic prophecies referring to the protection given by the ‘holy circle’ of shrines, earthquakes were mentioned by name. The Cape was not supposed to be experiencing an earthquake!
The 1809 earthquake impacted the SAMS in many ways. Jacobus Henricus Beck, a Cape colonist who had joined the SAMS, was deeply touched by the earthquake. Before long he was on his way to the Netherlands, Scotland and England for theological training. (Later he became the first pastor of the congregation formed at the ZA Gesticht.)
Another Cape colonist who was impacted deeply by the earthquake was Martinus Casparus Petrus Vogelgezang. He was a teacher, who also went for missionary training. Later Vogelgezang became a powerful preacher and church planter at the Cape. In 1837 he applied to be ordained, but he did not find favour with the Dutch Reformed Church authorities. Not having obtained the expected university theological training (in Holland), they turned him down, referring him to the ruling for missionaries. This condescending attitude was indicative of the general view by the Cape church with regard to mission work.

Moravian unwitting Connivance with Injustice
In the same year of the earthquake, the Earl of Caledon’s 1809 proclamation on behalf of the Khoisan made a deep impact on society. William Wilberforce Bird, a colonial official, called the decree the ‘Magna Carta of the Hottentots’ (Philip, 1828:Vol. 1, p.147). It met the demand for labour on the farms at the same time. In practical terms this was quite unfavourable to the Khoi, who became enserfed as farm labourers, worse off than slaves who at least had monetary value.
This document had some problematic clauses from a modern point of view, but it was nevertheless in a sense a precursor to the Ordinance 50 of 1828 in which the background contribution of Dr John Philip, who arrived in 1819 to be the superintendent of the work of the London Missionary Society, was important. The latter ordinance equated all races, also repealing the restricting pass laws that the ‘Magna Carta’ had introduced. ‘Gelykstelling’ of all races was very difficult to swallow, especially for Dutch colonists, running parallel with the anglicizing policy of Lord Charles Somerset, the governor at the Cape from 1814. The bulk of the farmers were themselves ‘in a state of mental and spiritual neglect’ (Du Plessis, 1911:77), understandably resenting the establishment of a school at which the children of those whom they despised, now received an education which was denied to their own children.
The Moravians became an unwitting partner to the enserfment of the Khoi because the farm labour around Baviaanskloof was mostly done by Khoi who could be hired for limited periods. At the same time the land passed more and more into the possession of the colonists. Existing land rights of Khoi were generally disregarded (Krüger, 1966:64). The Baviaanskloof neighbours came to hire labourers for the season every summer. The Khoi labourers received food and – four times a day – wine!

British support for the Underdogs
Genadendal owes its first school building to Sir John Cradock, the successor of Earl John Caledon. Being an educationanist himself, he endeavoured to increase and to improve the schools in the colony. He supplied the Moravians with a booklet An Account of the Progress of Joseph Lancaster’s Plan for the Education of Poor children (Krüger, 1966:117). The system devised by Lancaster to instruct a great number of children inexpensively, remained exemplary for the Moravian mission schools for a long time. Cradock did not have the same enthusiasm for the building of churches. When Johann Gottlieb Bonatz, a missionary stationed at Genadendal, applied for permission to build one in Groene Kloof in 1812, he received a negative answer. Using a concession granted by Earl Caledon and intervention by Christian la Trobe, the secretary of the Moravians in Great Britain for a second application, it was likewise unsuccessful. Cradock expressed regret that his predecessor had given away the best estate of the Colony. ‘He would have preferred to keep it as a country-seat of the governor’ (Krüger, 1966:118).
When Governor John Cradock became aware of the Afrikaner’s antipathy towards the baptism of slaves, he was so appalled that he decided to change the law. In 1812, he issued a proclamation that allowed baptized slaves to be bought and sold. He followed this up with the distribution of Dutch Bibles throughout the Colony. Nevertheless, the notion that slaves, servants and farm workers should not to be baptized or even (in some areas of the Colony) evangelized, continued to persist. The reason articulated was that it would give them equal status with ‘Christians’. The growing taboo against gelykstelling or social levelling became particularly marked on the Eastern Frontier where the stock farmer was bent on retaining his racial superiority. With the doors to Christianity closed to most slaves and farm workers, many of them – especially slaves – turned to Islam.

Continued Opposition to Missionary work
When Lord Charles Somerset took over in 1814, it appeared that he was even more antagonistic. When two of the missionaries paid him a visit he ‘put them out of countenance at once’ (Krüger, 1966:118) and shortly afterwards pitched up at Groene Kloof personally. He was so disgusted when he saw dirtiness and other imperfections among the Khoi there that he promptly notified the Moravians on his return to Cape Town that he wanted a radical change. As far as he was concerned, they were spending their time in laziness, uselessness and prayer meetings. He suggested a system of enforced and controlled labour to be introduced there. A passionate letter by Bonatz, in which he pointed out their own fore-fathers were also savages who were only gradually transformed by the force of the Gospel made little impression on the autocratic governor. After La Trobe, the Secretary of the Moravians in Great Britain, had interceded in London again, Somerset was censured and instructed to grant the necessary security for the settlement. In his reply however, the despotic governor suggested that the Khoi inhabitants should be transferred to Genadendal. His attitude towards the Moravians only changed after a personal visit by La Trobe in 1816 and his application to the Secretary of Colonies, the difficulties with Groene Kloof were solved and permission granted to build a church. La Trobe’s recommendation to the Mission leaders in Herrnhut that an English-speaking brother be sent to the Cape, was to have massive positive implications. Hans-Peter Hallbeck, a Swede who had been working in England, revolutionised work in South Africa, taking Genadendal and Moravian missionary work to another level.
Somerset also prohibited a missionary - the Methodist Barnabas Shaw - to preach to slaves at the Cape. Lord Charles Somerset also refused the Methodist missionary John McKenny, Shaw’s predecessor, permission to exercise the duties of a Christian minister to the slaves.42 After waiting in vain for such permission for 18 months, McKenny finally left for Ceylon - the present day Sri Lanka. Barnabas Shaw courageously defied the order, ‘determined to commence preaching’ even without Somerset’s permission (Mears, 1973:15). It is not clear whether Shaw actually preached to slaves. He did preach to soldiers ‘with the knowledge of the governor’ (Du Plessis, 1911:168), but Somerset probably decided not to make an issue out of that.

Sheer Perseverance and Zeal
Through sheer perseverance and zeal Rev. Barnabas Shaw put the Methodist Church/Wesleyan Mission Society on the Cape map. In 1819 he ascertained from the Colonial Secretary and Somerset, the Governor, that there would no longer be objection to the start of a mission in the metropolis. After the refusal of permission for preaching in the town and his defying the prohibition in 1816, he had left to start work in Leliefontein and Kammiesberg, Namaqualand. The next year the Rev. Edward Edwards joined him in Leliefontein, but Edwards was appointed to pioneer work in the metropolis. Services started in a hired hayloft in Plein Street, where congregants first had to pass behind the heels of horses before climbing an awkward ladder into the loft. A more comfortable venue was a hired wine store in Barrack Street. During a visit from Leliefontein, it was felt that Shaw should remain in the metropolis. He stayed for two solid yearsduring which the importance of Cape Town was increasingly recognised as a growing missionary base.
In zeal for preaching, Shaw had no match. On a typical Sunday he preached six times in English or Dutch (Mears, 1973:19). Through his endeavours three Methodist Church circuits evolved, namely Cape Town, Wynberg and Simonstown. His diverse endeavours included an evening school for children and adults in addition to the Sunday school, a free day school and a small library for the improvement and entertainment of soldiers. Very interesting is the vivid description of the day school: ‘Here are the aged learning to spell with spectacles; and babes who can just waddle to the school. Here are the children of heathens, Mohammedans and Christians; children who are the descendants of parents of all the four quarters of the globe…’ (Cited in Mears, 1973:17f).
Dr Philip caused much of the strain missionaries later had to experience. He had barely been in Cape Town when he made rash assertions, which rubbed colonists and the authorities up the wrong way. Complaints mentioned in a letter to the Acting Governor, Sir Rufane Donkin, proved to be unfounded.
Lord Charles Somerset became known to be an adversary of Dr Philip. In this particular case, we have the combined effect of two independent spirits, two headstrong men. Somerset had the temperament that can brook no opposition. Colonists were forced to either acquiesce or take their protests to England. Dr Philip had no scruple to do the latter. However, the strong-willed superintendent of the LMS would probably have clashed with any other ruler.

A sad saga with a happy ending
The Stellenbosch church historian Du Plessis recorded the sad saga of a Khoi tribe, the Afrikaners, that was driven from their indigenous grazing fields between Table Bay and the Berg River to the northern Cape by the advancing Dutch colonists. They had become impoverished by the end of the 18th century. Jager Afrikaner, their chief, was finally compelled by circumstances to work for the field cornet Pienaar. The latter also employed Jager Afrikaner in commandoes against the San (the so-called Bushmen). After a dispute between Pienaar and Jager Afrikaner over wages, a tussle ensued during which the Field Cornet was killed. Fearing retribution, the Afrikaner clan fled to an island on the Orange River, from where the Afrikaners ‘embarked on a career of depradation and marauding which made their name a terror to the farmers and to the tribes dwelling along the course of the Orange River’ (Du Plessis, 1911:116).
The Government declared Jager Afrikaner an outlaw and setting a price on his head. As he was an intelligent man, he attempted from time to time to secure a truce with the authorities, but with so much blood on his hands, the Government could not even contemplate negotiation with him. Under the labours of LMS missionaries, Jager Afrikaner became an exemplary follower of Jesus, becoming an ‘unswerving friend’ of Robert Moffat. The latter had the radical idea to take his friend along to Cape Town in 1819 for his wedding, a thought ‘which was fraught with consequences of the utmost importance for his future life’ (Du Plessis, 1911:156). One needs little imagination to appreciate the sensation caused when the missionary rocked up in the city with the man who had once been ‘the terror of armers and natives alike’. Moffat introduced him to Lord Charles Somerset, who was duly impressed, presenting Afrikaner with a wagon valued at £80.
An interesting prayer snippet exists around the wedding of Reverend Robert Moffat. While working in Cheshire as a gardener for James Smith, he fell in love with Smith’s daughter Mary. The father was however unwilling to allow his daughter to go abroad to marry the missionary in a remote desert station in far away Africa. Three years later the Lord softened Smith’s heart. That Robert Moffat had to come to Cape Town from his mission post for their marriage in St George Cathedral on 27 December 1819 was strategic. Here he was not only persuaded to abandon the mission to Namaqualand, but also to take over the mission station at Dithakong. That was the beginning of the special ministry to the Tswana in Kuruman that was to write Robert Moffat into history annals. He was also to impact David Livingstone, the missionary-explorer of Central Africa.

Early apartheid precedents by church and missions
In 1824 the DRC decided to regard the missionary as a separate but inferior entity. Nico Smith suggests that this invariably had to lead to separate churches for non-whites (Elkeen in sy eie taal, 1973:68). However, at the 1829 Cape DRC ringzitting it was still decided – upon a question to that effect from the circuit of Zwartland (Malmesbury) - that all members would be admitted to Holy Communion ‘zonder onderscheid van kleur of afkomst’.43 It was also stated that this issue was not even to become a subject for deliberation at a synod. Instead, it had to be seen as ‘een onwrikbaar stelregel, op het onfeilbaar woord van God gegrond...’44 that no person should be barred on these grounds (Dreyer, 1936:316).45 The churches at Somerset West and Swartland were far from happy with this decision. The missionary paper of 1834 provided for ‘gemeenten der naturellen’ (congregations for natives) but it was accepted that converts could join the White churches in the meantime. The watershed decision of 1829 of the Cape presbytery of the DRC was however watered down. In 1837 the DRC synod mentions that there should be enough (separate?) seats in churches for ‘heidenen die zich tot de openbare godsdienst begeven’ (Cited in Geldenhuys, 1982:29).46
After the abolition of slavery in 1834, the London Mission Society established a separate suburb, isolated from the town Port Elisabeth, for its people. It is ironic that the establishment of the mission stations, with the rationale to be a haven of protection for the Khoi people, set a precedent for the “locations”, which would be established in future.
In 1847 the Cape Colonial Government issued regulations for establishing locations close to “white” towns where the Khoi people and other non-whites or “coloured” people were required to live if they did not own property or were not housed by their employers. In the second half of the 18th century many subsidiary residential settlements were established throughout the Cape Colony. There were no legally imposed racial restrictions on “non-white” ownership or occupation of land in the Cape Colony until the late 19th century. Few members in these communities however had the means to avail themselves of these legal opportunities.

Practical Christianity
The Genadendal Moravians succeeded in making the Gospel very practical. J.S. Marais, a well known historian, noted how ‘the Hottentots were making the difficult transition from a nomadic to a more settle life’ under the missionaries’ influence. Every inhabitant of Genadendal had a vegetable garden adjoining his dwelling. The brethren encouraged simplicity, urging the Khoikhoi to spend their meager earnings on proper clothing instead of on wine and tobacco. Furthermore, a forest was planted west of the grave-yard, and new branches of industry were started like a joinery and a forge when new missionaries arrived with these skills. Some inhabitants practised their own trade; a cartright and blacksmith, a cooper, a transport-rider and the owner of a handmill are mentioned. Others became competent masons. Midwives from Genadendal (and Groene Kloof) had a good reputation, and were called by the wives of the farmers. When the postal service was improved in 1806, two men from Genadendal were appointed to carry the mail across the country. At Genadendal the economy flourished during this period. The mill, the smithy, cutlery, the garden, the vineyard and the shop contributed to the income. At Genadendal the work expanded significantly under the brilliant Swedish Superintendent Hans Peter Hallbeck. He tried new vocational branches, in order to create opportunities of employment for the inhabitants.
Under the supervision of Hallbeck and a Khoikhoi captain, trees were planted. It was laid down that the timber would be sold at half price to the residents. The profit would go to the poor relief.
Well-intended advice from their directors in Germany - suggesting that Moravian missionaries should be ‘tentmakers’ like Paul and not full-time pastor - had an unfortunate side effect. Already under Johann Adolph Küster, the superintendent who succeeded the acting leader Kohrhammer47 in 1807, patronage and a dependency on the missionaries developed. The indigenous congregants were not taught to tithe. An unhealthy dependency syndrome became common for so many churches, which came into being through mission work. Yet, because Küster was more intent on preserving and consolidating the work at Genadendal, it became a model mission station.48 The colonial visitor Barrow was impressed that the Moravians were apparently in no hurry to gain converts, but rather teach skills to those on the mission station.
Genadendal was soon regarded a model mission station to where many other mission agencies sent their new workers. The LMS and SAMS regarded it as standard practice for their missionaries before starting in their respective fields of work and also Johann Leipoldt of the Rhenish Mission was there on 27 November 1829, a mere month and a half after their arrival in Cape Town. Leipoldt made a thorough study of the missionaries’ work. Soon ‘he would adopt the same methods at Wupperthal’ (Strassberger, 1969:12).

Negative tenets
Yet, also a negative tenet developed at this time. The indigenous congregants were not taught to tithe. An unhealthy dependency syndrome on Germany became common for so many churches, which came into being through Moravian missionary work. Also this became the pattern country-wide. (By way of contrast, the Dutch Reformed Church received help from the government, but the congregants never looked to Holland to supply the stipends of their ministers.) The LMS erred on the other side of the independency spectrum. Their directors had difficulty to free themselves from the idea that the mission must become self-supporting almost straight away. That led not only to practices like trading in ivory and other commodities, but acting as agents in the trade of firearms and ammunition (Spilhaus, 1966:377). Already in 1802 ceased to be supported by the LMS, probably because of his trading practices. This gave a bad name to missionary work, and also led to doctrinal bickering after the colonist Joubert had to resign from the work in Zoar. In the case of Joubert the failure of the crops and the lack of other support led to his resignation. When the Berlin mission took over the work some years later, the congregants would not have a crucifix, candles and an altar. This caused a dispute, effecting a separation between Zoar and the neighbouring mission station Amalienstein (Du Plessis, 1911:98).
The Unity Elders Conference in Germany, which governed the Moravian mission work internationally, decided to send Christian Ignatius La Trobe, the Secretary of the Moravians in Britain to inspect the work at the Cape. Among his friends were Rowland Hill of the London Missionary Society and the evangelical parliamentarian William Wilberforce. La Trobe was a cheerful Christian and full of enthusiasm for the mission work. He could ‘negotiate with people like Lord Charles Somerset on the same level, but also converse with an illiterate Hottentot in a simple and brotherly fashion’ (Krüger, 1966:121). When he was visiting Lord Charles Somerset, La Trobe won his favour at once, turning his unfriendly attitude towards the Moravians into emphatic support.

Suppression of press Freedom
Colonial governments kept a tight rein on private printing and newspapers. If any appeared, it was by courtesy of the authorities. The Cape was no exception to this rule. Both Holland and England flatly rejected this privilege and all requests for a printing press were consistently turned down. All books and tracts, mostly of a religious nature, were imported.The corrupt Sir George Yonge banned all public printing by anyone except his nominated cronies through a proclamation on 21 July, 1800.
Johann Christian Ritter, by trade a bookbinder from Hof in Bavaria, was to be South Africa’s first printer. With the aid of a small handpress from his father that he brought with him, he produced handbills, advertisements and almanacs for the years 1795, 1796 and 1797.
The first real ‘book’ produced in South Africa was a Dutch translation of greeting from the LMS to Christians at the Cape in 1799. The translation was done in Cape Town and thought to be printed on Ritter’s hand press by Valentinus Alexius Schoonberg, son of a fellow Bavarian (De Kock, 1982:23).

The start of newspapers at the Cape
Until the end of the 18th century the influence of the press was minimal. The first newspaper at the Cape, De Kaapse Stads Courant, appeared in 1800. The tame paper was nevertheless some variation from the Government printing-office’s Cape Gazettte and Cape Calendar. The increased battle for the freedom of the press started only with the arrival of the British Settlers.
Thomas Pringle was one of the 1820 settlers, the country’s first poet in English. The brutality of life on the frontier where he initially settled with his wife, father and brothers in May 1920 did not blunt his sensitivities which he encapsulated so well in his best known poem Afar in the Desert:
…When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
Wits scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife,
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing, and dear melancholy… (The full poem is printed in De Kock, 1982:26).

Pringle settled in the Mother city in 1822, working as a librarian.
Joseph Suasso de Lima, a Jew, who came to the Cape in 1816, wrote profusely in different genres, including poetry. From his hand appeared the first manual of Cape history published at the Cape, Geschiedenis van de Kaap de Goede Hoop in 1825. About the same time as John Fairbairn, De Lima started De Versamelaar, a weekly paper.49
Thomas Pringle wrote to Abraham Faure and John Fairbairn separately more or less at the same time. He had no intention to anger the authorities. He and Faure hereafter decided to initiate a paper without delay, agreeing to exclude political or controversial matters. The importance of the role of Ds Abraham Faure at this time in the struggle for the freedom of the press has by and large not been recognised sufficiently, albeit that André Olivier (Bode op die Spoor van die Woord, 150 jaar met Die Kerkbode, 1998:11) mentions that Faure was hailed in the Afrikaans language as ‘die vader van die kerklike joernalistiek’ (the father of the church journalism) and even ‘die vader van die. Suid-Afrikaanse literatuur’ (the father of the South African literature). Not even two years after his return to Cape Town, Faure (in Dutch) and Pringle started editing the unique parallel bilingual periodical 'Het Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift' and The South African Journal. Together with the British journalists Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn, Abraham Faure fought for the freedom of the press, but whereas Pringle's South African Journal merely appeared twice, Faure persevered with his paper every alternate month for 20 years. (The interference of Somerset – combined with Pringle’s uncompromising attitude – caused the English version to stop after two copies.)

Somerset’s opposition to missionary work and press freedom
Lord Charles Somerset’s simultaneous opposition to missionary work and press freedom brought two formidable camps together. Thomas Pringle was one of the 1820 settlers, the country’s first poet in English. The brutality of life on the frontier where he initially settled with his wife, father and brothers in May 1920 did not blunt his sensitivities which he encapsulated so well in his best known poem Afar in the Desert:
…When the wild turmoil of this wearisome life,
Wits scenes of oppression, corruption, and strife,
And malice, and meanness, and falsehood, and folly,
Dispose me to musing, and dar melancholy… (The full poem is printed in De Kock, 1982:26).

Pringle settled in the Mother city in 1822, working as a librarian. The time on the frontier sharpened Pringle’s sense of justice which led to his fight for the rights of the settlers, and still later to his appointment as secretary to Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society. At the Cape he initially seemed ‘obsessed with a comfortable life for himself and his wife’ (De Kock, 1982:34), on the surface ‘observant of authority to the point of obsequiousness’. It could never remain like that because as Wessel de Kock (1982:28) described the passion of the exceptional Scotsman: ‘ …. He burned with a lifelong rebellion and outrage against injustice.’ It seems as if Ds. Abraham Faure, the Groote Kerk minister, who started a second DRC congregation, the Nieuwe Kerk,
ignited the flame in Pringle. Before attending Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Faure spent two years at the training school of the LMS, where he was strongly influenced to advocate the power of the printed word in Christian work.
Thomas Pringle wrote to Abraham Faure and John Fairbairn separately more or less at the same time. He had no intention to anger the authorities. He and Faure hereafter decided to intitiate a paper without delay, agreeing to exclude political or controversial matters. In his letter to Fairbarin it was all about money. With only the Government printing-office’s Cape Gazettte and Cape Calendar available to colonists: ‘we would have all the profits in our own hands’ (De Kock, 1982:38). Fairbairn was enthusiastic, dreaming already of becoming the Benjamin Franklin of the Cape in respect to the Freedom of the press.

Almost a Breakthrough for Freedom of the Press
An interesting dynamic at this time was the tactics employed by the governor. Writing from Genadendal where he had to stay longer than intended when he fell ill there, Pringle wrote to John Fairbairn at the Cape that he was sending his letter by ‘other channels’ irregular means, encouraging him to do the same (Meiring, 1968:107). The practice of tampering with mail, which became so common in the apartheid era, appears to have had a significant precedent.
Pringle and Fairbairn formally applied for permission to start a paper early in 1823. George Greig, a printer, submitted his own publication for a literary and commercial magazine, undertaking to exclude personal controversy and discussion of colonial matters.
On 2 December Pringle was summoned by Somerset, abrubtly teeeling him that Lord Bathurst, the colonial secretary, had permitted publication of the proposed magazine on condition that it should contain nothing ‘detrimental to the peace and safety of the Colony’.
George Greig stole the thunder of Pringles and Fairbairn when he discovered through widespread enquireies that though the law expressly forbade unlicenced magazines, the same apparently did not apply to newspapers! He decided to proceed without official permission. Already on December 29, 1823, less than three weeks after Pringle got the go ahewith their publication, Greig published his prospectus for a weekly paper, the South African.Commercial Advertiser. He sent a copy of his prospectus to Somerset as the governors’s ‘most obedient, very humble servant’, refraining however of formally asking permission (De Kock, 1982:42).

Government Censureship raises its head
On 7 January, 1824, while Pringle, Faure and Fairbairn ‘were still fussing around the layout of their literary magazine, the South African.Commercial Advertiser hit the street to a rousing welcome from the citizens of Cape Town.’ By the time Pringle’s The South African Journal appeared on March 5, he and Fairbairn were editing Greig’s newspaper. After the second issue the printer had realized that he needed professional assistance.
The importance of the role of Ds Abraham Faure, the new minister of the Groote Kerk at this time in the struggle for the freedom of the press has by and large not been recognised. Shortly after his return to Cape Town he started the unique paper 'Het Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift'.
With the British journalists Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn he fought for the freedom of the press, but whereas Pringle's South African Journal merely appeared twice, Faure persevered with his paper for 20 years. As the sole owner of the South African.Commercial Advertiser, John Fairbairn became a national figure and heralded as the ‘Father of the South African Press’, labouring for many reforms through his paper. Much of the due included in this tribute should however go to George Greig, Thomas Pringle and Ds Abraham Faure.
From its seventh issue the Commercial Advertiser started publicising court proceedings, reporting a trial around a Cape Town merchant , Lancelot Cook, who accused the collector of customs of malpractice in the disposal of slaves. When Edwards, ‘a wild-eyed, eloquent individual’ started vilifying Lord Charles Somerset, the governor feard that Edwards’ uncontrolled claims would be reported in the Commercial Advertiser. On May 4, 1824 Somerset promptly ordered the fiscal, Daniel Denyssen, to demand the proof sheets of the next issue. He feared negative reporting. Denyssen conveyed the governor’s resentment to Greig regarding their quoting liberal writers. In futures too trials should only be bpublicised on completion and then with omission of all ‘scurrilous’ parts (De Kock, 1982:44). Greig surrendered the proof sheets after some cat and mouse game during which Greig demanded that every communication to him should have the status of an official order.
A Government Clampdown once again
On Wednesday 5 May readers were surprised by a special notice on page one of the Advertiser demanding proof sheets of the paper for the next day and indicating that the publication of the paper was suspended for the present. The defiant announcement in the S.A. Commercial Advertiser was the beginning of a five year wrangling to wrest control of the press from the authorities. On Sunday, May 9, 1824 Lord Charles Somerset put his seals on Georg Greig’s presses.
In tandem with John Fairbairn, Pringle had been given permission to start a paper South African Journal. The first edition roused the displeasure of Lord Charles Somerset. After the appearance of the second issue, publication ceased. This more or less coincided with the wrangling around the S.A. Commercial Advertiser, which they were co-editing. On Thursday May 13 Pringle was summoned to the office of Denyssen, the fiscal. The latter had a marked copy of the second issue of the South African Journal, which contained an article on ‘The present state and prospects of the English emigrants in South Africa’. The article called their settling in the Cape Colony an ‘ill planned and ill conducted enterprise’ (De Kock, 1982:48). He warned Pringle as he had warned Greig that the tone of the publication was not in accordance with its prospectus and that it could only continue on a pledge that similar articles would not appear. After a few more altercations between him and the fiscal, he and Fairbairn decided to discontinue the South African Journal.They could not accept a system which made the editorial content subject to the whims of Lord Charles Somerset.
On August 18, 1824 the first issue of another newspaper, The South African.Chronicle and Mercantile Advertiser appeared, but on 31 August 1825 the South African Commercial Advertiser reappeared after Greig had returned to the Cape. He was the publisher and John Fairbairn the sole editor. Greig immediately petitioned Somerset to get his printing equipment returned. The battle between the South African Commercial Advertiser and the authorties resumed until on March 10, 1827 when Richard Bourke, the new Governor, cancelled the newspaper’s licence on instructions from London.

Pringle victorious in the struggle for press and slave freedom
Aided by Dr Philip, Thomas Pringle and his friends ultimately won their struggle for the freedom of the press against the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. De Kock (1982:57) suggests that Dr Philip played as more than passing role in the press agitation. He had a marked influence on Fairbairn, his future son-in-law.
Like Fairbairn, it was Pringle’s fervent desire to help make South Africa ‘fit country for free men, an adult nation with a rightful status, insead of a swaddled colonial infant’ (De Kock, 1982:52f). They rallied colonists who significantly petitioned for free expression not only for South Africa but also for ‘other colonies of the British Empire. Pringle left the Cape, arriving in London in July 1826. For seven years, from 1827 to the Act of Abolition, he threw himself enthusiastically into his job as secretary to Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society. Due to his role in writing extensively to newspapers, he assisted William Wilberforce tremendously as he tried to lobby forces in the British Parliament.

Press Freedom fuels Afrikaner nationalism
The achieved press freedom woke the simmering disquiet among the Dutch speakers from the sleep. The conscious attempts at anglicisation of education - and at every corner by Lord Charles Somerset - were bound to backfire. Already on April 9, 1830 De Zuid-Afrikaan was published by C.N. Neethling, soon seen as a vehicle to fuel Afrikaner nationalism. Officially it was started on the basis of neutrality, but already from its first issue it was made clear that the paper is also reactionary, a counter to the philanthropism of Fairbairn and Dr Philip. De Zuid-Afrikaan was probably the first concerted move by Afrikaners to resist their anglicisation. They could not foresee the dangers of a narrow nationalism, that in due course led to Black nationalism with the most crude calls to drive the White man into the see or slogans as 'One settler, one bullet!...

Grudges against the missionaries in the Advertiser
For the first time in the history of South Africa, the public could voice its opinion within certain limits on all matters of public concern. The Cape weekly newspaper, the S.A. Commercial Advertiser was however not only a blessing. Jakobus Theunissen, the son of Marthinus and a neighbour of the brethren in Genadendal, used the new medium to air his personal grudges against the missionaries in the Advertiser of 12 August 1826, writing under the pseudonym of Rusticus (Krüger, 1966:162). He asserted that the missionaries enriched themselves by exploiting the poor Khoikhoi. Hallbeck reacted with a long letter, pointing out that the work was not profitable, but was supported by subsidies from overseas. This was followed by another polemical reaction from Rusticus.
The Moravian settlements – Elim, near to Cape Agulhas, had been added in 1824 – suddenly enjoyed vigorous protection from the governors. But this now exposed them to public criticism in the Advertiser.
High-handed action from Germany further exacerbated the deteriorating conditions. When Hallbeck requested the mission board to send a missionary brother exclusively for the administration of Genadendal, it was unlovingly refused.

Missionary Diamonds formed
Dr Helperus van Lier, the mission-minded minister of the Groote Kerk, suggested three forays of missionary endeavour. One of these was outreach to the Eastern Cape. Dr van der Kemp, leader of the first four LMS pioneers, led this attempt as he in no time mastered the difficult Xhosa language, ministering to the Ngika (Gaika) tribe. From this tribe at least two missionary diamonds were formed out of the black coal of oppressive colonial history.
A group of people became inhabitants of Genadendal during this period, Xhosa-speakers from the Eastern Cape. In 1809 Lt.-Colonel Richard Collins, was given authority to stamp British authority on the region. In order to achieve this, he thought that Blacks should be pushed back across the Fish River. Those Blacks, who wanted to remain in the Cape Colony, should be directed to a Moravian settlement. The callous Collins even recommended that the mission station Bethelsdorp should be broken up since it was ‘designed for the benefit of the Hottentots rather than that of the Colony’ (Cited in Walker, 1964:149).
A Gaika woman, whose husband had deserted her,50 was the other missionary 'diamond'. She was among the first Blacks to be settled in Genadendal. There this woman, who later got the name Wilhelmina, became a follower of Jesus.
In Genadendal the missionary spirit took hold of Wilhelmina. Soon she urged the Genadendal Moravians to start independent work among her own people. She was appointed as nursemaid to the children of the missionaries. She also assisted with the teaching of the little ones at the ‘Kindergarten’ of Genadendal, setting out to teach the missionaries’ children the fundamentals of her language, so that they could later bring the gospel to her people. Johann Adolph, the son of Johann Gottlieb Bonatz, one of her pupils, later became one of the pioneers among the red blanketed pagan Xhosa in the Ciskei.

Historical distortion affirming White solidarity
Christian La Trobe could have sparked off a bomb with his report, in which he also included a short reference to the infamous Slagtersnek Rebellion of 1815/6, which was amplified in Afrikaner heroism to mythology. La Trobe arrived in George a week after the event, heard the story from Rev. Tobias Johannes Herold, the local Dutch Reformed minister, who had just come back from the Eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, where he witnessed the attempts at the executions of the five rebels. If La Trobe’s report had become known before 1818 when it was first published, much of the myth around the Slagtersnek rebellion when 5 rebels were about to be executed, might have been prevented. But the a-political perception of the Moravians might also have suffered. Coming from Britain himself, La Trobe was nevertheless quite critical of the procedure, but yet balanced. He wrote down facts, which surely would have been regarded as very political stuff: ‘The hangman was a black. The halters were too weak, or rather, as some suspected, intentionally cut…’ (Cited in Thompson, 1985:117). La Trobe noted further that the wives and relatives of those executed were present,51 ‘hardly to be explained by the standard of English feeling.’
George Mc Call Theal, the Canadian-born academic, unfortunately contributed to historical distortion in his effort to affirm White solidarity. Theal tried to steer along a diplomatic course between British imperialism and Afrikaner nationalism. Theal did this e.g. in his report of the Slagtersnek rebellion at the expense of the Black population, injecting ‘romantic sentiment into his conclusions in extenuation of the behaviour of the rebels’ (cf. Thompson, 1985:134). Theal omitted expediently how the rebels sought help from the Xhosa and he did not mention how the executions were bungled. Thompson (p.137) pointed out how school textbooks – following Theal’s historiography – depicted the uprising as the initiator of ‘perpetual hatred for the British government, as distinct from the British people in South Africa’. Ds Hendrik C. V. Leibbrandt, who became the keeper of the Archives Leibbrandt after he had left the church, contributed significantly to the exposure by the myth. Sad is especially that a Cape clergyman, S.J. du Toit, was the possible initiator of the abuse through his ‘history’ of the country ‘in di taal van ons land.’ In what amounted to naked propaganda against the English and for the spoken language of the Boers, he supposedly pointed out ‘hoe wreedaardig die Engelse met ons arme boere gewerk het.’ Jan Smuts and the other contributors in ‘Eene Eeuw van Onrecht’ (A century of Wrong, blew into the same horn.
Dr J.A. Heese had a special contribution through excellent research, showing how genealogy was manipulated to create the myth of the Slagtersnek Rebellion. It was commendable that Heese was assisted greatly by the spadework done by Hendrik Leibbrandt, a theologian who was forced to leave church office because of his views.

A catastrophe averted
The year 1821 and more especially 1822 were difficult ones because of a general famine in the Overberg region where Genadendal is situated. Many sympathisers came to the support of the Mission. The government and the landdrost (magistrate) granted money, which the brethren used to cook food three times a week for the hungry. The beneficiaries had to do some voluntary labour before the meals. The men were summoned to work in the gardens of the widows and other needy residents. In response to an appeal by Hallbeck, funds came from Germany, Holland and Britain. Thus a catastrophe was averted and only few people died at Genadendal during 1822 because of the famine.

A Xhosa female missionary pioneer
Wilhelmina Stompjes can be regarded as the equivalent of Magdalena Tikkuie of Genadendal. Many newcomers came to Shiloh from different backgrounds. This included a Sotho, Nakin, who had fled the Mfecane and a number of San (‘Bushmen’). 52 Nakin and his wife were the first candidates for baptism in Shiloh.
Wilhelmina Stompjes was an enterprising lady, who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the newcomers, more than the missionaries. She soon more or less ran the school for their children at the new mission station. The settlement which was started in 1828 received the name Shiloh (derived from Shalom, implying peace), but the Blacks called it Ebede, meaning place of prayer. Carl and Wilhelmina Stompjes were among the group who started this venture, operating as translators. Daniel Kaffer became backslidden, leaving Wilhelmina Stompjes as the sole translator.
Johann Adolph Bonatz, her protégée, had exceptional educative talent. When he took over the leadership of the school at Shiloh, the institution prospered. He himself went on to become the missionary among the Blacks par excellence, making various translations into Xhosa. Increasingly, Wilhelmina became ‘the advisor and support of the missionaries, besides having to act as the sole interpreter.’ Her translations were of a special order. She did not simply render the German words of the missionary into the corresponding Xhosa. Instead, she regarded his thoughts and words rather as being in the nature of an epigram, ‘which she then expanded to include what she considered would be suitable for the listeners and easily understood’ (Keagan, 2004:22). ‘She added picturesque illustrations and vigorous exhortations of her own, and her private conversations proved a blessing to many’ (Krüger, 1966:174).
The situation at Shiloh became so dangerous at some stage that Bishop Hallbeck seriously considered abandoning the mission enterprise there. In fact, an instance is told how the missionaries would have been killed if Wilhelmina Stompjes did not intervene resolutely: ‘She then violently berated Maphasa, who was so dumbfounded that he quietly retreated with his men’ (Keagan, 2004:22).
Magdalena Tikkuie and Wilhelmina Stompjes ploughed the ground for equality of women by doing work for which women would normally not have qualified. As the translator of missionaries, Wilhelmina Stompjes was perhaps one of the first worldwide.

Special Pioneering work
The missionary work at Shiloh was special in every sense. Exceptional was already the way it started, with believers from the earlier Moravian mission stations joining the missionaries. At the end of the first year thirty people from the western settlements the nucleus of the new station. Another hall-mark was the racial harmony that characterised the mission station in a war-torn environment. At the end of 1829, 88 Xhosas and Tembu’s lived in the settlement with 31 Khoi. Even some San joined the fray, enjoying the protection which the presence of the missionaries afforded. Another special facet at Shiloh was the role of an indigenous woman with regard to the newcomers. ‘More than the missionaries, Wilhelmina succeeded in gaining their confidence’ (Krüger, 1966:174).
Johann Adolph Bonatz, the protégée of Wilhelmina, had exceptional educative talent. When he took over the school, the institution prospered and he himself went on to become the missionary of the Africans par excellence, making various translations into Xhosa (Keagan, 2004:31).
Keagan narrates how the situation at Shiloh became so dangerous at some stage that Bishop Hallbeck seriously considered abandoning the mission enterprise there. In fact, an instance is told how the missionaries would have been killed if Wilhelmina Stompjes did not intervene resolutely: ‘She then violently berated Maphasa, who was so dumbfounded that he quietly retreated with his men’ (Keagan, 2004:22). Johann Adolph Bonatz remained in Shiloh for twenty-six years, becoming the real pioneer of the Moravian Mission in the east.

A breakthrough: indigenous teachers
The contribution of Hallbeck in the field of education was completely revolutionary, when he made use of intelligent learners to assist him. Thus he used Maria Koopman, the wife of the Khoi captain and a young girl who unfortunately drowned in 1810 in the Sondereind River (Balie, 1988:50). Hallbeck initiated the creation of an indigenous mission church by the establishment of a training school at Genadendal. He not only adopted an indigenous orphan, Ezekiel Pfeiffer, but he also decided to train him and another indigenous boy, Wilhelm Pleizier.53 That would have been fairly revolutionary for the Cape of the early 19th century. The two did so well that Hallbeck decided to train these two to become teachers to their own people. In September 1831, an infant school started in Genadendal with Hallbeck, Pfeiffer, Pleizier and a German female as teachers.
The gifted Ezekiel Pfeiffer was soon transferred to the primary school which at that stage had been manned only by missionaries. Some of the neighbouring farmers applied for the admission of their children to the school. Hallbeck was so impressed at the quality of the teaching at the school that he suggested that the children of missionaries should not be sent to Germany in future. Many of the neighbouring farmers attended the church where a hymn book was used, which had been specially printed in Zeist (Holland) for the three Moravian congregations at the Cape. Few farms in the proximity of Genadendal and Elim were without such a hymn book (Mamre was the third congregation). A spiritual revival in the Overberg started in Genadendal among married church members in 1828. They asked each other for forgiveness, committing themselves to live in submission to the Lord (Schmidt, 1935:4). The revival fanned out among the neighbouring farms. Their participation in the worship on normal Sunday increased considerably (Krüger, 1966:178).
Apart from a few companies and factories which were started at Genadendal, the Moravians also pioneered teacher training in 1838. Hallbeck’s vision got a major push when a German mission friend, Prince Victor von Schönburg-Waldenburg granted 20,000 thaler (guilders) for a training school. Prince Victor maintained a healthy interest in the training school. Hallbeck raved about Ezekiel Pfeiffer in 1834, praising his ‘grote getrouwheid as onderwyser… asof hy hom by vernuwing aan die Here toegewy het’ 54(Schmidt, 1935:5). No wonder that Pfeiffer was among the first to be appointed to train new teachers when the Moravians started the Kweekskool in 1838. 55 The Kweekschool at Genadendal was the first of its kind, even before there was one for Whites.The other two German-based mission agencies (the Rhenish and Berlin Societies) were soon also sending their converts for training in Genadendal. Theological training was an integral part of the programme. The emphasis was on church planting rather than church building. The protégées from the institution at Genadendal left for places all over the colony, even to the Easter Cape, one finds Johannes Nakin, starting with Samuel Mazwi at the school in Shiloh in 1954 where once Nakin’s dynamic mother-in-law Wilhelmina Stompjes and the education pioneer Johann Adolph Bonatz had taught. Naturally, the Moravians should have produced the first indigenous minister. Instead, Johannes Nakin for example, was ordained only in 1883 - almost thirty years after leaving Genadendal!56
The link of the Kweekskool to the church would influence the Cape for more than a century as teachers trained at Genadendal led ‘Coloured’ society in all walks of life.57

Empowerment of the Indigenous
The Moravians were also pioneers in the empowerment of the indigenous people generally. In Genadendal many inhabitants learned to do skilled work in the various branches of the Mission. Whenever possible, he passed responsibilities to the congregants, in order to release the missionaries for their spiritual duties. Thus an inhabitant of Groene Kloof succeeded Peterleitner in the joinery when the missionary was called to start up the work among the lepers at Hemel en Aarde. (This ministry was later moved to Robben Island). The management of the guest house of Genadendal was entrusted to a married couple from the settlement. Another couple at Groene Kloof managed the shop when the missionary fell ill. The Headquarters in Herrnhut short-sightedly unfortunately pulled the brakes of this process of the empowerment of the indigenous. They expected the missionaries to be ‘tent-makers’ like St. Paul in order to decrease the expenditure of the Mission.
Hallbeck’s ideas in 1836 for the empowerment of the indigenous believers were quite revolutionary, including tertiary training at the South African College in Cape Town, which had just started a few years prior to that. He proposed that the children of missionaries would be trained together with selected ‘Coloured’ children in South Africa in the interest of the local church (Krüger, 1966:182).

Another blessing in disguise
In 1837 Martinus Vogelgezang applied to be ordained, but he did not find favour with the Dutch Reformed Church authorities. Not having obtained the expected university theological training (in Holland), they referred him to the ruling for missionaries. ‘onder geene andere wijze, en onder geene andere bepalingen... dan betrekkelijk het ordenen van zendelingen’.58
In the spiritual realms the church ruling was to influence the Cape in no uncertain way, a blessing indisguise. On 17 October 1738 Vogelgezang resigned from the Dutch Reformed Church to start the first denominationally independent fellowship. This condescending attitude was indicative of the general view by the church with regard to mission work. The indifference to mission work is still rife in the great majority of churches. It is definitely no complement that many of them see behind all missionary endeavour only competition for the funds of the church.
After the abolition of slavery in 1838, there was a rush of freed slaves to the city. Many deserted their former owners in the agricultural areas. The bulk of these newly urbanised freed slaves turned to Islam. Support from the colonists in the mission work was not forthcoming at all. It does not credit the churches at the Cape that hardly any effort was made to reach the slaves at the Cape with the Gospel up to 1838, apart from what was done at the Z.A. Gesticht. A lack of perseverance was prevalent, combined with a tendency to go for softer targets than the resistant Muslims. And not much changed thereafter. All the more the stalwart work of individuals like Vogelgezang has to be admired, even though his initial approach to the Muslims was quite offensive.
Undeterred by the rebuff from the church of his day, the evangelist Vogelgezang preached the Gospel among the Muslims with unprecedented zeal. Vogelgezang used a version of ‘tentmaking’ - i.e. working in some vocation while doing missionary work. He operated initially simultaneously from his shoemaker’s shop in Rose Street, which is part of present day Bo-Kaap.59 That Vogelgezang gained the respect of his ecumenical contemporaries is demonstrated by the fact that various ministers of other denominations were present at his ordination in February 1839 at the Union Chapel including Dr John Philip and Rev Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society. In the course of time the zealous Vogelgezang planted a few churches, bringing the Gospel to the Muslims with much authority and conviction. In the criticism of the local newspaper De Zuid-Afrikaan with its links to the established church, an element of jealousy also played a role after Vogelgezang’s success in Bo-Kaap.

Racial Prejudice entrenched
Slavery as such was already in existence in biblical days. It has been a major tragedy of Christianity that Paul’s teaching was completely ignored, namely that Christian slaves were to be regarded as brothers and sisters (e.g. Philemon, verse 16). European colonists came to the Cape as a rule with racial arrogance. The prowess of Western civilization served to entrench racism, which had already been prevalent for centuries. The Greek classification of ‘Hellenes and barbarians’ - which was fairly neutral with hardly any racial connotation - was replaced by ‘Christians and heathens.’ The former were Europeans and the latter the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa and all new areas that were discovered. It needed a ruling from Pope Paul III with his edict of 1537 to decide that Indians were human! And yet, ‘Bushmen’ ‘Hottentotten’ and slaves at the Cape remained sub-human in the eyes of Westerners. A theology developed in which racism was rationalized and defended. Thus dark-skinned people were ‘distinguished from Whites because they were said to have been created with the animals on the sixth day. Hence they were excluded from the Garden of Eden, which was a white paradise!’ (Esterhuyse, 1979:21)
Esterhuyse suggests that ‘racism as a racial ideology owes its origin in our Western cultural history to attempts at a moral justification of slavery as a social institution’ (Esterhuyse, 1979:22). From this basis it naturally developed in South Africa to a defense mechanism and justification for racial prejudice and apartheid, namely ‘the preservation and safeguarding of vested (in this case “white”) interests.’
As we have seen, the slaves were perceived as property at the Cape. Even otherwise exemplary missionaries/clergymen like M.C. Vos not only owned slaves, but these Christians were also subtly influenced by their prejudicial upbringing. It is reported by Clinton (1937:30) how Van der Kemp directed new missionaries to a certain Mr Krynauw rather than to Ds Vos, since he considered the latter ‘to be not altogether free from the common … (colonist) prejudices against the heathen nations.’
The pastors at the Cape lacked the courage to challenge the colonists with the Pauline teaching that they had to see the believers among the slaves as family in Christ. Instead, the slaves were conveniently pointed to their duties in subordination and obedience. This sad fact represents a major factor of debt towards the Cape Muslims, that vital tenets of the Gospel have thus been withheld from them.

The compassionate work of the LMS
The compassionate work of London Missionary Society (LMS) missionaries like Rev James Read, Dr Johannes van der Kemp and Dr John Philip on behalf of the underdog slaves had the moral power of biblical truth on their side, but they were often opposed by their missionary colleagues. They were furthermore very unfortunate to have to battle against the pace that the Moravians had set at Genadendal. Nevertheless, the battle that raged at the Cape around the Khoi and the slaves – in which Dr Philip and Dr Van der Kemp had a big hand - had worldwide ramifications when it aided the cause of the abolition of slavery. Dr John Philip discerned that the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 caused the price of slaves to rise, leading to the enserfment of the Khoisan. Between 1808 and 1826 the price of slaves rose by 400% (Theal, RCC, 29:427). In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Earl Bathurst, Dr Philip called attention to several hardships suffered by the Khoi, such as the pass regulations, which prevented them from se ttling where they chose and sometimes led to the splitting of families. These were felt to be legitimate grievances, which would ultimately lead to the Ordinance 50 of 17 July 1828.
During Dr Philip’s visit to England in 1826, he met the evangelical parliamentarian Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. The latter had close links to William Wilberforce, the staunch fighter for the complete emancipation of slaves. In his subsequent correspondence with Buxton, Philip linked the slave issue to the situation of the Khoisan in the Cape Colony already in his first comprehensive report on the LMS stations although he made a distinction between the problems with the Khoisan and those pertaining to slaves (Walker, 1964:153). Ordinance 50 of 1828 and last not least the publication of Philip’s two-volumed Researches in South Africa were major factors in the run-up not only to the Great Trek of colonists to the interior, but also to the final emancipation of slaves worldwide.60
Dr Philip’s role in the proclamation of Ordinance 50 has sometimes been exaggerated. John Philip however definitely played a crucial role in the run-up to this ordinance and he became a prime mover both in the eventual formal abolition of slavery in 1834 and in its implementation at the Cape in 1838. Yet, this decree dramatically changed the legal standing of the Khoisan, putting them on an equal footing with the colonists. It is doubtful if William Wilberforce would have been able to die with satisfaction after his half a century of pioneering fighting of slavery, if he did not receive the support from the Cape.

The Moravian missionaries stayed clear of public debate over slavery and oppressive laws, cleverly theologising around it. Thus their Bishop Hans Peter Hallbeck called slavery the blackest of evils, which must certainly lead to the destruction of any country (Krüger, 1966:195). But the brethren did not feel themselves called to fight it. ‘To became slaves to the slaves and free men to the free, in order to win some for Christ’, was their attitude. This was an ingenious application of 1 Corinthians 3:19ff). Furthermore, Hallbeck regarded oppressive laws as great evils. He did not remain quiet about the pass laws, but only refrained from publicly opposing them in the newspapers (Krüger, 1966:165). In newspaper polemics during which Theunissen, a neighbouring farmer, attacked the Moravians under a pseudonym, Hallbeck restrained himself, omitting to take legal steps. In official correspondence he preserved Theunissen’s anonymity.
The pastors at the Cape lacked the courage to challenge the colonists with the Pauline teaching that they had to see the believers among the slaves as family in Christ. Instead, the slaves were conveniently pointed to their duties in subordination and obedience. This sad fact represents a major factor of debt towards the Cape Muslims, namely that vital tenets of the Gospel have thus been withheld from them.

Negative legacies of LMS missionary work
Dr Philip undermined his own efforts by the unloving way in which he presented his case. His writing - painting the picture at the Cape in a distorted way, exaggerating things here and there - became one of the causes of the Great Trek, as expounded by the Voortrekker leader Piet Retief in his manifesto. All LMS emissaries of the Gospel were hereafter suspect in the eyes of the colonists, while the Moravian mission at Genadendal became the model. This diabolic situation was a direct result of Dr Philip’s harsh criticism of the colonists. Not so long before him the Moravian missionaries had also been villains in the eyes of colonists - accused of ‘corrupting the Khoisan and encouraging laziness’. The absolute distancing of themselves from politics was a tradition of the Moravians, which was not always helpful, making it difficult for the LMS missionaries to make a clear prophetic stand on ethical and racial issues. Because of their apolitical role the Moravian missionary work suddenly became the role models. The precedent was set for the unbiblical notion ‘not to mix politics with religion.’
The way Dr Johannes van der Kemp and Dr John Philip presented their case exacerbated negative feelings towards missionaries. They somehow failed to translate the biblical message of brotherhood of all believers. Had they done this, it might have made Ordinance 50, which made Khoi and slaves equal to the colonists before the law - more palatable. The financial losses incurred due to the emancipation of slaves, was the result of the lies and distortions of Dr Philip and his LMS cronies in the view of the colonists.
The other side of the coin was that the LMS missionaries regarded the civilization of the ‘primitive’ indigenous peoples as a close second motive in the spreading of the Gospel. White domination seemed to be primary and colonial expansion an important part of their ministry. Suspicions were aroused that the church had ulterior motives, leading some in the 1960s to reject Christianity in favour of Islam or Marxism (De Gruchy, 1979:178).

Tension between Mission agencies
As deplorable as it was that Dr Philip gave ‘partial and mutilated extracts from official documents’ (Shaw, 1836:vii), it has to be seen as unfortunate in historical hindsight that Rev William Shaw deemed it fit to publish the correspondence between him and the LMS superintendent in the heat of the battle. It can not be defended that Philip refused his injurious statements, but the issues at hand were definitely not worthy to be fought about in public. It merely tarnished the image of two great missionaries. The missionary strategy of Dr Philip - to identify with the underprivileged, defending their rights of the indigenous peoples in the face of an advancing land grabbing colonial power - is surely in line with the teachings and example of the Master himself. Dr Philip was hypocritical in a sense. The LMS – as all mission agencies – accepted big land grants with little scruple, albeit that it cannot be said that this was land taken from the indigenous.
Shaw’s vision of a chain of mission stations inspired many believers in that era to come and assist the missionary cause in Southern Africa. It is disgusting to read that the editor of a church magazine ‘exerted his utmost ingenuity to excite the indignation of British Christians against the Wesleyan Missionaries’ (Shaw, 1836:19). Shaw and his Methodist colleagues would however have done better to leave the defence over to people from outside their fold.61 The mission cause undoubtedly suffered because of the tension as a result of the polemics fought out in the public domain.
A few decades later, the Anglican Bishop Gray was perhaps the most honest on this matter. He bluntly conceded in his correspondence with the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle,: ‘We have taken possession (justly or unjustly is not now the question) of a new Territory. From it we have thrust out the Heathen and planted ourselves in’ (Cited by Hodgson, 1984:65). His views on the release of Xhosa chiefs from banishment might even have assisted to the conditions of their release in 1869, namelya big tract of land in Kaffraria apiece. This had nevertheless little effect because when the chiefs returned they found their people dispersedm the bulk of their land confiscated and their power gone.

The rift between the British and the Dutch widened
Lord Somerset’s autocratic anglicising policies widened the rift between the British and the Dutch colonists. Whether the colonists either conveniently forgot or whether they were ignorant of the way in which Dutch authorities had discriminated against German and French-speakers in earlier decades, was actually immaterial. More factors which added to the Great Trek arose out of a desire for freedom from British domination and the grudges they bore from the effects of the emancipation of the slaves. Close to this desire was the Trekker vision of a Calvinist republic in which neither White ‘aliens’ like the British – they regarded themselves as Afrikaners, to whom African soil was dear – nor people of colour would be eligible for a meaningful role in the life of the community. (Of course, they were still completely blinded to regard the native Blacks and Khoi as Africans).

The lack of success among Muslims
The lack of success of those missionaries who did try to reach out to the Muslims must also be attributed in part to the lack of support they received from the other colonists. But some success was nevertheless booked already in the early stages of the work of the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, slowing down the spread of Islam. The Christian colonists made significant inroads in the Boland area. After noting his own lack of success to check the increasing number of Muslim proselytes, Wright wrote ‘Nor should I here pass over the successful exertions of the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, in directing the religious zeal of the proprietors of Paarl, Drakenstein, Franschhoek and Wagenmakers Valley that they could now trust their Christian slaves in their wine cellars’ (Wright, 1831:7). Borcherds reports a few decades later how adults were examined with a view to membership: ‘heathens complying with the same forms’ (1861:182). The partition into a separate church in 1881 was performed on a voluntary basis. ‘Coloureds’ who wanted to remain in the White church could do so. In fact, the ‘Coloured’ St Stephen’s church remained a member of the White Synod even in the apartheid era, albeit that there were quite a few attempts to nudge them to join the Sendingkerk.
The blatant prevalent racism might be very clear to us, but the colonists had a completely different set of values. The racial prejudice that was imported from Holland had already been starkly demonstrated at the baptismal service on 21 March 1666, when the service was stopped because a slave woman had the ‘audacity’ to bring her baby to the font. In due course the mission work of the Moravians at Baviaanskloof resulted in downright jealousy. It had such dire results on someone like Marthinus Theunissen. He started off as a friend of the Genadendal missionaries, but became a bitter enemy because other colonists influenced him (Nachtigal, 1893:132).

Materialism revived
Materialism was of course a major part of the problem of the slave owners. The governments at the Cape in the years before the emancipation of slaves conveniently favoured the wishes of the colonists. In the same vein, Piet Retief, giving the reasons for the Great Trek of the Boers to the interior in his famous manifesto, pleaded on behalf of the Boer colonists that they ‘...may suppress crime and preserve proper relations between master and servant.’ The 13 points on which Andries Pretorius based his politics in the new Afrikaner Republic (the later Transvaal) smack of racism of the worst kind.62 This was also the axis around which the politics of the country revolved in later years, especially in the apartheid era. This was accompanied by a condescending attitude, yet they endeavoured to prevent the situation where the Black would see the Afrikaner as his enemy (Pelzer, 1979:164).63 When the aristocratic missionary Dr van der Kemp wanted to have his domestic slave Suzanna baptized, it was refused with the very telling reason: ‘pride would grow insupportable when admitted to the community of Christians’ and he would not be able to sell her (Shell, 1994:354). The market value of a slave was of major concern to the rank and file colonist. When Van der Kemp went ahead to administer communion to the slave woman without the prior rite of baptism, the colonists were really upset, even trying to assassinate him. Miraculously none of their shots hit him.
In general, the colonists had only minimal interest in sharing the Gospel with the slaves. Rochlin summarised the behaviour of the colonists in this way: ‘The proprietors do not in general discourage the embracing of Mohammedanism. They probably prefer to have slaves of this persuasion in their wine-sellers, from the sobriety which their religion inculcates’ (Rochlin, - Aspects of Islam in the nineteenth century, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, London, 1939:216). A little later the same author puts it even stronger, showing that the colonists encouraged the spread of Islam among them, claiming that a sober slave is an asset around the house (The general perception was that the slaves had a big problem with the use of alcohol). Percival (1804:275) gathered the same information from hearsay as the chief motive to deny baptism. Furthermore, the attitude of the colonists to the religious instruction of slaves was so negative that it boiled down to an intimidatory influence on the rulers.

Other missionary Efforts of the early nineteenth Century
At the end of the 18th century, two stars of Cape mission work were operating in full force. Even though Rev. M.C. Vos - born and bred in South Africa - initially laboured in far-away Tulbagh, his influence and that of Dr van Lier was felt at the Cape ‘soos ‘n suurdeeg in die Kaapse volksplanting.’64 A century after their pioneering work, J.I. Marais wrote in the foreword to the Dutch translation of Nachtigal’s book on missions in South Africa: ‘Het tegenwoordig geslacht plukt de vrucht van hun gebed en arbeid, van hun tranen en hun strijd. Het waren donkere dagen toen zij optraden... Doch hun geloofsmoed zegevierde.’65
The work of Z.A. Gesticht flourished despite a significant simultaneous turning to Islam from the side of the slaves. Under Reverend Beck a living ecumenical spirit prevailed. The missionary ‘Genootschap’ enjoyed the support of all the church and mission agencies at the Cape. Since 1824 the Directors invited the ministers of all the congregations to become honorary members. Nobody refused. Their stance was not founded on window dressing, but was based on sound biblical principals. Thus the secretary Metelerkamp uttered his conviction at the welcoming of honorary members on 20 May 1824 that the kingdom of God can only be credibly extended on the foundation of unity of Christians according to John 17. Missionaries were also encouraged to come to the Mother City to come in contact with the other spiritual leaders. Strassberger (1969:6) suggests that the Gesticht church ‘was probably one of the reasons why the Dutch Reformed Church decided at their first Synod in 1824 to begin mission work…’
Efforts by the SAMS to find someone to work among the Muslims were at last successful when the Rev.William Elliot, who knew Arabic, was prepared to come to the Cape. He had been a missionary on the island of Johanna, one of the Comores group. For three years Elliot ‘continued to labour with great zeal and devotion, but the soil was barren, the prejudice deep-rooted and the support of Christian friends slack....’ (Du Plessis, 1911:98). The dissemination of a newsletter to the different Dutch Reformed Churches harvested a positive response: quite a few congregations contributed in a collection for the mission to the Muslims. Elliot brought a lithographic printing press to the Cape from England for the printing of hymns. To distribute New Testaments in the Malayu language was surely a shrewd move.
Initially Elliot started off well as co-preacher of Reverend Beck at ZA Gesticht in May 1825. Enthusiastically he got to know the Muslim community personally. After two months he had already started little schools in the homes of Imam Achmat and Joseph. 66 However, already at the end of 1825 Elliot started to complain about the difficult access he had to the Muslims (Botha, 1999:29).
The work was stopped in 1828 because of the need of funds and ‘the inveterate prejudices of that class against the Christian faith’ (cited in Els, 1971:428). On closer inspection, it seems that Elliot was not able to win the trust of the Muslims. Furthermore, financial support for the mission work dried up, possibly also as a backlash to Dr Philip’s demeanour. Church people regarded the LMS superintendent as ‘too political’, not behoving a missionary. It might be an exaggeration, but it is nevertheless interesting that Strassberger (1969:3) states: ‘Dr Philip is rightly regarded as the greatest politician at the Cape at the beginning of the nineteenth century.’ Yet, chiefly due to Dr Philip a historian of British Colonial History concludes that the English missionaries were the chief inspirers of British policy (Cited by Strassberger (1969:4).67

Cape churches working together
The entry of the Berlin Mission had an interesting component. It was started in Berlin in 1800 by Jänicke, a preacher of the Bohemian Church. (The Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Unitas Fratrum, was also consecrated as a bishop by Jablonsky in Berlin, who came from the line of Episcopal succession of the Moravian-Bohemians.) The mission movement from Herrnhut was almost emulated when 80 missionaries were sent from Berlin till Jänicke’s death in 1827 (Du Plessis, 1911:211). Learning from the mistakes of the LMS where the selection of missionaries had been not strict enough, the new German agencies - e.g. at Berlin and Basle - prepared aspiring candidates for the mission for an ascetic and pietistic lifestyle, ready for hardship. Many of these missionaries came to South Africa. In the Western Cape Amalienstein near Ladismith was an early mission station of the Berliners. Nearby Zoar was started by the SAM.
In the Southern Cape, near to present day George, the Berlin missionary Carl Pacalt started work at Hoogekraal in 1813. In appreciation of his sterling work there, a whole village was named after him, namely Pacaltsdorp.
The endeavour of the missionaries spawned the working together of the Cape churches around the time of the slave emancipation in 1838. These missionary efforts effectively slowed down the expansion of Islam. The cordial harmonious relationship between churches seems to have operated for quite a few years. A special feature of the mission effort of the early 19th century was the apparent lack of denominational rivalry. Thus Anglican Church services were first held in the Groote Kerk.
The Presbyterian Dr James Adamson and the Lutheran Rev. George Wilhelm Stegmann engaged in combined endeavours. Soon after his ordination as a Lutheran minister, Stegmann not only felt the need to do something for the slaves, but he also started with a ministry in Plein Street. He was asked by Adamson to join him in the outreach to the ‘Coloureds’ (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34). At St Andrew’s, Adamson would preach in English in the morning and Stegmann in Dutch during the late afternoon service. A special event to highlight the actual emancipation of the slaves was organized at the Scottish Church - as St Andrew’s was generally known (hence the name Schotse Kloof was given to the where area the ministers were residing). Dreyer wrote in the Christmas edition of the Koningsbode, 1936 (p.19) that the organized mission to the slaves started on 1 December 1838 - i.e. the date of the official emancipation. At the start of St.Andrew’s Mission after the slave emancipation, Stegmann became a regular preacher at the St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Green Point. In this endeavour believers from different church backgrounds worked together.

British-Dutch Rivalry
Whatever gains were achieved as the different churches and missionaries were working together in the first decades of the 19th century, were cancelled by the imperial efforts of domination, notably by Lord Charles Somerset. The earlier part of the nineteenth century has been described as ‘the rise of British hegemony in colonial society’ (Du Toit and Giliomee, 1983:24f). The anglicising of Cape society moved fast during his rule as the British asserted their social position through education, high culture and commerce. This was especially the case in education. ‘From the Scots superintendent-general of education through to the ill-paid teacher of the schools of industry or model infant schools, the majority of teachers were British’ (Worden et al, 1998:153). At this time, unfortunately the seeds of British-Dutch rivalry were sown, which would develop into resentment and even enmity and hatred towards the end of the century. Luckily, Somerset was initially opposed by liberal minds, notably by John Fairbairn, who not only discerned that the interest of Dutch and British Capetonians had lost their original distinctions, but he began to define a common colonial identity as early as 1825: ‘Whatever we are, whether born … in England or in Africa, … we are all Africans’ (Worden et al, 1998:175). The emancipation of the slaves and other factors leading to the Great Trek were important factors in the tragic separation of the two main European civilian components. The separation was temporarily halted when the British government announced in 1848 that it would send out convicts to the Cape colony. To the inhabitants of the Mother City the attempt to turn the Cape into a penal colony was demeaning.
On 5 April 1849 colonists signed a pledge not to receive or employ any convicts. A massive public meeting followed on the Grand parade of nearly 7000 inhabitants. A ‘remarkable degree of co-operation’ (Cited in Worden, 1998:175) prevailed between English and Dutch.
The next uniting move was a new constitution in April 1953. It was hailed as a new era of open government, responsible to the community and victory over selfish opponents who had no interest in the colony. Perhaps it was somewhat exaggerated, but it was Fairbairn again who sang the praises of the city and his fellow colonists: They had undergone a spiritual revolution (Worden et al, 1998:177). All this was however only short-lived. Five years later the opposing parties stood against each other very much on language lines.

An albatross removed: the emancipation of slaves
There was some sense of relief among colonists in spite of the financial losses experienced through the emancipation of the slaves. Petrus Borcherds, the son of Ds Meent Borcherds of Stellenbosch, verbalised the ambivalence to which Whites during the apartheid era can easily relate. On the one hand, Borcherds tried to justify slavery at the Cape: ‘I think ... slavery existed (here at the Cape) in its mildest form’. But he also said about slavery that there was ‘something so repulsive in that state of bondage and so contrary to the principles of justice... that slave emancipation ...was a great blessing... a tribute of infinite value to humanity’ (Borcherds, 1861:198f).68 The church situation at the Cape was far from a bed of roses. Yet, quite a few Muslims turned to Christ in the period after 1842, a result of possibly the most fruitful church/mission co-operation and outreach at the Cape for centuries. Adamson summarised the impact of the work in his Memorial to his excellency, the Governor in regard to the Scottish church, Cape Town (p.6).: ‘... in conjunction with like undertakings on the part of others, (the work) resulted in the establishment of a steadfast and almost unexpected barrier to the prevalence of Mohammedanism among the emancipated slaves’.
At the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht, ‘Lutheranen, Gereformeerdes en andere’ (Els, 1971:128) were worshipping together while they had the common goal of reaching the spiritually lost with the Gospel. Lord Charles Somerset definitely did not intend this when he invited Scottish clergy to come to the Cape. He obviously wanted to counter the Dutch influence by bringing in the British Presbyterian clergy. In this he succeeded for by 1837, 12 of the 22 Dutch Reformed ministers at the Cape were Scots. The likes of the prayerful Andrew Murray, father of the famous namesake, effectively curtailed Somerset’s well-meant but bigoted nationalism. Due to their influence, the Cape became possibly the first bilingual society outside of Europe. Dr Andrew Murray (jr.) spear-headed the DRC (Dutch Reformed Church) missionary effort to other parts of Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century.

A heart for the lost
In the ministry of Stegmann his heart for the spiritually lost shone through, especially for the Muslims. Ds Davie Pypers, whose call to St Stephen’s in Bo-Kaap in 1956 was soon followed by a burden for the Cape Muslims, describes Stegmann as fiery in spirit, powerful in the word and a hero in prayer (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34). Pypers furthermore typified Stegmann as a man ‘met sy gebedsworsteling en herlewingsgees’69 (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.36). This is illustrated by words from Stegmann’s diary, cited in the same article: ‘Oh, how heavy does the case of the poor deluded Mohammedans hang on my mind... Oh Lord, how long, how long shall they continue in darkness ... open the door, send out Thy servants.’
Apparently Stegmann had some notion of spiritual warfare. It is reported that the conversion of souls was the primary goal of his ministry, and that he was a ‘warrior of God and an attacker of the strongholds of Satan.’ The Lord used Stegmann’s powerful preaching to convict the congregation on 5 November 1843 in such a way that a church member, evidently overpowered by the Holy Spirit, exclaimed aloud towards the end of the sermon “Lord, have mercy!” and fainted. A hush fell over the church and thereafter the whole congregation burst out in tears in a typical revival scenario (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.36). Stegmann was self-critical enough when the near revival appeared to have been stifled a few months further on. He took the blame upon himself when he conceded in August 1844 with regard to the spiritual warfare: ‘What a havoc Satan has been making in poor St Stephen’s lately, so that with my own inward corruption and the perverse walk of many... I am ready to sink down.’ (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.36). It seems that Stegmann did not descern the need of confession on behalf of the churches for the deception that led to the beginnings of Islam or for the treatment meted out to slaves in the decades immediately prior to and coinciding with the start of his ministry. However, also in the 21st century it remains a battle to let churches discern the need of collective confession.
Various churches started with mission work of their own aimed at the slaves in general. Significant was the work of the Anglicans in the second half of the nineteenth century in Bo-Kaap, Onderkaap (the later District Six) and Papendorp (later Woodstock). The opening service of St Mark’s already took place on 4 October 1865. A mere twenty years later, St. Philip’s was started as a result of the pioneering work of the Cowley brothers. Furthermore, the Cape Muslims were not lovingly targeted as such. No wonder that they were still not liberated from religious bondage in the 21st century.

Language and race issue divide
It is sad that the language and race issue ultimately caused a division at St Andrew’s a missionary association was begun in 1848 with two separate congregations, the one white and the other ‘mixed. Ostensibly, the reason given for this in the first report of 13 October 1848 was practical, because ‘the converts from the Heathen’ were not ‘sufficiently acquainted with English to derive edification from religious services in that language’ (Cited in Cuthbertson, 1984:56). Soon it became clear that the differences were much deeper. A dispute arose between the Dutch speakers and the English part of the church. The former congregation consisted mainly of people of colour. Tensions grew which had ‘distinct racialistic undertones’ when the Dutch-speaking members felt that they were not enjoying the same benefits as the White English-speaking congregation. The teaching was evidently lacking that they expected more to get something from the church in stead of what they could put it. Rev George Morgan was clear in his preaching, but that may even have been part of the problem: ‘wherever a Christian church is planted …it is the duty… to extrend the blessings to all classes of men without distinction’ (Cited in Cuthbertson, 1984:60). Because of the depression of the 1860s and 1870s many English-speaking members left Cape Town. Eventually, on 31 October 1878, the Mission which was started in 1838, closed down. Yet, missionary work as such did not stop at the church. A new venture, St Andrew’s Sabbath Morning Fellowship , was started in 1876. The hired a hall in Bloem Street where Blacks were reached. In due course this flowed into the Presbyterian outreach which started in 1893 in Ndabeni.

Increase of Wage Labour
Ordinance 50 of 1828 encouraged the shift towards contracted Wage Labour in the Mother City. Workers were hereafter free to enter contracts and were obliged to receive pay. A number of Khoi, former prize negroes and free Blacks enter into such contracts, mainly as herdsmen, house servants, wagon makers, butchers and gardeners. Freed slaves added to their number after 1838.
A further addition to the Mother City’s work force in the late 1830s was the presence of Mfengus. A small community of 20 to 40 settled in ‘six or eight huts… near the foot of Table Mountain’ in 1839 (Cited in Worden et al, 1998:110). Between 1817 and 1823 parties of British workers came to the Cape as indentured workers, some of whom were initially intended for the Eastern Cape.

The Covenant of Blood River
Even though the Covenant of Blood River took place in far away Natal, it had an impact on the rest of Southern Africa. Few historians discerned the spiritual roots at work, namely that it was also a protest against the liberalism which had moved into the ranks of the church. Ds. G.W.A. van der Lingen of Paarl was one of very few indeed who withstood that tide. It is no surprise that he became God’s instrument for introducing the blessed Pinksterbidure, the tradition of prayer services between Ascencion Day and Pentecost that became such a blessing to the NGK over one and a half centuries.
The Voortrekkers were devout Christians who firmly believed that God Almighty had a calling for them in Africa. Andries Pretorius, one of their leaders wrote just before his departure from Graaff Reinet to Ds G.W.A. van der Lingen: ‘Thus we shall become a people working for the honour of his name.’ Even though one has to concede that they were deluded en masse by a distorted exposition of Scripture, which made them believe that the British wanted to impose on them a ‘Skrifvreemde vermengingsbeleid met die heidene’ (a policy alien to Scripture of mixing with heathens), it is clear that they lived by the Word of God, applying Yahweh’s promises to Israel for their own situation.
The Trekkers saw the arrival of Andries Pretorius on 22 November 1838 as an answer to their prayers for a suitable leader. The devout and spiritually mature Pretorius was almost immediately elected as their military commander. (That he chose the mix-bred J.G. Bantjes as his journal writer demonstrates that he was not as bigoted as so many of his compatriots in respect of racial mixing.) Pretorius discerned that humbling before God was necessary even before they could proceed to the serious matter of making a covenant. In a fighting speech he pleaded with the combined meeting to remove anything which could cause disunity so that they could perform their duty with the help of God. He emphasised again and again ‘Eendrag maak mag’ (unity empowers). According to Bantjes, Andries Pretorius discussed the possibility of a covenant with Sarel Cilliers, a devout elder, who was later given the task to formulate the covenant. It is significant that they promised that they would establish a temple to his honour if the Lord would give them victory over the enemy. It has been pointed out that Pretorius who was a builder by trade was happy with this formulation rather than ‘building a church’. Burger (1997:312) suggests that this is an indication of a spiritual temple and not a material one. At the church service on 9 December 1838 Sarel Cilliers used Judges 6:1-24 to draw attention to the fact that Gideon was called to save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. For a whole week until the evening of 15 December the seriousness of the covenant with God was repeated at the evening devotions.
The victory against tremendous numerical odds reminded indeed of Gideon’s diminutive army defeating the Midianites. Even more significant is the spiritual impact on Southern Africa. The Mfecane, during which an estimated 2 million Blacks were killed in inter-tribal fighting, was brought to an end at this occasion. (Years later President Paul Kruger discerned that the Afrikaners got punished because they did not always obey the covenant. Defying a threat by the British of a charge of high treason to anybody attending a mass protest meeting at Paardekraal, halfway between Pretoria and Potchefstroom, the Blood River covenant was repeated on 8 December 1880 by Kruger and other leaders.)

The start of racial exclusion
Racial discrimination became a part of life at the Cape already in the 18th century. This was however informally practiced. Thus slaves just fell in line sitting separately at the Groote kerk and the Lutheran Church. The need to exclude the undesirable was also marked in the public spaces of the town. Sir George Yonge, governor during the first British occupation, attempted to close the government gardens to the general public altogether, but when this caused an oucry, he consented to permit entry to all, provided that strollers wrote their names in a book kept at the entrance (Worden et al, 1998:145), thus inaugurating possibly the first ‘security system’ of the Mother City. The first time racial exclusion was practised, appears to have occurred at the African Theatre, also called the Komediehuis. After a fight in 1829, all slaves and free Blacks were barred from attending and three policemen were later on duty during performances ‘to keep all black boys out’ (Cited in Worden, 1998:145).

Church apartheid prepared
It is sad that church authorities at the Cape might have been the initiators of apartheid. While it was surely not quite Eric Walker’s intention to link Dr John Philip with apartheid (1964: 152), he unwittingly paved the way for it to some extent ‘as a convinced segregationalist…opposed to indiscriminate mixing of races.’ His motive was solid, rather as a precursor of Black Consciousness, opining that the Khoi would ‘never become civilized until they stood on a legal equality’. Yet, the major result of the LMS and the Methodist Missionary endeavours was the ‘Coloured’ Congregational Church, which was not multiracial (De Gruchy, 1979:13).
At the time of the emancipation the slaves were still rejected at the first churches. St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Green Point was the first to open its membership to Blacks. Coloured soon formed an integral part of the congregation (Cuthbertson, 1984:50). In Onderkaap (the later District Six) mixed congregations flourished. The Methodists had a congregation as early as 1837, which had 200 Whites and 150 ‘Coloureds’ on its roll in 1854. That this racial breakdown is specifically mentioned, suggests that the apartheid spirit could have crept in somewhere between 1837 and 1854. Of course, there had been separate seating in all the churches and there had been outright rejection of slaves before 1800. It has also been reported that a church was specially built for slaves in Wynberg so that the slave owners would not have to share the same cup at Holy Communion.
The Mission started at St Andrew’s after the emancipation of the slaves made deep inroads in Cape Society. A day school provided elementary education for ‘coloured’ children. In December 1841 they had 500 registered with a daily attendance of 350 (Cuthbertson, 1984:52). D.A. Kannemeyer, the teacher appointed by St Andrew’s to run the school, noted that ‘80 or 90 were the children of Mohammedans’ (Cuthbertson, 1984:50). Cathechism classes and teaching to ex-slaves were given, which enhanced their confidence. However, a new element crept in after 1841. The slaves were now emancipated and clearly more outspoken, but still easily influenced. Rev Morgan, who was on the receiveing end of the liberating power of the Gospel, has been quoted in a sermon at the 25th anniversary of St Andrew’s: ‘slaves by truth enlarged are doubly freed’ and ‘Slavery, in its mildest, or rather its least oppressive form, is a bitter draught, an it is injurious no less to the slveholder than to the slave’ (Cited in Cuthbertson, 1984:59). Things came to a head when a dispute arose between Stegmann/Adamson and Rev. Morgan, a new minister they had helped to call.
It seems that Adamson and Stegmann were different from contemporary clergymen. They were completely accepted by people of colour. The Centenary Record of St Andrews mentions ‘the unsatisfactory arrangement’ as a reason for the discontent after Rev. George Morgan, the successor of Dr Adamson, joined the mission to the slaves (Rodger, 1929:28). Haasbroek (1955:82) mentions the concrete reason of the discontent: the slaves were not happy with Rev. Morgan. This was exploited by Stegmann. The split that occurred at St Andrew’s in 1842 was clearly the result of personal rivalry between Stegmann/Adamson and Rev. Morgan. At a time when the missionary work flourished, there occurred division in the St Andrew’s Church.

Carnality hits Church Unity for a six
It all started when Adamson was overseas. In his absence Stegmann was acting minister for both the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. Rev. George Morgan was appointed as the successor of Dr Adamson in 1841. He was proficient in the Dutch language and consequently took a more active part in the teaching and preaching activities at St Andrew’s mission. Morgan, as the new minister wanted to preach every alternate Sunday at the much better attended evening services (Cuthbertson, 1984:52), but Stegmann was not willing to share the pulpit with him. The German appears to have been unreasonable, insisting to officiate at all the services of St Andrews as he had done during the absence of Dr Adamson. Morgan promptly refused Stegmann ‘toegang tot die kansel’ (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34), permission to preach. After Adamson’s return from overseas, he sided with Stegmann. Hereafter he was ‘as’t ware verplig’, more or less forced to leave the church.
By this time meetings and school classes for slave children were held in the old theater, the Komediehuis in Bree Street. On 20 April 1842 a ‘vergadering van ontevredenheid’ (a meeting of dissatisfaction) took place at this venue. Stegmann implored the big audience to return to the Scottish Church but only one person did, the rest refused (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34). The damage of disunity was already done. The building, which was envisaged as a separate church for freed slaves called forth the anger of the colonists. Being their former theatre, where now slave children were being taught, the colonists were terribly enraged. Possibly one of the first protest marches at the Cape ensued. Hereafter the church was pelted with stones - hence the name St Stephen’s, named after the saint who was maryred by stoning.
Yet, the services at St Stephen’s were not exclusively attended by slaves. Ds Frans Cachet, Jewish-background minister who came to faith in Christ in Holland, had a short stint at St Stephen’s after Stegmann had left the post vacant. About this time it was mentioned that the main service was in the evening, attended by ‘blankes en kleurlinge’ (Haasbroek, 1955:84).70 In the wake of this tussle church apartheid was born at the Scottish church when Ds Stegmann took almost all the ex-slaves along with him. Nearly all the Lutheran teachers of St Andrew’s Mission joined Stegmann to start a congregation at St Stephen’s. Stegmann apparently also played a schismatic role when he started an institution for German speakers in Long Street. The sanctuary became the St. Martini Lutheran Church. Stegmann and Adamson hereafter established a number of mission endeavours in and around Cape Town, which came together to form a loose union called the ‘Apostolic Union.’
Even though a separate school for colonist children was already started in 1663, there were still slave and Khoi descendents on all the schools at the Cape until 1876. Without giving any motivation, Coetzee (??) states about the movement to separate on racial grounds that it was ‘…veral die kerklike owerheid wat die wenslikheid en noodsaaklikheid van so’n stap ingesien het’.71

Internal Bickering of Religious Leaders
The precedent of the bitter in-fighting between Ds. Le Boucq and Kalden at the turn of the 18th century, which led to Kalden being recalled to Holland, had many repeats at the Cape. At the Groote Kerk major differences developed between old church council members and the incumbents in the 1830s. A bitter controversy arose between members of the Groote Kerk, after Herman Schutte, the well-known builder, discovered major deficiencies of the roof. One group in the church advocated the complete demolition of the building and others opposed the move. Both camps had strong personalities, Ds. Johannes Spijker and Abraham Faure respectively. It was not helpful for good relationships when Ds. J. Beck of the Z.A. Gesticht allowed Ds. Faure to come and preach at his fellowship there regularly on his ‘free’ Sunday with a full retinue of disgruntled Groote Kerk church members.
The praiseworthy step of the gifted mathematician and theologian Dr James Adamson to operate as lecturer at the South African College (the precursor of the University of Cape Town) in 1836 ‘in order that its total collapse and disappearance might be prevented’ (Rodger, 1929:24), however unfortunately introduced a period of racist turmoil at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church after Dr Morgan the new minister joined at the end of 1841.Morgan could not appreciate Adamson’s networking with the Lutheran Rev. Stegmann.
The Anglican Church had their own version of bickering at this time. In England the Oxford Movement called for an examination of the Catholic roots of the church. When George Hough, a civil chaplain, who had started to minister at the Cape in 1813, preached a sermon on fasting in Lent, some members found that too Roman Catholic. Hough’s High Church teaching on baptism caused a rift between himself and his subordinate, Lamb. Hough believed and taught ‘baptismal regeneration’, that one is born again at baptism as an infant. A nasty quarrel ensued. Hough left the Cape in 1847, but not before a number of laity resigned from St. Georges because of the teaching of baptismal regeneration which they regarded as a Catholic relic. They started the Holy Trinity church in Harrington Street in 1846.
Robert Gray became the dynamic first bishop of St. George Cathedral, arriving in 1848. He was however too radical for many church members when he called a synod of clergy and laity in his diocese Cape Town in 1856. A number of laity disagreed with the holding of the synod. Six congregations of the evangelical tradition refused to be represented, including the Holy Trinity church of Harrington Street. When Bishop Colenso of Natal, who differed with Gray liturgically and theologically, was deposed, this finally led to a new denomination, the Church of England in South Africa (CESA) as opposed to the Church of the Province of South Africa (CPSA). Th initial split was caused by Gray’s inflexibility in accepting that congregations might feel more comfortable in worshipping God in an evangelical way.
Colenso was somewhat ahead of his time with his 1862 book which examined the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua critically. Any biblical criticism was regarded as heretical and his critical views were considered dangerous. Yet, as Peter Hinchliff reminds us, Colenso ‘advocated revolutionary and unpoüpular missionary policies’, asserting very firmly ‘that the Christian gospel possessed definite social implications.’ (Cited by De Gruchy, 1979:17.) Contrary to Robert Gray, he was convinced that African religious traditions and customs were not to be rejected out of hand. Rather he hoped to ‘leaven African culture and its social system with the gospel. What was needed was the transformation of African society, not thedetribalisation of individuals by turning them into black Europeans’ (De Gruchy, 1979:17). Bishop Colenso, who had a genuine heart for missions, unfortunately thus got entangled in bitter theological disputes, which led to a schism in the Church of England in this country. The separation, combined with a shortage of funds, brought organised missionary effort to the Indian immigrants by this denomination to a halt.

Other religious disputes
It is sad that religious disputes ‘formed almost the bread and butter of Cape Town lawyers’ (Worden et al, 1998:184) from the 1850s. The DRC had internal quarrels, which came to the fore at the 1862 synod where Andrew Murray was elected moderator for the first time. After the liberal dominees Thomas Burgers and D.P. Faure had tried to infiltrate the synod with unblical concepts and an appeal to the Supreme Court, Murray did a grand job in holding the synod together. Faure disagreed so totally with the doctrine that man is at all times inclined to evil, that he was prepared to risk expulsion. It was however far from charitable how colleagues like Naudé and Hendrik C. V. Leibbrandt were looked upon as criminals because they supported their colleague. All of this led to the great schism the following year which finally resulted in the formation of the Free Protestant church in 1868. Leibbrandt also had to leave the church. That he became the keeper of the Archives benefited the country. His meticulous research and publication of documents rectified many a myth.
Apart from ‘liberalism’ as a source of tension, there was also the use of English. What could however have been a spectacular move of church unity between the Anglicans and the DRC in 1870, faltered because of the too liberal view held by some ministers. Especially the Episcopal succession turned out to be a major stumbling block. The Reformed tradition could not allow for the recognition of bishops.
Also the Muslims had their fair share of internal bickering, especially the differences around the appointment of imams. In fact, these conflicts were so severe that ‘the only solution was a split in the congregation and the establishment of a new mosque. The result was a proliferation of mosques’. Furthermore ‘oral tradition attests to several prayer rooms in the homes of Imams not officiating at a mosque’ (Davids, 1995:55).
In respect of internal religious bickering, the Jews proved to be no exception. The first major issue was the supply of Kosher meat, for which the Synagogue made itself responsible. But since the meat was prepared exclusively for the members, it became a problem when new Jews settled in the city who refrained from joining the Congregation. Many of those from Eastern Europe regarded the Synogogue and Rabbi Ornstien, who was at the Cape from 1882-95, as ‘heteredox in the extreme by their standards of piety’ (Herrman, 1941:57).
Then there was also the petty mutual prejudice between Russian and English Jews, disapproving for example of one another’s pronunciation of Hebrew. The East Europeans furthermore regarded Yiddish almost to be a holy language, whilst the West Europeans despised it as a ‘debased jargon’, a Southern German dialect written with Hebrew characters.
On this premise the issue of burials to be performed only by accredited persons was very real fore those late 19th century Cape Jews who had difficulties with Ornstien. Similarly, a major dispute erupted in Oudthoorn when the Jews there chose a man to operate as marriage Officer who did not have the approval of Ornstien.

A dent in Andrew Murray’s legacy
At the 1829 Cape Dutch Reformed Church synod it had not only been decided that all church members would be admitted to communion ‘without considering colour or background’, but also that race was not even to be a subject for deliberation at a synod. Instead, it had to be seen as ‘a hard and fast rule, based on God’s Word’ that no person should be barred on racial grounds.
Three decades later Murray and three other young dominees, namely P.K. Albertyn (Caledon), J.H. Neethling (Prins Albert) and N.J. Hofmeyr, wanted the church to move forward in reaching the lost. It seemed however that Andrew Murray, the great man of God, did not sufficiently discern the danger of racial prejudice. That the nationals of colour could also be used as missionaries was apparently not remotely present in the thinking of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa at that time. At the Church synod of 1857 they were given the challenging task as a commission to examine the matter and report back to the synod. With no money and personnel available for missions, it appears that some synod members might have tried to silence Andrew Murray and the three young colleagues because of these restraints.
The report of the threesome however ‘took the breath away of some of the older members’ (Du Plessis, 1911: 284). Ds Gottlieb van der Lingen from Paarl suggested with a ‘curious smile upon his face’ that they should do to it themselves. The threesome was thoroughly vindicated when because of the revival of Worcester and surroundings, no less than 50 young men volunteered for ministry.
However, the very same 1857 synod tragically agreed to accept racial separation because of the ‘weakness of some’ - as a motion put forward by no less than Andrew Murray himself. This implied a complete about-turn of the 1829 decision not to divide the church along racial lines. The participants had no idea to what a disaster their decision would lead in the long run, even though separation was to be voluntary. An incorrect message was conveyed, and it seems as if there was not a single person of colour among the 145 missionaries that left the Mission Institute in Wellington over the years. The decision paved the way for the ‘Coloured’ sector of the denomination, the Sendingkerk, to be sent on its separate way in 1881. An anomaly was that the (Coloured) St Stephen’s Church of Bo-Kaap was accepted as a member church at this same synod.

The run-up to a revival
The 1860 revival of Worcester that started in the church where the well-known Dr Andrew Murray was the minister has been described as a result of teamwork (Brandt, 1998:58). It has been reported that his father, Ds Andrew Murray (sr), had prayed for revival every Friday evening since 1822. By 1860 he would thus have prayed for 38 years. The gifted young dominee Andrew Murray, who had just come to Worcester prior to this, would be impacted during the revival along with thousands in the Western Cape. The younger Andrew Murray appears to have at least matched his father as a prayerful minister of the Word. About his life the secular Dictionary of South African Biography, Volume 1 (p.578) wrote: ‘The golden ray of prayer illumined all he did...He believed that nothing that was amiss and demanded correction could not be corrected or endured by prayer.’ This is confirmed when one takes a closer look at the titles of his 250 books. There one finds titles like De Kracht des Gebeds (1860), Pray without ceasing (1898) and The prayer life (1912). A letter was sent out to call for prayer.
A significant contribution to the revival came from Montagu where three believers came together for early morning prayer on Sundays from the beginning of January 1860. Then there was the missionary conference in Worcester in April 1860 that can be regarded as the run-up to the revival. Three hundred and seventy preachers and laymen attended. The Presbyterian Dr James Adamson set the tone with a report at the conference of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in America, and the conditions for revival. Ds Andrew Murray (sr.) was so overawed by the same topic that he burst into tears. And then there was a passionate prayer by his son and namesake that stirred the hearts of many, so much so that someone has suggested that this caused the beginning of the revival.
Montagu was the first place to experience revival under Rev James Cameron, a Methodist minister. People came from Worcester, Wellington and Praal to observe and experience it. (Ds G.W. van der Lingen from Paarl was initially a little apprenhensive). In May 1860 the revival started there with three prayer meetings per day. There was also great conviction of sin and confession.

Turn of the tide in favour of Biblical Christianity
South Africans were among the world leaders in church cooperation when the Evangelical Alliance was formally started in 1857 in Cape Town. In fact, at this occasion the founders declared that an Evangelical Alliance existed in the Mother City in all but name already in 1842. The South African Evangelical Alliance thus functioned long before it kicked off formally in England and six years before it started in Germany. They referred to the move when pastors of different churches had a weekly prayer meeting a few years after the slave emancipation. The South African branch of the Evangelical Alliance was the first outside Europe. This was the start of the worldwide movement, which again brought the major correction in Lausanne in 1974, after Marxists had successfully infiltrated the World Council of Churches.
Cape Evangelicals got together in Cape Town in 1842 to work out a strategy to reach the lost of Southern Africa. Gerdener records how - within five years after the centenary of the start of Georg Schmidt’s endeavour - ‘concerted action had arrived.’ At that stage there were only 9 mission societies in South Africa, the bulk of which had to be contributed to the endeavours of Dr John Philip. (In 1937 – another century on – South Africa had become the best occupied mission field in the world with 1,934 Protestant missionaries and 658 Roman Catholic priests, according to the World Mission Atlas of those years.)
Ds Dirk Postma broke away from the Dutch Reformed Church to form the Gereformeerde Kerk in 1859 – i.e dropping the Dutch link in the name that they regarded as an albatross on their neck, keeping them in bondage to the liberalism of the Mother country. The Gereformeerde Kerk gave massive support to the first Afrikaans language movement through Ds S.J. du Toit and of course Ds Jan Lion Cachet, who started as a teacher in Cape Town. Cachet became one of the pioneering lecturers of the Dopper training institution in Burghersdorp and moved with the institution to Potchefstroom in 1904. His brother started many congregations in the Transvaal in opposition to theological liberalism that was existing there. The churches started by Frams formed part of the Dopper Church,of which Ds D. Postma was the founder. Thereafterore he returned to the Cape where he became the Dutch Reformed minister at Villiersdorp.
The start of the Alliance in Cape Town led indirectly to the opening of the Stellenbosch DRC Kweekschool in 1859. At this occasion Professor N. Hofmeyer complained that no effort was made to bring all Christians of the country together. A committee organized a conference fairly quickly. Some 400 delegates from the Dutch Reformed, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian and Presbyterian churches converged on Worcester in 1860 for the epoch-making conference. Worldwide it was one of the first of its kind.
An interesting view expressed at the conference in Worcester was: ‘the home of every Christian should be a mission station’. The success of Worcester led to a similar one in Cape Town in Januar 1961. A special innovation – worldwide perhaps a first – was that the conference was conducted in two languages on alternate days, Dutch and English. Hereafter such conferences with delegates of 5 denominations plus mission societies were held at different centres. The first missionary conference took place in Genadendal in 1865 where 20 participants of the Rhenish, Berlin, London, Dutch Reformed and Moravian groups gathered. In 1872 Andrew Murray suggested regular missionary conferences with all churches and missionary societies. Missionary conferences took place in alternate years at different centres of the Western Cape until the South African War.

Dynamic Teaching and its results
The aged Lena had been one of the pupils of the new missionaries who arrived in Baviaanskloof in 1792. She became the driving force of a culture of learning in a sea of ignorance, a time when many a colonist was still illiterate. The teaching at Genadendal was dynamic. Already in 1832, i.e. six years before the start of the teachers’ training school, the Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette reported ‘the best country library, perhaps, that may be in the colony’ (Cited in Balie, 1988:54), with a section apiece with German, English and Dutch books. The library not only had a reading room, but also loan facilities. As a result of the dynamic teaching in Genadendal almost the whole population was literate and ‘leesgierig’ (eagre to read). In 1838 the missionaries recorded about the book loans: ‘Our lending library is in a brisk circulation… for as soon as one is brought in, it is immediately issued to fresh applicants’ (Balie, 1988:54). The thorough pioneering of Georg Schmidt was still bearing fruit after a century.
A direct result of the library and the desire for learning was that the inhabitants picked up that they had civil rights. In The Cape Standard it was argued that the missionaries exploited the inhabitants. In August 1850 one of the inhabitants, Titus Vergele, wrote from the Mother City in a beautiful handwriting72 that he had done some research in the City Library. Vergele came to the conclusion that the mission station belonged to the Khoikhoi. He requested his friend Johannes Jass to call the inhabitants together so that they could stand up for their rights. On 19 September of that year a four man delegation from Genadendal went to Cape Town with a memorandum to the Department of the Interior, complaining that the Mission is not prepared to protect them against the neighbouring farmers who wanted to take their property once again. The same year the missionaries wrote to Sir Harry Smith, the governor, requesting that the authorities should inquire into legislation to protect the inhabitants. This was probably one of the first instances in the country where the indigenous population started their own protest in the form of a memorandum. This resulted in a commission of inquiry in 1851. A proposal was made that the mission station should be given only in trust to the Superintendent of the Moravian church. This happened indeed on 15 February, 1858.

The demise of the Moravians prevented
Prince Victor, the German ruler who did so much for the indigenous people through his generous gifts to the training school and who offered to finance the extension of the institution to double the intake, died. With that the opportunity to develop a large non-denominational training centre at Genadendal, had passed. Bishop Robert Gray made his own arrangements, establishing Zonnebloem College at Cape Town for the sons of Black chiefs.
Two very talented brethren operated at Genadendal at that time. Both of them came from the educational field. Carl Kölbing, had been teaching at the Moravian Secondary School in Niesky (Germany) before he started in Genadendal. He succeeded Teutsch as the superintendent, the head of the Mission. Disturbances and rebellion at the mission stations could have developed into ugly situations. Kölbing took a broad view, not regarding this as ‘retrogression of the spiritual life’ (Krüger, 1969:266). He discerned that many people, who had formerly obeyed the European missionaries without contradiction, were now more outspoken. Kölbing realized that the political changes had released forces which possessed not only negative, but also positive potential. Kölbing probably underestimated the negative forces, which were not counterbalanced by spiritual vigour and prayers from around the Moravian world as his predecessors still enjoyed. In Herrnhut the 24-hour prayer chain was petering out.
The second dynamic personality at Genadendal was Benno Marx, who became the principal of the training school and the organist in 1855. Indigenous teachers operated in all Moravian schools by 1859, with the exception of the girls’ departments at Genadendal and Mamre. Subsidies were gradually granted for the existing schools. Both he and his assistant Andreas G. Hettasch studied at the institutions of Lancaster in England – the world leaders in education at the time - before coming to South Africa (Krüger, 1969:269).
Benno Marx brought with him the age old Bohemian-Moravian tradition which combined music and printing, to add a few more firsts to Genadendal.73 Apart from the first training school in the country, of which he was an integral part, Marx discovered an old unused printing press. With further upgrading, the Genadendal Printing Press became the first in the country where music was printed. The link to the training school saw also a Teachers’ periodical printed, a tradition which was to be resumed many years later when ‘The Educational Journal of the radical Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) was likewise printed in Genadendal.
Music played a big role at the training school. Teachers taught at Genadendal left the institution also as organists and choir masters. They not only enabled the Moravian Church to be among the leaders of church music in the country in due course, but they blessed many other churches and missions. Even the White Dutch Reformed Church was blessed when in 1887 Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Jannasch from Moravian stock became the organist in Stellenbosch. Jannasch was born at Mamre from a German-Danish missionary couple. He went to study in Stockholm under the great Norwegian composer, Eduard Grieg (Rosenthal, Encyclopaedia for Southern Africa, 1961). Thereafter he became organist and music teacher at Gnadenfrei. Professor N.J. Hofmeyr brought him to Stellenbosch where Jannasch taught music at the Rhenish school and at Bloemhof Seminary. He was also the co-founder of the conservatorium through which he brought a new dimension not only to organ music in the congregation at Stellenbosch, but from where he also exerted a ‘decisive and lasting influence on church singing’ in the DRC country-wide (Stellenbosch, 1969:263a).

A slave inherits a farm
The Moravians became involved in another remarkable piece of Cape history when six ex-slaves inherited a farm. Pastor G.W. Stegmann of the Lutheran church told Christian Ludwig Teutsch, a Moravian missionary from Genadendal, about a settlement near Piquetberg where a considerable number of ex-slaves dwelled together, who also longed to get a missionary. Hendrik Schalk Burger, who bought Goedverwacht as a cattle farm in 1809 or 1810, had also bought a slave woman, Maniesa with her two children. Burger did not permit his slaves to go to school, but a slave of a neighbouring farm read the New Testament behind Burger’s back when they did their washing in the Berg River. Another slave even held prayer meetings on the farm until Burger detected it and gave him a thorough hiding.
After his wife’s death, Burger lived amongst the slaves. After the liberation of slaves in 1838, he very surprisingly bequeathed Goedverwacht to the children and the son-in-law of Maniesa, on condition that they would not desert him as long as he lived.
Teutsch was sent from Genadendal to investigate the possibility of starting a mission station there. He preached in one of the dwellings of the former slaves, but found Goedverwacht unsuitable. Teutsch found the property rights too complicated. He promised the former slaves however, that the missionaries of Groenekloof would visit them from time to time. The name of the latter station was changed to Mamre in 1849. When Teutsch got back to Genadendal, it happened that one of the students of the training school, Jozef Hardenberg, became available for appointment. The inhabitants of Goedverwacht bade the teacher a hearty welcome. That became the beginnings of the Moravian mission station there, the first to start without direct involvement of a German missionary.

Progress at Genadendal
The spiritual renewal at Genadendal, and to a lesser extent at the other Moravian mission stations Elim and Groenekloof (Mamre), continued for a few years. The establishment of the training school at Genadendal produced good results with missionaries and indigenous workers working side by side in harmony and love. The only discernable disharmony at this time seems to have been the reluctance of the missionaries to surrender full control of the schools on the main mission stations. The reason was not so much that the Germans wanted to lord over the Khoikhoi, but because they were so fond of teaching.
Pfeiffer, one of their indigenous prodigies, assisted by the students, not only managed the infant school of Genadendal, but he also attended to the organ and the choir. Alexander Haas served as a teacher at Elim from 1842, David Lackey at Groenekloof from 1844. Thus indigenous folk were given responsibility already at quite an early stage. And yet, this was a century after Magdalena and the other converts of Georg Schmidt had been handling the congregation in Baviaanskloof after his enforced departure in 1744.
The German aristocrat Prince Victor kept a keen interest in the training school, which he had assisted to establish. He wanted the institution to serve the other mission societies as well, granting three bursaries to the Berlin Mission for a start. He also urged the Moravians to prepare the students for ordination, but the missionaries considered the training of indigenous helpers as still on trial. They wanted to advance cautiously. In the mornings the students were taught English, Dutch, Geography, History, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Drawing and in the afternoons, they learned various trades in the village.
On the out-stations like Houtkloof and Kopjeskasteel the two teachers Carl Jonas – who was the first to be ordained as a minister – and Jozua Pleizier were not constantly under the eyes of the missionaries. The local people provided for their living.

Indifference sets in
The former slaves who moved to the mission stations were keen to learn and hear the Gospel, but indifference and indolence started to set in among those who had grown up in Genadendal from childhood. The situation on the mission stations deteriorated when philantropists started criticizing the missionaries, denouncing them for treating their wards too harshly. A few bad elements among the hundreds of newcomers conspired with some of the young people of the settlement against the local authorities.
In Germany the prayer chain was stopped after running for about 120 years. Seeing from the angle of spiritual dynamics, it is not surprising that the Moravian mission stations around the world suffered from an ever decreasing vibrance, even though there was still an abundance of vitality in their traditions. The Cape stations were no exception. The content of the publications which were hereafter printed from Genadendal, clearly depicted this change. In the second half of the 19th century the Daily Texts and the annual celebrations of the revival in Herrnhut in August 1727 were wry reminders of the glorious past. For the rest, little more than traditionalism was passed on. Only a remnant remained true to the Herrnhut revival spirit.

Anglican Missionary work impacting Cape Islam
The first Anglican Bishop in South Africa, Robert Gray, came to the Cape in 1848. Within a matter of weeks he rented Protea Estate, which once had been Bosheuvel, when Jan van Riebeeck lived there. Almost immediately Bishop Gray implemented his vision to reach out to the indigenous people and to the Muslims with the Gospel. A major evangelistic coup on Bishop Gray’s part with regard to the Muslims was to bring in Rev. Michael Angelo Camilleri, who arrived on 9 December 1848. He was the first missionary sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) who was scheduled to operate specifically among the Cape Muslims. Unfortunately he was working at the Cape only for a short period. Furthermore, other responsibilities made it difficult for him to concentrate on the actual loving outreach to the descendents of the slaves. Quite a few years elapsed before a successor to Camilleri on behalf of the denomination became responsible for such outreach among the Cape Muslims.
Through ministry of Christian compassion during the smallpox epidemics, many a Muslim heart was opened up for the Gospel. The charitable concern of Dean Thomas Fothergill Lightfoot of the St Paul’s Church during the smallpox epidemic of 1858 was e.g. making a deep impact, preparing many a Bo-Kaap Muslim for the Gospel. Lightfoot referred to an increase of ‘catechumens’ (candidates for confirmation) after the epidemic.

Fluctuation of attitudes towards Cape Muslims
That Islam survived in Cape Town is nevertheless quite surprising. Colonists had great prejudice towards Cape Muslims, who were generally referred to as Malays because of the Malayu language which was the lingua franca of the slaves. Thus Samuel Hudson, a slave owner, confidently believed that ‘Malay… can administer poison in such a way as to destroy the health, without occasioning death for many months or eleven years’, A certain Colonel Blake’s referred at an admiral’s party in 1837 to ‘Malay poisoning pins, hair, nail pairings vomited in a ball’ (Both quotes from Worden et al, 1998:128).
The general attitude of Christian missionaries towards the Cape Muslims as a people group was fairly positive, but this appears to only marginally influence the rank and file colonist. The positive view of Christian missionaries was for example reflected in the report of a mission Committee in 1847. This report described the Muslims as ‘an industrious, thriving people, many of them wealthy, and generally speaking, they manifest an intelligence of mind and a respectability of character decidedly superior to most of the other classes of the coloured population’ (Report of the Cape Town Auxiliary Committee (to the London) Mission Society for 1847, 1848: 7). This was in keeping with the philanthropic spirit of the period after the emancipation of the slaves.
The friendly atmosphere was bound to change when the attitude in society towards Muslims turned around significantly in the last quarter of the 19th century. The other objection to hospitalisation was the food that was not ‘hallal’ (ritually clean). Hospital regulations rejected the food that was brought from home. During the 1807, 1812, 1840 and 1858 smallpox epidemics, the Cape Muslims endured these indignities in silent protest. In 1882 they openly showed their defiance by refusing hospitalisation, quarantine, vaccination and fumigation. The view that their religion is ‘superior to the law’ (Cape Times, 1 August 1882) made middle-class Cape Town furious against them and newspapers started to scorn them. The suggestion was made that the ‘Malays’ should be accommodated in separate residential areas (Lantern, 9 September 1882). As soon as their demands were met, provision was made for the ablution ritual and nurses were drawn from their community, the Cape Muslims complied with the regulations. But dangerous seed had been sown, which was to germinate in due course (The seed re-surfaced in the establishment of a ‘location’ for Blacks in Ndabeni at the turn of the century when the Bubonic plague hit the Mother City in 1902 and still later with racist apartheid laws of the 1950s and 1960s, e.g. the Group Areas Act).
The communal life had the imam in the centre. The Muslims consulted him on all occasions. Visiting the sick was part and parcel of his religious obligation. Therefore they rallied together in anger when the ‘infidel’ authorities ordered that the imam should not visit his congregants during the time of an epidemic.

Gray and Grey at the Cape
The education and the training of the indigenous people was being advanced at that time by two influential men whose surname sounded almost the same – the governor Sir George Grey and Bishop Robert Gray. The latter visited Genadendal shortly after his arrival. Bishop Robert Gray was especially interested in the training school, considering soon, to see Anglican students trained at Genadendal. He planned to establish mission stations among the Blacks, with a missionary, a teacher, an artisan and an agriculturist for every station, combining spiritual and temporal education such as the Moravians were involved with. Very much led by the notion of British imperial hegemony, as the church of those who governed, they should eventually take the lead (Janet Hodgson in Saunders et al, 1981:4). He believed that a group of African royal chiefs would have a far greater influence in evangelising his countrymen than foreign White missionaries. Bishop Robert Gray hereafter made his own arrangements, establishing Zonnebloem College at Cape Town for the sons of Black chiefs. The combination of Gray and Grey was vey significant in this venture which led to the beginnings of Black writing at the Cape, so much so that Janet Hodgson described Zonnebloem as the cradle of Black writing in the country.
Sir George Grey had similar plans. He visited Genadendal a month after his arrival, conversed with the Moravian brethren about his plans, expressing the hope that they would also make educational contributions. The result of the advance of education under Sir George Grey was that many requests were received in 1856 and 1857 by candidates for the training school from different churches.
In many other ways the reign of Sir George Grey at the Cape was formidable. His contribution in the medical and educational fields deserves special recognition, making the most modern care available for the poor. Inspired by Florence Nightingale’s ideas on hospital design the New Somerset Hospital was opened in 1862 (Worden et al, 1998:181). In and around Cape Town he was the initiator or guiding spirit of many developments like the revision of the judiciary, a new monthly mail service between the Cape and England and his proposal of two railway lines. Very significant was also his idea to improve the harbour by building a(nother?) breakwater. Abrahams (1955:39) gives the greater due in this regard to the great Cape parliamentarian Saul Solomon: ‘It was due to his vision and determination that an early start was made on the construction of the Docks and breakwater.’
Grey’s independent thought was however his downfall. His conciliatory gesture towards the Dutch-speaking Afrikaners, by initiating a federative union with the two Boer Republics, was not appreciated in England. He was promptly recalled. The new government under Lord Palmerston acknowledged the fallacy to recall the exceptional governor, sending him back to the Cape. But also Palmerston’s government was adamant that a federation with the two Boer Republics was not on. If the advice of the far-sighted Grey had been heeded at that time, the history of the country would surely have taken a different course. When London repented via the efforts of Lord Carnarvon, it was too late.
Due to Grey’s rich experience in Australia and New Zealand, before he came to the Cape, he surely was equipped for the job to try and quell the war on the Eastern Frontier. There he however overreached himself. General South African history reports that ‘Grey’s genius shone at its brightest’ (Picard, 1974:105) after the unexpected Xhosa uprising in 1857 and the vision of Umhlakaza and his 13 year old niece to invite the tribe to kill their cattle. In more recent research it has been shown that it was not that simple at all; that Grey and his men had a sad role in the spreading of the rumour of the cattle-killing and thus in the misery when 50,000 men, women and children perished. In September 2001 the British government apologized to the Xhosas in a rare gesture of modern times, when a conference in Durban looked into reparations for colonial guilt. The terrible episode did confirm in Grey’s mind however a resolve to guide the Xhosas away from superstition and build with them a country in which all races could live in harmony under British tutelage.
The mission station started by Bishop Robert Gray at Abbotsdale near Malmesbury in 1870 was to bear fruit in a special way.

Another wayward Grey
In his book Up from Slavery (2005: 145f) R.E. van der Ross related an interesting snippet of another wayward Grey at the Cape. Rev Harry Grey was a delinquent clergyman from Cheshire in England, who was given a ‘remittance’, a sum of money to come to the Cape, with the understanding that he would not return to Britain. Harry Grey later married Martha, the daughter of Rebecca Solomons, a freed slave.
Via a dramatic turn of events the remittance man, Harry Grey, became a nobleman. Finally Martha, his widow, inherited a substantial sum of money. She never forgot her mother’s wish that something should be done for the children of the disadvantaged community from which she stemmed. Now that she had the means, she put that idea into practice, granting a large piece of land and some funds to her church the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in Wynberg, to build a school. That was to become the Battswood School, which later became the Battswood Training College for teachers.

Harbingers of Charity
The wives and daughters of evangelical reformers were the harbingers of charity in 19th century Cape society. They were allowed to play a more prominent role in public life than other women, with prejudice against ‘the weaker sex’ abounding. It is quite surprising to find that even within the family of the liberal fighter for the rights of Khoi and slaves, the missionary Dr John Philip, the same prejudice prevailed. His daughter Eliza (who later married the well-known pioneer of press freedom John Fairbairn) was forced by her father to give up her ambition to become a teacher ‘since she would fail to gain the social virtues desirable in a young woman’ (Worden et al, 1998:130). Nevertheless, many missionary wives and daughters worked as teachers or ran business of the mission, albeit generally unacknowledged and usually unpaid.
In yet another way, Jane Philip, the wife of Dr John Philip, broke ground for the liberation for women. She was paid for the bookkeeping that she did for the London Missionary Society. This work was customarily done by men.
Worldwide the Cape came up with a novum: nationalistic compassion. In 1820 the St Andrew’s Friendly Society was set up to provide relief and medical aid for the Scottish community and in 1829 the St Patrick’s Society was founded to accomplish the same thing for the Irish. In 1843 St Stephen’s members started a system by which members contributed sixpence to one shilling (sterling) a month to cover the cost of medicines in the event of sickness or the need of burial. For modern ears it may sound strange to read that the aim of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, which was initiated by Jane Philip, was ‘to alleviate the sufferings of deserving persons’. However, to the missionaries and evangelicals must be contributed ‘the strongest philanthropic impetus’ (Worden et al, 1998:121). In their view, care of the soul was closely linked to the relief of the suffering. The Good Samaritan was the paradigm of border-crossing benevolence. Built on the margins of the town on the road to Green Point, the Somerset Hospital was founded on this premise by Dr Samuel Bailey. It was intended for the outcasts of society, for merchant seamen and slaves, paupers and ‘lunatics’ (Worden et al, 1998:121). Jane Philip also founded the Bible and Tract Society, distributing religious literature to the poor, as well as being prominent in establishing mission schools in Cape Town.

Revival fires spread from the Boland
50 Days later, the churches which had sent delegates, experienced the special move of the Holy Spirit.
This happened also 50 days after the conference under Ds Andrew Murray (jr.) and Jan de Vries in Worcester.
The role of young people definitely has to be mentioned. In fact, it was in the youth meeting in the church hall where an unnamed ‘Coloured’ teenage girl dared to call for a song before her prayer, as was the custom. After the typical racially prejudiced hesitation of the time, Ds J.C. de Vries, the minister, allowed her to go ahead. During her prayer, a sound came from afar, getting increasingly louder until the building felt as if it was shaking. Everybody hereafter seemed to have prayed simultaneously, almost oblivious of the other participants. Dr Andrew Murray, who was called to come and listen to the ensuing noise, had great trouble in bringing order in the chaos. A visitor who observed his efforts from the doorway, warned him in English: ‘Be careful what you do, for it is the Spirit of God that is at work here.’
Each one seemed so burdened by his load of sin that they continued to call upon God for forgiveness and cleansing with an intolerable weight of guilt, sin and shame. Hettie Bosman, a teacher from the Karoo, was visiting Worcester. She had been praying for revival for years. During a special prayer meeting she fell unconscious and was carried to the parsonage where Andrew Murray prayed for her. She rose up with an extraordinary experience of joy. She married a pioneer missionary and took revival with her into the mission field. A hunger for revival broke out in all directions. The Stellenbosh Seminary started by John Murray and Nicholas Hofmeyr in 1859, could hardly cope with all the new students after the revival. Missions and evangelism commenced and within ten years after the revival had started in Worcester, the Dutch Reformed Church had more than 12 mission stations established in and beyond the Cape Colony.
The movement of 1860 stirred every part of the community and soon it was widespread. Even on remote farms people experienced conversions. A group from Worcester went out to tell of God’s dealings. Prayer meetings started all over the district with people of all races crying out to God not to pass them by. Revival moved to Beaufort West with a tremendous force from 6 -13 January 1861, nearly four months after it commenced in Worcester. Prayer meetings, often lasting all day, were held four times a week and meetings were held everywhere on the Lord’s day, in homes, under a tree, at farm houses. The church was too small for the crowds. God’s grace was flowing so widely that farmers in the remotest areas were touched. The fire also spread to the Free State, Transvaal, and many other towns.
It is striking that the Worcester revival spread from the conference of Christian leaders to different church backgrounds. Within months the move of God spread to Wellington, Swellendam and even to Cape Town, more than 100 kilometres away. The next year the revival also moved eastward across the Karoo and to the Northwest as far as Calvinia. Prof. Hofmeyr and Rev Van der Rijst, a missionary, kept on praying for revival for 6 years. While Professor (then Ds) Nicholas Hofmeyr was the minister there, he could initially not motivate his congregation to come to prayer meetings. At Calvinia the Holy Spirit then swept away fierce resistance. In 1860, spontaneous prayer meetings started in the congregation, growing as a movement without the help of the clergy.
Ds Gottlieb van der Lingen, the son of a LMS missionary pioneer and the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Paarl, initiated the Whitsuntide prayer meetings between Ascension Day and Pentecost in 1861. The Pinksterbidure would impact Afrikanerdom for many decades. Gottlieb van der Lingen was also God’s instrument and catalyst for De Gereformeerde Kerkbode, which later became Die Kerkbode.

Revival in the Mother City and a backlash
Like Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Church, Andrew Murray had a great love for and interest in children. The very first book he wrote was Jezus de Kindervriend (1858). At the Cape, the Dutch Reformed Church penetrated into the fisherman families of Roggebaai near to Green Point, where they opened the second church school on 15 April 1861. In spite of the well-known revival of Worcester, Dr Andrew Murray was not yet so famous when he served as the minister of the Groote Kerk in the Mother City from 1864. His booklet Abide in Christ, which was originally written in Dutch, a daily devotional for a month, was meant as a manual and guide for the many converts in Worcester, when Murray saw them becoming gradually less committed. Within four years, more than 40,000 copies were sold. However, he only published a translation of it eighteen years later, the first of his English books. Andrew Murray was toimpact the Christian world like few before or after him. The pattern of 31 or 52 chapters (intended respectively for dialy use during a month or once a week for y year) was a favourite with him, a model that was to be emulated by many to this day for devotional diaries or prayer books. Abide in Christ was said to have started a revival in China.
In February 1865 Andrew Murray started with services in Roggebaai every Thursday evening with a ‘full house.’ On the other side of the Groote Kerk, Murray started with services in a house in Van de Leur Street in District Six. Soon a parish of the mother church was started in Hanover Street, at that time called Kanaalstraat, where race and class discrimination started to play a role. The ‘Dreyerkerk’ as the church became known later, was obviously intended for poor Whites and ‘Coloureds’. Nevertheless, especially for the parishes of Roggebaai and Hanover Street, ‘the services could not be long enough in duration.’
Satan had to react, trying to split the church. An unbiblical theological liberalism infiltrated South Africa in the 1850s. This happened amongst other things when a book De Moderne Theologie appeared, written by Ds D.F. Faure, the founder of the Free Protestant Church. Andrew Murray replied in 1868 with a series of thirteen sermons.

Work among prostitutes and ‘fallen women’
Between 1845 and 1873 several state-aided schemes brought British settlers to the Cape. Women were especially valued, ‘both as domestic servants and for their reproductive capacity’ (Worden et al, 1998:178). The English Fund for Promoting Female Emigration brought a category of British females to the Cape, which created new problems. This was partly due to the administrative failure when there were no facilities available for the women while they looked for employment. The Gentoo, on which these women sailed to the Mother City in 1851, gave a label by which prostitutes were nick-named in due course – gentoo’s.
Bishop Gray distinguished himself through various ministries of compassion. Thus he brought out a party of ladies to work among prostitutes and ‘fallen women’ in 1868. “Georgie” Handlye assisted Rev. Lightfoot in Bo-Kaap, while Harriet Humphreys and Alice Pocklington went to stay at the Bishop’s cottage at Kalk Bay, to work among the local fishing community. Mary Anderson-Morshead, the youngest of the group, helped to start the first Refuge for Penitents which began with three girls. In 1870 “St George’s Home” moved to an old Dutch homestead in Keerom Street. The Refuge, a renovated outbuilding opposite the Mission House, contained beds for 20 former prostitutes, including pregnant girls. The inmates were expected to learn skills and contribute to their living expenses by working as laundresses. Destitute girls also found their way to the Home.
Among the first was a little girl who had been ‘thrown away’ by her mother. Here her motherly ways caused her to be called Mammetjie. If ever a child was hurt or wanted comforting, they found Mammetjie ready to administer comfort.
Near to Zonnebloem in District Six, services were started in the cottage of Lydia, a former slave woman. This work, started by Rev. George Glover, became the parish of St. Philip’s with the Lydia School linked to it.

Influence of Genadendal
The example of Genadendal had ramifications throughout the country. Wherever possible all new missionaries – from different societies - were taken to Genadendal to show them what the Moravians had achieved there.
The Rhenish Mission Society probably profited most. Wupperthal in the Ceder Mountains was started on the same principles with various branches of industrial work. J.G. Leipoldt laboured there with great patience and forbearance among the 200 Khoikhoi who were settled at the station. With the year 1840 a time of revival and spiritual refreshment dawned on that station. Soon there was not a single hut on the station in which there was not someone who had found inner peace through faith in Jesus. During the early part of 1842, no less than sixty adults were admitted to baptism at Wupperthal. The revival even spread to the neigbouring (white) farmers.
The increase of missionaries unfortunately also had a negative side effect. Competition and rivalry started popping up, e.g. in little Namaqualand. When the Rhenish also wanted to enter this region, the Wesleyans who had been there since 1816 with Barnabas Shaw in Lelyfontein and since then at a few other places – the LMS had been in Little Namaqualand already since 1806 – there was protest. The issue was amicablv resolved when the Rhenish missionaries abandoned their attempt to settle there as well.
The Presbyterians and others had moved further afield. Lovedale in Kaffraria, as the area around the Kei River was called, was started on behalf of the Glasgow Board. Rev. John Ross and John Bennie, a lay missionary, laid the foundations in 1824 of a mission station which was identified – in the mould of Genadendal – as a venue for a special educational effort on behalf of the natives. It got the name Lovedale in honour of Dr John Love of the Glasgow Missionary Society. Thanks to the efforts of the Free Church of Scotland, which took over in 1844, Lovedale acquired great importance.
Lovedale was to become a prime educational institution, known for prominent scholars who were teaching there and especially because of Africans, who became leaders in their countries of origin. From this institution the Fort Hare University in Alice developed. What Stellenbosch was to the Afrikaners, Genadendal/Lovedale became to people of colour. A major breakthrough happened when a Black youth, a prodigy from Lovedale, was trained in Scotland to return in 1856 as Rev. Tiyo Soga. He was the first South African of colour to be ordained as a minister, ahead of Carl Jonas, the first Moravian.

Lovedale, the Presbyterian counterpart of Genadendal
Lovedale profited from the death of the German Genadendal benefactor, Prince Victor, when Sir George Grey, the governor, supported Lovedale in stead. Their Pupils engaged in agriculture and carpentry, masonry and blacksmithing. The diversity of staff and pupils implied a broader training than in most schools. The printing press overtook the meager beginnings of Genadendal. Music was also fostered and a brass band delighted many. A Lovedale choir toured the country and new compositions, among them Nkosi, Sikelel iAfrica - which became the national anthem of more than one African country - were printed with words and notation. The ecumenical spirit was another area where Lovedale overtook the model Genadendal. In the founding of the Fort Hare University in 1916, three churches co-operated. By no means only Presbyterians, Quakers, Anglicans, Methodists and Congregationalists taught there. The founding James Stewart, who already in 1878 had the vision of university training for Blacks, wrote: ‘we are both colour blind and denominationally blind’.
In 1851 Lovedale had escaped being destroyed by fire when 1500 converts to Christianity refused to join revolutionary insurgents. Another feature of Lovedale was the academics and politicians which the institutions there gave to the country. Not only big names among Blacks like John Tengo Jabavu and Z.K. Matthews, but distinguished Whites like Sir James Rose Innes and the brothers Richard, William and Saul Solomon of Jewish stock can be counted to the alma mater. Saul Solomon and James Rose Innes were to become staunch White fighters for Black political rights. Saul Solomon was to become one of the greatest Capetonians of the nineteenth century. He came to the Mother City from St. Helena and he was one of the first students at the South African College, the parent institution of the University of Cape Town. (As were his brothers, all of whom married Christians.)
The written history of South Africa was given a major push by George Mc Call Theal, a Canadian-born teacher at Lovedale. Former students like Nelson Mandela gave Lovedale and Fort Hare the stamp of ‘instruments of peace’, which spread a message of moderation among Blacks. It may be argued that the peace-loving beginnings of the ANC delayed the liberation from apartheid shackles. It is however also valid that much bloodshed was avoided because of the moderate stand of ANC leaders and others, who were taught virtues like forgiveness at Lovedale.

Other early Missionary contributions at the Cape
The influence of the German Moravian missionaries - especially in the field of education and church music - was toimpact Cape ‘Coloured’ society throughout much of the 20th century. The Genadendal Kweekskool was stopped in 1935 when the Rhenish Mission started a similar institution in Worcester. The Moravian model was emulated by the Methodists (Wesley in Salt River), the Anglicans (Zonnebloem), the Congregationals (Dower in Uitenhage) and the DRC (Battswood). The church-based training schools supplied teachers for ‘Coloured’ schools at a time when the government was really not doing much in this regard for people other than White. German missionaries pioneered educational and social activities all over the Western, Southern and Eastern Cape. It is therefore not surprising that the secondary schools in Genadendal, Stellenbosch and Worcester were named respectively after Emil Weder, P.D. Lückhoff and Söhnge. The latter went to Worcester in 1906, especially for the training of advanced pupils. It is fitting that the teacher’s training college which was started on 13 April 1929, got its name. In Worcester a whole ‘Coloured’ residential area – Esselen Park - was named after the gifted Rhenish missionary Esselen, whom Stellenbosch initially would not release for service in Worcester. Another German, Seidenfaden, started the mission station Zuurbraak near Swellendam. The Rhenish mission left an indelible impression on Stellenbosch with 5 schools at one stage with 1225 pupils and 28 teachers in Stellenbosch and its surroundings. To meet the housing shortage the mission bought a plot of ground.

Women spearheading missionary work
A rare feature of the 19th century is that a Cape-based missionary agency actually owes its existence to a woman. Mrs Martha Osborne was forced to leave India due to illness. In England she was thoroughly impacted by the Holy Spirit after conversion during a meeting of D.L. Moody, a well-known American evangelist. Her husband became seriously ill soon after his retirement, and eventually died. A newspaper reported negatively about conditions among British soldiers in Cape Town. The presence of ‘dens of the lowest description’ there gripped her. This became Martha Osborne’s call to missions. She sailed in 1879, devoting herself to work among the Cape soldiers.
In South Africa she initiated evangelistic missionary work in Cape Town, Natal and Zululand. She founded a Sailors’ Home, a Ladies Christian Workers Union, the Railway Mission and the South African YWCA (see below). In 1890, she married George Howe who had been working alongside her with a similar vision. During the South African War the couple established no less than 27 Soldiers’ Homes. The Osborne Mission went through a number of changes and mergers.
During a visit to England Martha Osborne challenged Spencer Walton, an evangelical Church of England member, to come and join the outreach at the Cape. Walton was the first director of the Cape General Mission that later - after a merger - became known as the South Africa General Mission, finally at last becoming the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF).
May, Emma and Helena Garratt, three sisters from Ireland accepted an invitation to visit the various stations of the South Africa General Mission. May Garratt responded positively to that invitation but. Bible readings among the police led to the establishment of a Christian organization and other outreach forms. The other two sisters also got involved in other outreaches in the country. Thus the Africa Evangelistic Band (AEB) came into being through the evangelistic activity of Emma and Helena Garratt. The Pilgrims, as their workers were called, evangelized in same-sex pairs, discipling new believers as they criss-crossed the country, bringing life to many a spiritually dead church.

The Emancipation of women pre-empted74
The author of The Romance of the three Triangles is convinced that the work of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) ‘had its inception in the mind of God’ (Nowlan, 2001:3). The Ladies Christian Workers’ Union was formed in Cape Town at the suggestion of Mrs Martha Osborne. In August 1884, during a visit to the Mother City by Dr Andrew Murray for evangelistic services, this organisation was formally established under his chairmanship. At one of the Ladies’ gatherings the role of young women and the best way to help them was discussed. Mrs Osborne’s sister succeeded in gaining the interest of many Christian friends. It seemed as if the matter ended there, even though a great deal of interest was expressed.
The women continued to pray, asking God for further guidance. There was an urgency now to find a suitable venue to which they could invite young women. For weeks they prayed to this end.
At this time the affluent Bam family of Cape Town had sent their two daughters to Germany for schooling. During their stay there both girls contracted Typhoid Fever, dying of it subsequently. In this time of grief their father heard indirectly of the desire of the Ladies Christian Workers’ Union to befriend young women in Cape Town. He wrote a letter in which he expressed his desire to devote the house, which was the birthplace and home of his deceased daughters, to the work the Ladies Christian Workers’ Union had in view.
The hearts of these women were filled with praise and gratitude to God for his gift through Mr Bam. They had asked for one room. God gave them a building in Long Street with many rooms, which almost immediately became a venue for services conferences plus a substantial library via a gift of books from the YWCA in London. Bible classes on Sunday afternoons were popular and well attended. Furthermore, in the winter months, a special kitchen provided soup for the poor.
At a public meeting on the 6th May 1886 presided over by Dr Andrew Murray, it was decided to inaugurate the work of the YWCA. The building was dedicated for use by young women as a safe place and also intended as a place of rest for Christian workers and missionaries coming to town.right from its inception, a basis of faith became the framework within which membership would operate. The dependency upon God was epitomised by a week of prayer, first used in the second week of November. Later the second week in March became the week of evangelism. When special needs arose, it was quite normal that the leaders would call for Quiet Days. ‘It has always been the great desire of the members that the organisation should never lose the spirit of waiting on God to know how and for what to pray’ (Nowlan, 2001:24). Under the leadership of Miss McGill, the house became a blessing to many. At one stage she was President both of the Ladies Christian Workers’ Union and the YWCA. On 5 June 1901 the committee of the former union resolved to discontinue using the name Christian Workers’ Union. It had by then done its job to instill dignity and self-confidence in many a young woman. The emancipation of Cape women was prepared and pre-empted in this way.

Another Great Cape lady
Marie Koopmans-de Wet harvested perhaps the best epithets of all Cape women, although she was never involved in active politics or the like. The best one is possibly that of ‘the bearer of public conscience.’ No wonder that the scrupulous and racist imperialist Cecil John Rhodes described her as ‘a dangerous woman, and I fear her more than the whole Afrikaner Bond’. Using her pen to great effect, Marie Koopmans-de Wet came up not only for the rights of the underdog Afrikaners of the late 19th century and their language but also for the prosperity of all population groups. The Mother City is indebted to the ‘indefatigable fighter for the preservation of Cape Town’s historic beauty.’ It was possibly through her influence that Cecil John Rhodes bought the property of the Kirsten family which later became Kirstenbosch under Professor Pearson and his successors, one of the best botanical gardens in the world. That Devil’s Peak became state property and prohibited domain for city expansion was surely also coming from this sort of influence. Officially of course, Rhodes got the name for it.
Writing from the background, Marie Koopmans-de Wet objected quietly but effectively when the government of the day (out of genuine fear against renewed animosity by Afrikaners or was it hidden resentment?) wanted to let the remains of Paul Kruger, who had died in Clarens, Switzerland in 1904, be paraded quietly in the evening. Her letter resulted in proper honour for South Africa’s first freedom fighter and statesman with world acclaim.

A new wave of revival
During Pentecost 1904 the Methodists at Wittebergen sponsored a week of prayer. There was such a response that intercessors met at 4 a.m. and prayer meetings continued throughout the day. A month later a great revival hit the village of Villiersdorp. This was part of a worldwide move of the Holy Spirit to which the booklet of Dr Andrew Murray, The Key to the Missionary Problem, had contributed significantly.
Especially the news of the Welsh revival in 1904 caused the Dutch Reformed Church commission to issue a call for all churches to join together to pray for South Africa. Dr Andrew Murray, together with Prof. N. J. Hofmeyr and Ds Botha, organized a conference on revival for ministers at Stellenbosch Seminary in May 1905. The main topic was the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the world and in the church. Soon local awakenings were taking place all over the Cape Province, in both Afrikaans and English-speaking churches.
On the evening of 23 July 1905 about 130 young people were engaged in a Christian Endeavour service in Villiersdorp when deep conviction gripped the entire meeting. The Holy Spirit led their concern for sin, which turned into brokenness, tears and a spontaneous calling on the mercy of God. Each evening the people gathered in meetings of up to three hours. The number swelled and attendance increased from 350 to 500. Sometimes a score of people could be heard praying simultaneously. Nothing else was talked about and more than a hundred villagers were converted, including the roughest and most reckless men in the district, but the believers were transformed into fearless witnesses, testifying with great power, urging friends to respond and praying for them by name in the open meetings. One young man became a pioneer missionary in Nigeria. Three months after the revival started, the minister appealed for help from his colleages, because it was spreading. This moving of the Spirit began to influence thirty other Dutch Reformed congregations, chiefly in the Western Cape, the Boland and the Eastern Province.
Still in 1905, the news from the revival in Villiersdorp caused the Christians in the Karoo town of Prins Albert to start with prayer meetings in homes. Soon the homes were too small and they met at the schoolhouse. One Sunday evening the Holy Spirit caused a spirit of conviction to break out among people of all ages. Even the children of the parish became so concerned that they filled another hall in the village, astounding the leaders and adults with their prayers for their own salvation, their families and friends. Whole households got converted, many of them led to the Lord by their own children.
In September 1905 Rev William M. Douglas from the Methodist Church, who had ministered powerfully in the Eastern Cape and in the Karoo, was invited to Wellington for a convention. He shared the ministry with Albert Head, a well-known speaker from England. Dr Andrew Murray presided over the convention. A conviction settled over the gathering and soon scenes of revival surfaced as people sought blessing for their souls. A prayer meeting with two hundred people present continued into the early hours of the morning and led by Rev Douglas, it became the focal point of the convention.

Andrew Murray, the catalyst of missions
Andrew Murray continued to be a blessing to the nation, having founded the Bible and Prayer Union in 1883. The main object of this venture was to encourage members of his church to read the Scriptures daily and to pray regularly for specific causes. The organization published Uit de Beek, a daily devotional booklet, of which Andew Murray was the editor for 40 years. He also wrote a booklet in 1885 ‘De school de Gebeds’ that was translated into English as ‘With Christ in the school of Prayer’.
The link between prayer and missions became concrete when the Goodenow Hall was built in Wellington in 1886. Here the annual Western Cape Keswick holiness meetings were going to be held for many decades. In the same year Murray was also the catalyst for the Ministers’ Missionary Union, where pastors pledged 5 to 20 pounds sterling as an annual contribution. How fitting it was that his nephew, Andrew C. Murray, could be sent as the church’s first missionary of the new era to Nyasaland (today’s Malawi) in 1888.
In the Cape General Mission, which was started in 1889 with Dr Andrew Murray as President, there were from its outset people from different denominational backgrounds. Andrew Murray was closely involved with the South Africa General Mission until the end of his life. From the beginning the Mission agency was a dual enterprise, intending to reach both the White and Black sections of the population. In the main towns of the country they would labour among the neglected Whites. The Mission agency was blessed with spectacular growth. After only five years the original six workers had increased to sixty-eight.

Islam at the Crossroads
The number of Cape Muslims given by slaves for 1875 is more than 1,000 less than 1842, whereby it must be noted that the 1840/1 and 1858 smallpox epidemics will have taken their toll, contributing to the reduction. The Cape Muslim reaction in these epidemics had been to hide their patients. Hence, when the Imams were questioned about the prevalence of smallpox in their community, they denied it. In the 1858 epidemic there were 20 to 30 funerals per day in Cape Town, half of which were ‘Malay’ (Davids, 1984: 62). In the period after 1842 significant inroads were made into Islam by the mission work, especially by Rev. Stegmann at St Stephen’s, by Rev. Vogelgezang in Rose Street and later by the Anglicans at St Paul’s (Bo-Kaap) and St. Mary’s (Woodstock).
Islamic growth seemed to have come to a standstill at that point in time. Internal bickering by Muslims and a power struggle by Bo-Kaap imams was not helping their cause either. Between 1842 and 1876 only three mosques were built in the whole of the Western Cape and none of them could be attributed to genuine growth. The one in Strand (1850) had been long overdue. In the case of Claremont (1854), quite a few Muslims had been living between Mowbray and Wynberg without having a single mosque. In fact, considering the early beginnings (1668), the one at Constantia should have been built well before 1884 when it was finally completed.
The religion was all but knocked out in the Bo-Kaap when personality disputes rocked the mosques (The many mosques in the ‘slamse buurt’, the original ‘Malay Quarter’, is a sad legacy of this bitter in-fighting). The doctrinal differences were given a formal tinge already on 27 February, 1844 when the Nurul Islam Mosque in Buitengracht Street became a Shafee congregation.

Christians to the rescue of Islam
The rescue came from outside, in the form of reprieve from Christians in a surprising combination. European Christians unintentionally brought with them the baggage of racial and religious superiority, which did not stop at the church door. This happened literally after the arrival of Archdeacon Nathaniel James Merriman in 1849, scheduled to start his ministry as leader of a new diocese Grahamstown. He described how at St Georges Cathedral two or three Muslims ‘with their red handkerchiefs on their heads’ came out of curiosity to see the new Archdeacon, but ‘the attendant official turned them out and shut the door in their faces!!!’.
The churches were too occupied with their own internal issues to see the need of bringing the Gospel to the ‘Malays’ who were perceived to be inferior. At this time, the work of the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) suffered due to a a lack of funds. The need for a special mission to the Muslims was nevertheless definitely felt and a sub-commission was specially formed for this purpose. Speaking on behalf of this sub-commission, Rev. G.W. Stegmann insisted on a final decision in 1873. Yet, Muslims were still coming to faith in Christ. In the annual report of the SAMS of 1875 it is mentioned that 7 of the 18 new members to be confirmed were Muslims. It is ironic that Christians have saved Islam from extinction at the Cape again and again, directly and indirectly.
There was genuine compassion by Mr Petrus Emanuel de Roubaix - who was a director of the SAMS and a Cape parliamentarian. He intervened to get money from Turkey to finish the building of a mosque in far away Port Elizabeth, which was opened on 1 June 1866 (The actual building of the mosque was commenced in 1855). The P.E. mosque was special, the ‘first ascertainable reference to a mosque with a dome and a minaret’ (Bradlow and Cairns, 1978:18). De Roubaix, brought in Abu Bakr Effendi, an imam from Turkey, to try and stop the doctrinal fighting in the mosques.75 Effendi was however nowhere the final answer when he caused doctrinal disunity himself. The name of the Shafee Mosque in Chiapinni Street that was built in 1876, now reminds one of the Shafee versus Hanafee doctrinal struggle, which was caused by Effendi. His greatest contribution was probably the writing in Afrikaans of the Bayan al-Din, a religious text, written phonetically in Arabic script.
Illustrated by the person of De Roubaix, a shift possibly occurred within the SAMS, away from an outright evangelical position to a more humanist approach. Kollisch praised the philantropist De Roubaix’s ‘indefatigable zeal in the cause of civilisation and progress’ (Kollisch, 1867:44) - there is nowhere mention of any passion by De Roubaix for the spread of the Gospel.
In spite of being so controversial, Effendi injected new life in Cape Islam. Under his influence there was an increase in religious services and ‘a stronger feeling of brotherhood was engendered amongst Muslim boys… and conversion to Christianity practically stopped’ (Worden et al, 1998: 189).

Dr John M. Arnold, an underrated missionary
Bishop RobertGray died in September 1872, but the new Archbishop, William West Jones, was also positively inclined to the importance of the work. He recruited the German-born Dr John Mühleissen Arnold. Bishop West Jones wrote about him: ‘He is a fine old man, full of energy and self-denial. ... The Church is crowded every Sunday, and his simple earnest preaching is working wonders’. Dr Arnold, an exceptional but completely underrated missionary, operated in Papendorp. He would definitely have made a deep dent on Cape Islam - in tandem with Lightfoot in Bo-Kaap - if he had not died already in 1881, i.e. after being at the Cape for only 6 years. Other reports show that Arnold impacted Muslims in the short stint in Papendorp significantly. That he was in charge of Muslim work over the whole Peninsula (Langham-Carter, 1968:12) militated against an even bigger impression amongst the adherents of that religion in Woodstock.
It is strange that hardly anybody referred to the profound missiological-theological work of Arnold prior to his coming here. Why did hardly anybody point to his monumental book on Islam, the third edition of which had been printed in 1874, just a year before he came to the Cape? It is all the more notable that only very few books on Islam had been written in English before his work. He was a researcher of no mean quality, delving out less known facts about the life of Muhammad, the supreme Islamic prophet, e.g. that he had not been circumcised and not buried within 24 hours after his death.76
That Arnold was an Islamist of note is demonstrated by the fact that he could not only quote from the faked Gospel of Barnabas in Spanish - i.e. at a time when an English translation was not yet freely available. Arnold gave his knowledgeable view: ‘the interpolation of this spurious Gospel by a Muslem hand is too palpable to deserve a word of comment or argument’ (Arnold, 1874:170).
The consciences of the responsible people in the churches were evidently not sensitive to the urgent appeal for more workers by Rev. Hewitt, who wrote as editor in the Anglican church periodical: ‘We need special men... who will look for no immediate results, but be content to labour and to wait’ (Hewitt, 1887:246). Sins of omission, in not responding to the call of Evangelisation, were the order of the day. Instead of flexibility to send workers to help Arnold, a rigid legalism came in its place.

Insensitivity to Islamic culture
The Cape Muslims of the 19th century displayed fierce religious objection to vaccination, quarantine, fumigation and hospitalisation. They regarded epidemics as inflictions imposed on them by God, which could only be relieved by Him. Communal Islamic prayer meetings were organized during the epidemics of the 19th century. True to classical Islamic thinking, and shared by the predeterminist Calvinists at the Cape, life and death is in the knowledge of God over which man has no power. Muslims saw vaccination as interference in the will of God on the part of the infidel authority.
When it became known that some of their dead who had died of smallpox were buried in the coffins provided by the municipality, Muslims became afraid of the hospitals (normally they do not use coffins). The perceived interference in Islamic burial rites played a big role not only in cementing their opposition to the government of the day. It also contributed to the conversion of undecided slaves and to the consolidation of Islam because slaves were excluded from Christian burial facilities. These rites created for the Cape Muslims a sense of equality and dignity that was denied to them in the society at large. On the other hand, the high degree of dignity to the deceased as well as the sense of community involvement was also very attractive for those outside of the Islamic fold. The final ablution rite for the deceased is a compulsory ritual in Islam, irrespective of social standing and no matter how the body might be deformed and destroyed by the cause of death. To deny Muslims these ablution rites or the dignity of carrying the corpse to its last resting place, were interferences that the Muslim community could not tolerate.

Islamic expansion
If Islam was appearing to die a slow death by 1875, it was hereafter rescuscitated. The 7th Western Cape mosque, the Shafie mosque in Chiapinni Street was built in 1876. Other mosques that were built had the existing presence of Muslims as basis. In 1899 mosque no. 16 of the Western Cape was a fact,.even though this one in Vos Street was also the result of a feud, ending with the condition that no Friday jumu’a services would be held in the mosque. It cannot be denied that during the last quarter of the 19th century there was genuine Islamic expansion, a direct result of the prejudice and oppression of the ruling class. At any rate, the end of the nineteenth century was a far cry from the liberal notions with which the century had started.

5. Early Spiritual ‘Warfare’ aT the Cape

Already in Old Testament times the Israelites were warned against idol worship. This occurred as a rule on the ‘high places’. Nevertheless, the Jews and later also the Christians of the Middle East ignored these warnings, getting into all sorts of bondage because of their disobedience to the divine precepts. Often they combined the idolatry with ancestor worship. The Israelites had to refrain from idol worship including that of stones and trees, but they were disobedient again and again.
In due course, the buried saints were regarded as mediators. This grew to quite immense proportions, especially in Roman Catholicism, where the birthdays of saints are still commemorated worldwide. (The New Testament only calls living people saints and never anyone who has already died.). In Egypt the shrines of buried saints became places of prayer very soon and copied by Muslims when the Musselmen conquered North Africa. Ancestor worship at the shrines became part and parcel of Folk Islam, which has the anomaly that Jesus is rejected as mediator but the deceased in the shrines are being called upon for help in times of distress and need. In Cape Town the shrines, called Kramats, the graves of Muslim leaders, are specially frequented before pilgrims leave for Mecca.
The biblical prohibition of ancestor worship was watered down, almost nullified in this way. (In the secular government after 1994 ancestral worship became increasingly prominent, especially after it became known that Thabo Mbeki, one of the vice presidents at the time and the present State President, appeared to have fairly close links to sangoma’s (witch doctors). In the belief system of the latter, ancestral worship is quite central.)

Spiritual ‘Warfare’ in earlier centuries
The influential reformer Martin Luther believed so much in the reality of the devil that he was reported to have thrown his inkpot at Satan. His famous hymn ‘A mighty fortress is our God’ typified his belief in the realities and need of spiritual warfare. Along the lines of the teaching of the ‘Streiter-ehe’ (warrior marriage) the Count Zinzendorf saw his marriage as part of the spiritual battle where no sacrifice is too great in the light of the Cross of Calvary. C.T. Studd, the founder of World Wide Evangelisation for Christ (WEC International), was very much influenced by the concept. That became the motto of the fledgling mission agency he founded. Studd furthermore used terms like ‘prayer batteries’ and ‘chocolate soldiers’77 at the beginning of the 20th century. The earlier name of the mission agency was significantly called Worldwide Evangelization Crusade. In the late 19th century hardly anyone typified spiritual warfare more than William Booth and his Salvation Army.

Spiritual ‘warfare’ breaks out in full force
Unseen occult forces have been at work at the Cape from early days of the settlement. This happened notably through the Kramats (shrines), to which we have referred in earlier chapters.
1770 could be regarded as the year when Spiritual ‘warfare’ broke out in full force. That was the year in which the infamous decree of India was promulgated with the intention of protecting slaves who had been baptized. As we have seen, the decree was counter-productive at the Cape because of materialism, when the colonists even actively encouraged the slaves to become Muslims so that they would remain marketable. In the same year, 1770, Shaykh Nuruman, who hailed from Batavia, was banished to Robben Island. He gave talismans in Malay script to runaway slaves after his arrival on the mainland in 1779. This Islamic clergyman acquired the reputation that he not only gave advice to slaves, but that he could prophesy the future and protect them from evil. His fellow slaves immediately came to ‘recognize him as a Wali’.78 He evidently wielded supernatural occult power at a time when the church had little clue of what was going on with regard to things of the unseen world. It was furthermore narrated in oral tradition that Nuruman ‘was engulfed by a strange light which radiated from his body’ (Guide to the Kramats ..., 1996:15). Occult forces were thus now also operating at the Cape via Islamic talismans, which included Qur’anic verses sewn into garments.
In 1779, the year of Nuruman’s release from Robben Island, the Lutheran church was given permission to function parallel to the hitherto only denomination. The Lutherans started with services the following year. 1780 thus also became a landmark in the spiritual realm. That was the year in which Tuan Guru, a major Islamic role player at the Cape, was banished to Robben Island. 1786 was possibly the year of the next major clash of invisible spiritual powers. In this year two church leaders came to the Cape who were representatives of opposite spiritual forces. The evangelical giant Dr Van Lier joined the Groote Kerk team while DsMeent Borcherds, a freemason, became the main force in the opposition to mission work, arriving in Stellenbosch the same year.
In 1788 Achmat of Ternate died on Robben Island after many years of incarceration for a flimsy reason. The spiritual scale however seemed to have tipped the other way in that year with the start of a missionary prayer group of about 60 people who committed themselves in an organized way for the outreach to the ‘heathen’ and the slaves (Els, 1971:29). Dr van Lier formed this group that started at the Zendinggesticht in Long Street. The Christians, who were congregating at the Z.A. Gesticht, were prayerful people with a concern for the slaves and the downtrodden. The monthly (later weekly) prayer meeting however seems not to have discerned the looming danger, namely unseen occult powers coming via (folk) Islam and free masonry. But God honoured their prayers and concern.

Revival and Warfare
A missionary prayer circle of about 60 people got off the ground around the above-mentioned evangelical group who committed themselves in an organized way to weekly prayer (later twice a week) for the outreach to the ‘heathen’ and the slaves. The influence of the Moravians operated at these prayer meeting because Van Lier saw to it that the Idea Fidei Fratrum of kort begrip der christelijke leer in de evangelische broedergemeenten (1778) by Bishop Spangenberg - and other writings of the Moravians, including reports of their mission work around the world – were read at these prayer meetings (Krüger, 1966: 48).
Van Lier continued to lobby for missionary action, pleading for the establishment of a Dutch missionary society, for the admission of missionaries to the colony and urging the Moravians to re-enter the field. According to him, three enterprises were called for: ‘One among the Hottentots in the Colony, one among the Bantu in the East, and one among the indigenous peoples to the North’ (Du Plessis, 1911: 63f). Van Lier possibly had some indirect influence on the founding of the London and Rotterdam missionary societies in 1795 and 1797 respectively. What a joy it must have been to welcome the three Moravians to his table after returning from sick leave, but his days were numbered. Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the first missionary society in the world outside of Europe at the Cape in April 1799. Van Lier had already died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only 28.
One wonders what could have happened at the Cape if similar consistent prayers had been offered as was the case in the German congregation at Herrnhut on behalf of the Moravian settlement in Baviaanskloof to which three new missionaries returned in 1792. Supernaturally Khoisan converged on the settlement that was renamed Genadendal. Soon the mission station became quite sizeable in terms of population, second only to the Mother City. Catherine Pik’s recollections at Genadendal in 1808 illustrate how many were divinely drawn to the settlement. One of the inhabitants recalled: ‘I remember what my late father used to say, exhorting us children to take notice and follow those people who would once come from a distant country, and show us Hottentots a narrow way, by which we might escape from the fire, and the true Toiqua (= God)’.
The colonists were not enchanted by this migration to Baviaanskloof, as the same Khoi person narrated: ‘the farmers were angry, and told us that they meant to sell us as slaves. But I remembered my father’s words, and would not be prevented from moving to Baviaanskloof’ (cited in Elbourne, 1992:12). This culminated in opposition to the mission work in Genadendal from the Moedergemeente in Stellenbosch, where Ds Meent Borcherds was the pastor. The opposition of colonists included a well-documented plot to seize Baviaanskloof from the Moravian missionaries who had arrived in 1792. The main features of the plot were: to demand of the missionaries an assurance on oath, that they would immediately leave Baviaanskloof and return finally to Europe. In case they should refuse to promise this, they were to be shot. The mission station was divinely saved, amongst others by the looming conflict between the two main colonial powers of the time - the Dutch and the British.
Was it pure co-incidence that the youthful Van Lier died in 1793, the same year in which Tuan Guru, a prime role player in the establishment of Cape Islam, was released from Robben Island? Apart from the group of evangelical Christians, the Gospel outreach to slaves/Muslims figured very low on the list of the priorities of the first Cape churches. Ds Michiel Christiann Vos, the first missionary of South African origin on a foreign field, stepped into the legacy of the mission-minded Dr van Lier (There seems to be no evidence that the two met personally).

Real warfare with a clear spiritual dimension
Real warfare broke out at the Cape in 1795, which had a clear spiritual dimension. If the Battle of Muizenberg had been protracted with high casualties, the Genadendal mission station would have been given its deathblow. Almost all its males had been conscripted to fight alongside the Dutch. In fact, in the battle itself the Pandoere from Genadendal testified to the missionaries how bullets were flying around them ‘like sand’ with no one of them hurt (Genadendal Diaries, p. 140). There might have been an element of exaggeration involved, but as Bredekamp stated: ‘From their perspective, it was a great miracle to have survived the English onslaught’ (Bredekamp, 1995:51). That ‘not a single Baviaansklower died in combat’ was surely not accidental. The return of the soldiers to their families secured the survival of the struggling mission station Genadendal, which soon became the biggest town apart from the Mother City, more populous than Stellenbosch.
Some 200 believers of Baviaanskloof who had been gathered into the Church of Christ - out of more than 800 who had settled there by 1798 - were taught to call their superiors ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, as it was the custom in Herrnhut and among Moravians in other countries.79 Lady Anne Barnard, at her visit to Baviaanskloof in 1798, was deeply impressed as she observed how the minister would address his congregants with ‘his voice even and natural’ as mijne lieve vrienden (my beloved friends). This was so unlike the pompous preaching style of the Dutch Reformed dominees.
An interesting feature was the involvement of a few Stellenbosch believers, in spite of the resistance to missionary work of Meent Borcherds, their dominee. After the arrival of Christian Kühnel, Hendrik Marsveld and Daniel Schwinn, the three Moravian missionaries in 1792, the Kerkeraad petitioned the government ‘that the further extension of this sect (Moravians) might be opposed…and the (three) missionaries directed to withdraw to a district in which no Christian congregation was yet established.’ Two members of the Church Council, the elder Groenewald and the deacon Desch, took exception to the petition. They even dared to put their protest to paper, noting that Baviaanskloof is ‘sufficiently distant from the church of Stellenbosch.’ This nevertheless did not deter Borcherds and his church council cronies from objecting a few years later against the ‘sound’ of the Genadendal church bell well over 50 kilometres away on the other side of a mountain range. Yet, Borcherds’ stance changed after his study of the Moravian Bishop Spangenberg’s doctrinal exposition Idea Fidei Fratrum, even to the extent of apologizing to a visiting Moravian brother for his earlier behaviour (Krüger, 1966:79).

Further results of the work of van Lier
A major result of the ministry of van Lier was that local Christians got involved in missionary outreach. At different homes and further afield the Gospel was spread by people who were impacted by Dr Van Lier, long after he had passed away. In an annual report of mission work in 1799 we read of three houses in the city where slaves were taught in the Scriptures, as well as work in Stellenbosch, Wagenmakersvallei (i.e. the later Wellington) and Land van Waveren (i.e. the region which had the present day Tulbagh as its centre).
James Read, missionary of the LMS, wrote soon after his arrival at the Cape in a letter from ‘Wagonmakers Valley’ on 3 November 1800 about the beginnings of the work there by J.J. van Zulch, one of those led to the Lord by Van Lier. Van Zulch was a colonist who had been advised in 1796 by a doctor that the country-side would be beneficial to his health. Read narrated how the area had been spiritually dead. ‘It resembled the valley of Ezechiel, full of dead bones: both white and black, both Christians and heathens … when van Zulch arrived there (Cited in Du Plessis, 1911:420). But being a man ‘full of the Holy Ghost and faith’, Van Zulch surely did not labour in vain. In 1800 Read reported of about 300 people meeting, predominantly slaves and Khoikhoi, some of whom ‘are even well established in their faith.’
Machtelt Smith, a widow, was one of van Lier’s converts who was to have a big influence in the lives of many. She bought a plot in Tulbagh on which she had a meeting house erected for the outreach to the less privileged. On Sunday afternoons she soon had 150 – 180 gathered there. Ds. Vos would preach, while she undertook the further instruction of those who had been touched by the Gospel. Machtelt Smith did much of the pastoral work after Vos left Tulbagh. She later also assisted the LMS missionaries in Berthelsdorp.
The German Martin Melck and Dr Jan Morel were two other evangelicals at Stellenbosch with a direct link to Dr Van Lier. Melck had already been instrumental in the beginnings of the Lutheran Church in Strand in the Mother City when he started with secret services in a ‘warehouse’ in 1774.
Meuwes Janse Bakker settled in Stellenbosch after he miraculously survived a shipwreck off the coast of South America. He decided to devote his life to mission work among the ‘heathen’ at the Cape, buying a house in Dorp Street, Stellenbosch in 1798. Bakker immediately taught a few slave children there. When the SAMS started at the ZA Gesticht in the Mother City, he and the deacon J.N. Desch became the correspondents in Stellenbosch. Desch conducted, at his own cost, a school for slave children after the Church Council adopted the resolution that ‘slave children also shall be instructed in reading and in the elements of the Christian religion.’ In spite of the reluctance of Borcherds, their dominee, Bakker was supported by the Church Council, becoming the SAMS missionary in Stellenbosch in no time. Slaves attended the afternoon services in his home, which soon became too small. Bakker left for further training in mission work in Holland the next year, returning in 1801 with one big goal: that his property would be used for the extension of the Kingdom. That became the beginning of the Rhenish Mission there, where P.D. Lückhoff became a prominent missionary. In the same year the Stellenbosch Mission Society was started, only two years after the SAMS and the Tulbagh Mission Society.

The crown of van Lier’s ministry
The crown of Van Lier’s ministry was surely when South Africans went to the mission fields themselves. Ds. Vos, who went to Ceylon, cannot be regarded to Van Lier’s ‘scalps’. He had been called by God independantly as a juvenile whose ‘heart was grieved at the neglect of the immortal souls’ of the Cape slaves. Cornelis Kramer was the first Cape Christian to offer his services for missionary service. Originally he wanted to proceed to Holland to study for the ministry, but the call to accompany the missionaries who were proceeding northward seemed so clear, that he dropped his original intention, joining William Anderson where he helped starting the mission station Klaarwater, which became the focus of the missionary work amongst the Griquas.
Jan M. Kok, who had to overcome many obstacles before he could be sent to the Briquas (or Bechuanas as they were subsequently called), was the next. Kok became the first known ‘martyr’ of Southern Africa, murdered by two of his workers, apparently because of a dispute over renumeration. The SAM pioneered in compassion when Kok’s widow received a pension of twelve shillings per month from their meagre funds. Kok, whose heart had once been ‘aglow for Jesus’ in the Ceder Mountains and who had taken up mission work on his own initiative, ‘seems to have relapsed into trading.’ The trading in ivory and other commodities was togive missionaries a really bad name as the lackeys of the British imperial rulers. Because of the failure of crops– plus the lack of adequate support – the colonist Joubert resigned after a few years of faithful pioneering work in Zoar near Ladismith.
In 1794 Dominee Vos returned from Holland. There he had been touched by the Holy Spirit to return to his home country and minister to the slaves and the Khoi. Although he soon moved to Roodezand (Tulbagh), his influence was felt all over the Western Cape. In the Mother City itself, Machteld Smith, a widow that had been discipled by Van Lier, was performing a similar role to that of Magdalena Tikkuie in Genadendal. God used her - along with Ds Vos as the main role players - to advance the evangelical cause until the SAMS was formally constituted in 1799. The first missionaries of the SAMS at the Cape were significantly not ordained in the Groote Kerk or even Stellenbosch but in Roodezand (Tulbagh) where Vos was the minister. It comes therefore as no surprise to find that a second missionary was initiated on 3 October 1799 in the home of Machteld Smith in the presence of forty seven members (Strassberger, 1969:22).
There is clear evidence that some Christians at the Cape comprehended the biblical implications that the Gospel had to be brought to the uttermost parts of the earth. As early as 1804-1809, Rev. M.C. Vos - born and raised in the Western Cape - operated as a missionary in India and Ceylon.

More Occult forces unleashed
There were also unseen forces at work that had their origins in other parts of the world. The enlightenment was one such force that influenced not only the theology in the churches. 1776 can be regarded as the birth of a demonic order that called themselves the Illuminati, the enlightened - the cream of the intelligentsia. Adam Weishaupt started the order in that year, which regarded itselves as the only people to rule the world, the only people who can create world peace. This could thus be seen as the pristine forerunner of the figure that the Bible calls the Anti-Christ. Their expressed purpose was the creation of a new world order that would include a world government. The origin of the order is significant. Enlightenment has light as a root component. Satan whose name is also Lucifer, literally carrier of light, has the Latin lux as root that means light. Paul has significantly prophesied that the devil will masquerade as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Adam Weishaupt lifted the lid at the founding of his secretive order of the Illuminati on 1 May 1776 - seen by him as an improvement on freemasonry. His aim would be to create world peace that would lead to a breakdown of structures to make a mass out of mankind. Chaos, atheism and barbarism would also break down God’s hold on man. Then the time would be ripe to enthrone Lucifer before which the mass of people would kneel in worship.
1829 was the next date of great importance to impact the world in the spiritual realm from that source. At the Illuminati congress in New York in that year the decision was taken to combine atheism and nihilism to communism as a tool to enthrone Satan without war. In 1848 Karl Marx became the chairman of the order. The ideology was only thrashed in 1990, when the Soviet Union crumbled. By that time much of the idealism with which Marx started off, had been completely diluted, almost obliterated.
To the influential Tuan Guru, the name given to Shaykh Abdullah ibn Qadi Abdus Salaam, who had been interned on Robben Island from 1780, has been attributed a renewed prophecy of a ‘holy circle’ of shrines about this time. The Kramat (shrine) on the (in)famous island was already in place since Shaykh Mattara died there in 1754. By 1788 the Shaykhs of Constantia, Sayyid Mahmud and Abdurahman Shah had also been buried about a century before that.
Dr van Lier had died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only 28 years, the same year in which Tuan Guru was released from Robben Island. Tuan Guru utilised the insecurity of the Dutch authorities at the Cape to the full - it was just two years prior to the first British take over. Tuan Guru became the driving force behind a madressa (Qur’an school) and the first mosque in Dorp Street in 1794/5.

Cape Freemason progression
In the case of freemasonry, the occult link can be traced back to the Baal culture of Nimrod in Babel. The Cape link came from Amsterdam with the HERE XVII (the directors of the D.E.I.C, the Dutch trading company which was in control at the Cape). The Cape of Good Hope Free mason Lodge - established in 1772 - was only a stone’s throw from the Groote Kerk. Occult forces were thus bombarded right into the front row of the church establishment, e.g. when Anton Anreith and Louis Thibault, influential freemason architects,80 were involved with so many buildings at the Cape. High degree Freemasons serve a god known as the Great Architect of the Universe G.A.O.T.U, known by his secret name of Jah-Bal-on.
In Dr A. A. Cooper's book The Free Masons of South Africa, one is struck how much freemasonry was intertwined in the church and in the state leadership of the 19th century. The idolatrous origins of freemasonry were apparently not known at that time. Johannes Truter, a chief Judge with close links to the Z.A. Gesticht, who is reported to have been impacted by Dr Van Lier, was also known as a prominent freemason. Simultaneously, the witness of the church in South Africa with regard to secretive societies was effectively blunted through this link.

Freemasonry in the Cape Church
Anton Anreith, one of the leading freemason figures in the secretive freemasonry of the Cape in the late 19th century, made his presence felt in no uncertain way. His architectural work affected even the inner precincts of the first two Cape churches, the Groote Kerk and the Lutheran Church. The pulpit of the latter church was Anton Anreith’s sculpture masterpiece, including lions with huge paws - which is freemason symbolism. A similar feature is found in the pulpit of the new building of the Groote Kerk, likewise by Anreith. Herman Schutte, another freemason, did the church design. That this church was so much involved with the secretive Afrikaner Broederbond in the 20th century is surely no co-incidence. The obelisk structures on the exterior of the building that replaced the original Groote Kerk made the early Christian sanctuary of the Cape resemble more a freemason temple than a traditional church. (A sad feature of the 19th century church was that there appears to have been not a single dissenting voice for many decades in respect of the freemason influence).
Ds Meent Borcherds, who became a minister in the Moedergemeente in Stellenbosch in 1786, had the all seeing eye of the freemason order, of which he was a member, installed in his parsonage La Gratitude. Therefore it is no surprise that he was so opposed to evangelical missionary work. Borcherds’ son became a high official in the Freemason Lodge de Goede Hoop near to the Parliament buildings.
The only two church buildings built at the Cape before 1850 where I could not trace clear freemason roots are the Z.A. Gesticht (1804) and the Union Chapel on Church Square (1821). Both institutions had links to the evangelical and missionary movement. But even these institutions had prominent Freemasons like Judge Truter, ‘a loyal supporter of the Z.A. Gesticht’ (Botha, 1999:28). In the case of the the Z.A. Gesticht, it might have been quite accidental when they refrained from the foundation stone ceremony because of the opposition of De Mist to evangelism among the slaves of the city.
The secretive Afrikaner Broederbond of the 20th century is very much a variation of an old theme. The origin of the concept in Afrikaner society that one had to be a freemason or a member of the secretive Broederbond if one wanted to get somewhere in society, is probably to be found in these roots. (In fact, it became well-nigh impossible to get into the upper echelons of the National Party, which ruled from 1948-94, without these connections.)

Messianic Jewry - an ally of the Cross
Because Jesus was a Jew, it should theoretically only be natural for Jews to come to faith in him as their Lord and Saviour. However, Jews have difficulty to recognize in him their promised Messiah. The anti-Semitism and persecution over the centuries - all too often by people who professed to be Christians - was possibly not the main obstacle either. The emperor Constantine had already caused a rift, when he gave special privileges to Christians - by making Sunday the official day of rest in 321CE. The rift was formalized at the Council of Nicea that he called in 325 CE. From the viewpoint of Jews however, Constantine made the pagan worship to the sun god fashionable. This might in this way be something Christians worldwide should confess and repent of, especially because the ‘conversion’ of Constantine has to be regarded as controversial. The Chi-ro – the symbol that he is reported to have seen in the sky and which he interpreted as a cross – actually is a pagan symbol for the sky god. Perhaps the repentance of Christians on this score could be a start towards reconciliation to our spiritual ancestors, the Jews.
Two Jewish converts are recorded to have been baptized at the Cape as early as 1669. It is not clear whether these and other Jews of that era who professed their faith in Jesus openly, did it out of convenience or conviction. Everybody who came to the Cape at this time had to be of the Protestant Christian faith. The constitution of the Dutch East India Company required this from all its employees and settlers.
By the 19th century restrictions on Jewish people were relaxed. On September 26, 1841 seventeen Jewish believers celebrated the Day of Atonement and a week later the first congregation ‘Tikvath Israel’ (The Hope of Israel), was established at the Cape. To me it is not co-incidental that this was also the time when a mini revival was taking place among the slaves in the wake of the emancipation in 1838.

Two Jewish brothers enrich Cape Christianity
Two Jewish brothers enriched evangelical Christianity at the Cape profoundly, Jan and Frans Lion Cachet. Frans had a short stint at St Stephen’s after Stegmann had left the post vacant. He took over at the Ebenhaezer Church in Rose Street after the sudden death of Rev. Vogelgezang. This parish was at this time linked to the Congregational Church (Cachet, 1875:82). Ds. Frans Lion Cachet initiated the remarkable innovation of teaching Arabic to the pupils. This was a display of keen insight since the Arabic script was common at the time among the Muslim slaves. He also had evening classes with the intention of enabling the children and adult pupils to read and understand the Qur’an and to judge for themselves.
Ds Jan Lion Cachet, his brother, was originally a teacher who later became a professor of Theology. Jan Lion Cachet became one of the stalwarts in the fight for the recognition of Afrikaans. It is significant that this warrior - who was born and bred in Holland - had to remind Afrikaners that the language of Holland was not feasible in this part of the world. He did this at a time when the Afrikaners were about to give up the fight for their language (Dekker, Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis, 1980:32). It is tragic that the Afrikaners made an idol out of the language, building a monument for it in Paarl. In terms of spiritual warfare, we discern how easily Satan can turn a worthy cause into idolatry.81

Theologians in fierce Rivalry
In 1873 Ds. Frans Lion Cachet pleaded in the Cape DRC Synod for a mission to his people, the Jews, to be started. He moved to the Cape village of Villiersdorp in 1876. He found a ‘deep sea of love’ for the Jews among ministers, elders and deacons, even among the most distant congregations (Cited by Hermann, 1935:201). The passionate plea of Frans Lion Cachet was however also a provocation to the Jews. Notably, the opposition was coming from their Rabbi, Joel Rabinowitz. Hermann (1935:201) cited ‘violent opposition on the part of the Rabbi.’ Rabinowitz’ letter of 30 October 1876 to the Cape Argus was definitely not cordial, accusing Cachet of condescension and ‘casting doubts on … his motives.’ But Ds. Cachet’s reaction was not in the spirit of Christ either. The ‘lively correspondence’ between Christians and Jews – perhaps one should rather say polemics - continued in the Cape Argus for over a month.
The result of the controversy was that by 1876 favourable conditions for Messianic Jews to win their cultural compatriots over to faith in Yeshua had passed somewhat and it was left to Gentiles to lead such people to faith in Jesus as their Lord and Messiah. Only in 1894 the resolution was passed: ‘… the time has come for the DRC to pay its debt to Israel by commencing its own mission to the Jews’.
(Gerdener, 1958:131).

6. Diverse Spiritual Dynamics

The teaching of the priesthood of the laity and the interpretation of Revelation 2:15 that hierarchical structures are basically divisive, as something that God hates, were by far not widely known. The practice of the Moravians and the LMS to ordain Christian workers distinctively as missionaries, received a negative slant. In the Dutch Reformed Church mission work was clearly seen as something inferior. At the same time the pioneering SAMS almost dissolved itself when its ministry was assimilated into the Dutch Reformed Church towards the end of the 19th century.
An artificial and unbiblical differentiation between Christian action and evangelistic outreach resulted in a rift in the missionary movement. In South Africa the old scourge of racism nipped the evangelistic spirit in the bud.

Christian action
Against the background of the general negative attitude of Whites, including the majority of the missionaries and clergymen, there is one layman who towers above everything that happened among the Cape Muslims in the second half of the 19th century: Mr de Roubaix, a Cape Parliamentarian. In spite of his shortcomings, De Roubaix practised much of what biblical Christianity is all about. Kollisch, a contemporary, notes that public newspapers and other records of his time would show that De Roubaix ‘most cheerfully rendered his aid whenever required, and as his deeds were open, it was a matter of general surprise ... that as a Christian... he should give such support and assistance to a class of people belonging to an opposite creed’ (Kollisch, 1867:9). It was especially remarkable how - after losing the parliamentary election in 1856, mainly because of his involvement with the Cape Muslims - De Roubaix went forward even more staunchly as the champion of the despised people group. He spared, according to Kollisch, no time and money to bring the reform that was so much desired (Kollisch, 1867:9).
That the nationals of colour could also be used as missionaries was not remotely present in the thinking of the churches in South Africa. And that is still very much the case today in respect of Blacks. Only very few insiders have heard about Maart from Mozambique and very few have ever heard what the Black preachers the Prophet Harris and Bishop Samuel Crowther has accomplished in West Africa.
The Rise of Cape Afrikanerdom as a political Force
The prosperity of the 1850s in the Western Cape was followed by a prolonged recession in the 1850s, triggered by the collapse of the Cape’s wine exports to Great Britain. Between 1875 and 1880 Onze Jan Hofmeyr in Cape Town and Ds S.J. du Toit formed two movements which sought support among Afrikaners. In 1878 Hofmeyr’s Zuid-Afrikaansche Boeren Beschermings Vereeniging (BBV) was founded, through which he was elected to parliament as representative for Stellenbosch soon thereafter. Du Toit’s Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners in Paarl had as its chief aim the recognition of Afrikaans as the national language of the country. In 1880 Du Toit formed the Afrikaner Bond to coordinate the activities of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners. After initial rivalry, the two groups merged in 1883 under Hofmeyr’s leadership, but commonly know as the Bond. Angered by a school system where the children of Afrikaner farmers received education along with those of ex-slaves, a key element of support among Afrikaners was ‘the common urgency about the need to deny the rural underclasses the franchise and education’ (Giliomee in James and Symons, 1989:67). Hofmeyr was compelled to tone down the demands of the organs of the Bond, De Zuid-Afrikaan, such as the need to ‘order the administration of justice along more patriarchal lines’ (Giliomee in James and Symons, 1989:67) because of the need to compete for the Black vote. Their chance came with the joining of forces between Jan Hofmeyr and his Afrikaner Bond with the party of the premier Cecil John Rhodes to keep people of colour out of the parliament of the Cape Colony. That link was only short-lived because of the Jameson Raid, which forced Hofmeyr to sever his links with Rhodes.
Due to the unfair allocation of parliamentary seats in favour of the rural areas, the Afrikaner Bond nevertheless briefly had their own premier for a few years from 1898-1900. However, W.P. Schreiner, was not really a Bond man. A growing tendency developed to define Afrikanerhood ieologically. In due course a clear divide emerged: farmer-merchant, rural-urban, Afrikaner-English.
Jews as mediators between Boer and Brit
At the turn of the century Boer-Brit relations were at fever pitch almost everywhere. An atmosphere of estrangement and hostility discouraged contacts that might have developed into co-operative co-existence. The countrytown of Oudtshoorn was one of the few exceptions. Rabbi Abrahams (1955:71f) pointed to the role Jewish children were playing. Jewish school children ‘often assumed, quite unconsciously, the role of mediators. Their knowledge of both English and Afrikaans enabled them not only to have playmates among both groups, but to rope them in, with juvenile impartiality, into common games and partnerships of fun.’ The young folk of Jewish and Afrikaner stock furthermore got to know each other on the farms, developing into an ‘invaluable bond between the Boervolk and the People of the Book…’ Abrahams also highlights a ‘curious ‘trilingualism’ in Oudtshoorn at the time. Jannie de Jager, the mayor, got to learn r fluently and ‘quite a number of local famers and not a few of the Coloured inhabitants were well-acquainted with the mother tongue of the Lithuanian Jew.’

Economic disparity in late 19th Century Cape Town
Well before the discovery of diamonds and gold in the interior poor Whites came to the Cape from Europe in increasing numbers, causing a serious health threat. The most neglected were the back streets, like the lanes of the areas which later became District Six and Bokaap. Robert Campbell, who was familiar with the work of the Glasgow City Mission, began a ministry among the poorest of the poor in Cape Town in 1878. When he moved to Beaufort West in 1880, there was no one with a similar vision in the burgeoning city.
The dream of diamonds attracted steamer-loads of young fortune-seekers, many of whom had to discover the hard way that ‘all is not gold or diamonds that glitters’. District Six became the first place of residence for most immigrants to Cape Town, Black and White. Slum landlords seized their chance to rent out unsanitary, badly drained houses to poor tenants.
In the wake of the recession of 1883 the presence of indigent Whites on the Capetonian streets became quite common. An ‘European’ and a ‘Coloured’ family shared a hole in a rock twelve hundred metres above the Roeland Street prison and ‘nine years later there were multi-racial squatter settlements above Longmarket Street ‘ (Worden et al, 1998:229). The ‘mineral revolution’ brought an influx of capital and people into the country which further disrupted existing social patterns. ‘In thirty years Cape Town underwent a metamorphosis from a sleeepy colonial backwater to thriving city’ (Worden et al, 1998:211).
The disparity between Black and White was exacerbated by the exploitation of rural poverty, e.g. when Mfengu dock workers were recruited in the 1890s. The rich became richer and dire poverty increased on the other extremity of the economic spectrum. By 1893 White vagrants were a more common sight than they had ever been before.
With the immigration of White and Black workers, miscegenation and residential intermingling increased towards the end of the 19th century. The Labour Commission was told that ‘large numbers of German and Swedish immigrants’ had lawfully married ‘Coloured’ women. Where here was evident exaggeration, it was not the case that immigrant girls were reported to favour Muslim men ‘and get thereby husbands who know not billiards and brandy – the two curses of Cape Town’ (cited in Worden, 1998:227). Nevertheless, social integration was effectively a lower-class phenomenon. A Grahamstown journalist referred to a ‘fusion of races’ in 1895 in the Mother city ‘from which every other community in South Africa would shrink’ (Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:52).

Increase of Racism and anti-Semitism
In the 1870s there was informal racial segregation in Cape Town. Most Blacks were confined to the poorer schools and in the churches one would find them in the back pews. ‘The 1875 census demonstrated the existence of a race class relationship by this time: whiteness correlated positively with a higher rate of pay’ (Harriet Deacon in Van Heyningen, 1994: 72). By the 1880s, large numbers of Blacks were moving into Cape Town. Fears that the dominant White class might be threatened fuelled the election of ‘Clean Party’candidates for the Town Council. It was convenient to blame the new Black arrivals for the dirtiness of the slum areas and associating them with the spread of disease. But also ‘Coloureds’ and ‘Malays’ had to be kept in the proper role of subordinates. In 1887, in a court case, Omar vs. Norman, Cape Town’s resident magistrate upheld the right of a Sea Point hotelier to refuse admission to his bar of a well-dressed ‘Coloured’ man. ‘Coloured’ people were forced to drink at the ‘tap’ at the back of ‘good’ hotels. Also in sport separate organisations came into existence.
The economic boom of the 1890s and significant immigration from Whites provided a suitable background for ‘social separation.’ New to the 1890s was the discovery of ‘poor Whitism’ as a problem which one could tackle via segregation. Poor Whites were regarded as deserving upliftment, especially through preferential education. Spurred on by the Dutch Reformed Church, and under the guidance of the Superintendent of Education Langham Dale, undenominational public schools were established aimed specifically at releiveing the problem of ‘poor Whitism.’ These schools were to offer superior education to the mission schools and to be for Whites only. The idea was to leave the mission schools to educate ‘non-European’ children. Via discriminatory government subsidies the latter schools would remain inferior. Already in the 1890s technical training was only provided for Whites and all technical apprenticeships at the government railway workshops were reserved for indigent White children Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:53). Segregation was to be part and parcel of the upliftment of Whites and thereby abused to maintain White supremacy.
Cecil John Rhodes, the Prime Minister, set some dubious examples like donating a bath chair for ‘female European lepers’ (Harriet Deacon in Van Heyningen, 1994:74). Others followed suit when horses and a cart were made available for White male patients, when a different diet with ‘medical extras’ such as tinned sardines were given to White lepers. By the end of the decade suburbs specifically for Whites were being created and envisaged. Oranjezicht, Camps Bay and Milnerton belonged to these suburbs.
The Chinese were singled out as a plague, because gambling and crime were believed to peculiarly Chinese vices. The exclusion of ‘non-Whites’ was envisaged after 1900 and there were even calls for segregation of trams and side-walks, in the latter case following the racist Boer Republic example. In fact, already in 1901 Whites and ‘Coloureds’ were inoculated at different times during the bubonic plague crisis. Racial segregation of education was entrenched in legislation in 1905.
The Social Farm for freed prisoners confined its work entirely to Whites and the shelter opened in Anchor Street in 1896 excluded ‘coloured men. ‘Swart gevaar’, made its entry also among ‘Coloureds’ deemed their employment opportunities threatened from Black newcomers. Prejudice was thrown around indiscriminately; Africans were suddenly ‘a source of infection threatening the physical and moral health of the city’ (Worden et al, 1998:220). Fights developed with ‘Cape boys’ who did somewhat lighter work at higher wages and who were appointed as foremen over African worker gangs.
As an aftermath of the Anglo Boer War, there was an influx of poor Europeans to the Cape. A significant increase in racism and anti-Semitism followed. Cape Muslims, previously seen as clean an industrious, were now described as ‘dirty, lazy, profligate, ignorant and unruly’ (Worden et al 1998:220) and dressing like ‘peacocks though they live at home like swine’ (Worden et al, 1998:220). By the end of the century legislation began to exclude ‘undesirable aliens’. Clearly targeting the East European Jews, whose language Yiddish was discriminated against, an Immigration Act was passed in 1902 to keep out those who could not write in European characters. Asians also came under attack when a General Dealers Act was introduced in 1906 to protect ‘European’ traders (all Whites were increasingly called Europeans) from Indian competition.

Hypocritical indignation
In the early 1890s there were still instances of ‘mixed’ cricket matches. Objections only arose in the middle of the decade after T. Hendrickse, a ‘Coloured’ cricketer, was elected to play for the ‘all comers’ against the South African national team. Interestingly, the opposition came mainly from his home union, Western province. The only White administrator on record as defending Hendrickse’s right to play in the 1897 championships was Frank Robb, who happened to be the secretary of Hendrickse’s club Woodstock (Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:54).
Racially segregated facilities in official institutions were becoming more common in mission schools, prisons, hospitals and at asylum. Some schools accepted light-skinned siblings and rejected those of darker complexion. Worst was to come when ‘a respectable young coloured man’ was excluded from the local YMCA, to the disgust of not only a few Capetonians (Worden et al, 1998:229; Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:50). This indignation was however hypocritical because the Salvation Army had already gained ‘respectability’ through racial discrimination. Few colonists were so honest as the merchant and miller J.W. Attwell, who believed that it would be a mistake to over-educate people of colour because ‘then they would aspire to be clerks and the like’ (Cited by Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:53). A reporter from the Scottish Dundee Advertiser discerned a distinct line between Europeans and ‘Coloureds’ ‘almost as rigidly drawn as if they were a lower range of beings’ (Cited by Robert Ross in James and Symons, 1989:50).
The little resistance from Whites against school separation came from within Cape Town. However, all of these ‘objections’ came from clergymen who were involved with ‘mixed’ mission schools. Closer inspection shows that even here self-interest played a significant role, e-g that they would lose school-fee paying students or that their schools might lose ‘tone’ or status.

Moral Upliftment
Whereas poverty destroyed basic family life and opened the way to crime and degradation, it also spawned missionary compassionate concern. Modernisation at the Cape was spearheaded by the medical profession, prompted by the shocking conditions in the town. The great reformer was Dr Alfred Gregory who endeavoured to give the Cape an efficient public health service and quite a few churches started in District Six and Bo-Kaap between 1880 and1910. In spite of the ambivalence which the Salvation Army radiated, their battle against vice was proverbial and exemplary.The liberalism of the mid 19th century brought in its train the double moral standard of Victorian Britain. Prostitutes were regarded as normal to provide in the sexual needs of healthy young men. Thus the Cape Argus explained in 1868: ‘Harlotry, as an institution… is …in a degree a safety-valve for public morality, and as some protection to the chastity and purity of our virgins and matrons…’ (Cited in Worden et al, 1998:234f).
Evangelicals were the advance guard against the double standard, demanding from pulpit and everywhere that men conform to the same norms. Instead of merely condemning, some believers devoted themselves to the rescue of ‘fallen women’ with the Anglicans and the Salvation Army among the most active in this regard. Alcoholism had been rife in the Mother city since the earliest beginnings. The rumblings of the mineral revolution made matters worse.
Social purity and temperance provided middle-class women with their first public stage. In 1885 the Contagious Diseases Act was passed in the Cape ‘to protect respectable families from venereal diseases passed on by nursemaid and servants’ (Worden et al, 1998:237). This enraged reformers who saw in this Act a licence and encouragement of the double standard. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union went on the rampage to bring about the repeal of the Act. Schools and churches were prominent in the battle against vice. Especially in Observatory, the first real suburb because Papendorp (Woodstock) and Salt River were little more than the overflow of District Six, evangelical Protastantism shaped the minds and actions of the residents, fighting liquor doggedly. Observatory remained without a hotel or bottle store until 1918.

The danger of racial prejudice insufficiently discerned
It seemed that Dr Andrew Murray did not sufficiently discern the danger of racial prejudice. At the very same DRC synod of 1857 where he and three other young dominees recommended that the church should move forward to reach the lost, the synod agreed to racial separation because of the ‘weakness of some.’ This implied a complete about turn of the 1829 decision not to divide the church along racial lines. At the 1829 Cape DRC synod it had not only been decided that all members would be admitted to communion ‘without considering colour or background’, 82 but also that this issue was not even to be a subject for deliberation at a synod. Instead, it had to be seen as ‘een onwrikbaar stelregel, op het onfeilbaar woord van God gegrond ...’83
The participants had no idea to what a disaster the 1857 decision that would lead in the long run, even though separation was to be voluntarily. The wrong message was sent out. It seems as if there was not a single person of colour among the 145 missionaries that left the Mission Institute in Wellington over the next few decades after 1857. An anomaly was that the (‘Coloured’) St Stephen’s church of Bo-Kaap was accepted as a member church at this same synod. Yet, it should not be forgotten that the motion tabled in 1857 had as its main component a positive statement: ‘The Synod regards it as feasible and Scriptural that our members (coming) from the Heathens, be taken into existing congregations wherever this can happen.’84
The Dutched Reformed Church penetrated into the fishermen families of Roggebaai where they opened the second church school on 15 April 1861 (Hopkins, 1965:231). In February 1865 Dr Andrew Murray started with services every Thursday evening with a ‘full house’. And in District Six he began with services in a house in Van de Leur Street. Soon a parish of the mother church was started in Hanover Street.
The well-known revival of Wellington, where Murray had gone, in due course also influenced the situation at the Cape. Murray came over to assist from time to time. Especially for the parishes of Roggebaai and Hanover Street ‘kon die dienste nie lank genoeg aanhou nie’ (Hopkins, 1965:231).
Furthermore, at least one of Andrew Murray’s disciples, Petrus le Roux, was influenced by Murray to be a missionary to the Zulu’s. He was ordained Eerwaarde, i.e. as a Dutch Reformed missionary in 1893 at Wakkerstrooom in the Eastern Transvaal. Within seven years Le Roux had 2000 members, attributing his success to ‘good, earnest, native preachers’.

A British Woman spearheading missionary work
A rare feature of the 19th century is that a Cape-based missionary agency actually owes its existence to a woman. Mrs Martha Osborne was forced to leave India due to illness. In England she was thoroughly impacted by the Holy Spirit after conversion during a meeting of D.L. Moody, a well-known American evangelist. Her husband became seriously ill soon after his retirement, and eventually died. A newspaper reported negatively about conditions among British soldiers in Cape Town. The presence of ‘dens of the lowest description’ there, gripped her. This became Martha Osborne’s call to missions. She sailed in 1879, devoting herself to work among the Cape soldiers.

Women in the founding of Cape-based missionary agencies
In South Africa the go-getter Martha Osborne initiated evangelistic missionary work in Cape Town, Natal and Zululand. She founded a Sailors’ Home, a Ladies Christian Workers Union, the Railway Mission and the South African YWCA. In 1890, she married George Howe who had been working alongside her with a similar vision. During the South African War the couple established no less than 27 Soldiers’ Homes. The Osborne Mission went through a number of changes and merger.,
During a visit to England Martha Osborne challenged Spencer Walton, an evangelical Church of England member, to come and join the outreach at the Cape. Walton was the first director of the Cape General Mission that later - after a merger - became known as the South Africa General Mission at last becoming the Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF).
May, Emma and Helena Garratt, three sisters from Ireland, accepted an invitation to visit the various stations of the South Africa General Mission. May Garratt responded positively to that invitation but the other two sisters also got involved in other outreaches in the country. Bible readings among the police led to the establishment of a Christian organization and other outreach forms. The Africa Evangelistic Band (AEB) came into being through the evangelistic activity of Emma and Helena Garratt. The Pilgrims, as their workers were called, evangelized in same-sex pairs, discipling new believers as they criss-crossed the country, bringing life to many a spiritually dead church.

Andrew Murray’s heritage jeopardized
Also in another regard Murray’s work was seriously curtailed. His legacy of interdenominational outreach was undermined. In 1870 there had even been a discussion about unification of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Anglican Church. In the Cape General Mission, which was started in 1889 with Andrew Murray as President, there were people from different denominational backgrounds from its outset. Andrew Murray was closely involved with this mission until the end of his life. From the outset the Mission agency was a dual enterprise, intending to reach both the White and Black sections of the population. In the main towns of the country they would labour among the neglected Whites. The Mission agency was blessed with spectacular growth. After only five years the original six workers had increased to sixty-eight.
The same Petrus le Roux of Wakkerstroom fame had no scruples to mention that the ‘good, earnest, native preachers’ came from the Methodist and Anglican churches. Initially deeply influenced by Andrew Murray on divine healing and holiness theology, Petrus Le Roux was impacted by American Zionists from Illinois. Their three-fold immersion in the Snake River of Wakkerstroom introduced bickering over the number of immersions in believers’ baptism.

Battles around burial rites and cemeteries
The perceived interference in Islamic burial rites played a big role not only in cementing Muslim opposition to the government of the day, but it also contributed to the conversion of undecided slaves and to the consolidation of Islam. These rites created a sense of equality and dignity for the Cape Muslims, which was denied to them in the society at large. The final ablution rite for the deceased is a compulsory ritual in Islam, irrespective of social standing and no matter how the body might be deformed or destroyed by the cause of death. To deny Muslims these ablution rites or the dignity of carrying the corpse to its last resting place, were interferences that the Muslim community could not tolerate.
The smallpox epidemic of 1858 focused attention on urban cemeteries. The Cape Town Municipality received a letter of complaint with regard to the health hazard that urban cemeteries presented. A special committee on cemeteries was elected. This special committee recommended in December 1858 ‘that health and safety of the inhabitants imperatively demand that no further internments should be tolerated in the present Burial Grounds and that a general cemetery should be established...’ (Municipal Cemeteries Commission Report of 1858, cited by Davids, 1980:68).
These recommendations were not acted upon, possibly because of the sensitive nature of the issue. In 1873 another special committee was elected to look into the matter. In 1875 the Cape Town Cemetery Bill was gazetted. But parliament referred it to a Select Committee, after strong petitions, notably from the Dutch Reformed Church. The Parliamentary Select Committee heard evidence from all interested parties. The Cape Muslims were represented by an educated cab driver, Abdol Burns. He came to play an important role as negotiator for the Cape Muslims from 1875 to 1886 in their dispute with the Cape Government on the cemetery issue.
From his evidence before the Parliamentary Select Committee, it became clear that Burns was not prepared to concede any of the rights of the Cape Muslims on cemeteries. Burns’ central argument was that Muslims must carry their dead to its last resting place. This he put as a religious law, sacred to all Muslims. ‘The cemetery riots of 1886 are probably the most significant expression of civil disobedience of the nineteenth century Cape Muslim community... The closure of their cemeteries, in terms of the Public Health Act No. 4 of 1883 moved them to an emotional frenzy which united them to ward off what they regarded as external interference in their religion’ (Davids, 1980:62).
A spin-off was the spread of Islam to other parts of the country. Thus Achmat Effendi left for Kimberley after the riots.

A new lease of life for Cape Islam
The perceived Christian government came to the aid of the embattled Islam again and again, uniting the Muslims in the process. Thus the threatened closure of the Tana Baru cemetery at the top of Longmarket Street, where some of their Karamats (Saints) were buried, joined the Muslims in resistance. To the Muslims the threatened closure of cemeteries did not make sense. In their view their cemeteries constituted no danger to public health. They saw the measure as a means of undermining the religious freedom they were enjoying in the Colony. They feared that should they concede willingly to give up their holy cemeteries, their sacred mosques would certainly be endangered. Their cemeteries were as important as the mosques ‘as a rallying point of culture, as an expression of their religious cohesiveness’ (Davids, 1980:64). Islam got a new lease of life at the Cape. They got new self-confidence to use their democratic rights also in other issues. Islam provided leadership and a community base for resistance. Thus Jongie Siers and John Mahomet , two Muslim fishermen petitioned the town council when the municipality threatened to ban fish-curing on Roggebaai beach in 1878 (Worden et al, 1998:243f).

Jewry at the Cape
Two Jewish converts are recorded to have been baptized at the Cape as early as 1669. It is not clear whether these and other Jews of that era who professed their faith in Jesus as their Messiah openly, did it out of convenience or conviction. Everybody who came to the Cape at that time had to be of the Protestant Christian faith. The constitution of the Dutch East India Company required this from all its employees and settlers. By the beginning of the nineteenth century restrictions on Jewish people were relaxed.
On September 26, 1841, seventeen Jewish believers celebrated the Day of Atonement at the home of Benjamin Norden and a week later the first congregation ‘Tikvath Israel’ (The Hope of Israel), was established at the Cape. Norden, who arrived with his brothers on the boat Belle Alliance in Simons Bay in May, 1820 (Hermann, 1935:99) - before the ship went to the Eastern Cape with the other British Settlers - should be seen as the founder of the first Jewish congregation in Cape Town. To me it is significant that this was also the time when a mini revival was taking place among the slaves in the wake of the emancipation in 1838. Somehow this signalled the beginning of the alienation of the Muslims by Christians – albeit a very striking one.
Cape Christianity has historical debt with regard to the treatment meted out to Benjamin Norden, who had the courage of his conviction to swim against the stream in compassion. He was one of the Commissioners of the Municipality, who sent a resolution to England when it became known that Sir George Grey had informed the Cape Governor that convicted felons would be sent here. In his resolution, Norden called upon the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, to prevent the threatened calamity to the welfare of the country.

The Boycott bandwagon
The entire population was unanimous in opposition to the dumping of convicts. Five thousand citizens gathered on the Grand Parade in protest. A sort of pledge was drawn up and signed by everybody who could write , promising not ‘to employ or knowingly admit into their establishment or houses any convicted felon or felons sent to the Colony and to discountenance and drop connection with any person who should assist in landing, supporting or employing such convicted felons’ (Cited in Hermann, 1935:148). A committee was formed after another meeting on 31 May called the Anti-Convict Association, for the purpose of resisting the introduction of convicts and for seeing that the pledge was kept. A complete boycott was soon called on the ship, the Neptune, which had been sent from Britain to the Bermudas to collect convicts and bring them to the Cape. Alarm broke out on 19th September 1849 when the Neptune arrived in Simon’s Bay with 282 convicts. A vigilance committee was dispatched to Simon’s Town to ensure that the convicts would not be disembarked.
Sir Harry Smith was now in a very difficult position with John Fairbairn, the editor of the Commercial Advertiser, as his uttermost enemy. Fairbairn became the leader of the ‘Ultras’, for whom no measure was too extreme. The governor and the entire civil service, along with the military and naval establishments were to be starved out because they were still prepared to negotiate around the pledge. The municipality was functioning ‘to all intents and purposes as an alternative government’ by this time (Worden et al, 1998:176). At the height of the agitation, however a split occurred in the ranks of the protesters between ‘Moderates’ and ‘Radicals’. The ‘Moderates’ were satisfied with the assurance of the Governor that the convicts would not be allowed to leave the ship, but the agitated majority passed a resolution that it would be ‘a violation of the Pledge to furnish any of supplies… to the Naval department of Simonstown directly or indirectly’ (Cited in Hermann, 1935:149). Benjamin Norden dared to protest against these ‘disloyal and violent’ measures, furnishing the Naval Department with supplies for a month.
On 10 October 1849 the Commercial Advertiser published the names of twelve men who had been ‘put under the Pledge’ for supplying provisions to Government departments. From a positive point of view the Committee set an example of a complete boycott, which a little more than a century later was tobe emulated by the Friends of District Six. On the negative side they wielded a reign of terror throughout the town and its neighbourhood, which also got its perpetrators in the ‘struggle’ against apartheid. Fairbairn, the leader of the ‘Moderates’ ‘became almost a dictator’, ordering all interaction with the government to be aborted.
Ordinary commercial operations almost came to a standstill. Idleness and unemployed was rife. On 15 October 1849 about three hundred ‘Coloured’ people marched to the Governor to demand work and food.
A tense situation developed after the protestors had first been sent to Fairbairn, who in turn sent them to Norden, who relieved their immediate distress. The matter however had repercussions through agitation and stoning. Norden received a large stone in the back that wounded him seriously. He never completely recovered in spite of a series of operations. There was more rioting. On the same day that Norden was assaulted, a party of unemployed people attacked John Fairbairn, beat him and wrecked his house.
In the aftermath of the saga, all Jews were labelled ‘Pledge breakers’. A letter by Samuel Rodolf in which he undertook the defence of the Jewish community in the Commercial Advertiser on 13 October apparently succeeded in allaying public suspicion. Cape Town Jews were not in sympathy with Benjamin Norden’s attitude towards the Pledge, but they respected his convictions (Hermann, 1935:154). Finally Britain yielded. On 21 February 1850 the Neptune sailed for Van Diemen’s Land.
The labelling of people a century later as collaborators and quislings85 would have similar dire consequences. The attitude of the ruffians who attacked Norden and Fairbairn was tobe repeated by intolerant scoundrels who would not allow others to disagree, even going to the extremes of burning down houses and ‘executing’ dissidents by necklacing. Interesting also is how the Jews and Germans were appreciated, with words that Rabbi Israel Abrhams regfarded as largely applicable to Cape Town as well: ‘They are open-hearted and open-handed. No more hounourable men, and no more charitaboe men, can be found in the world’ (Abrhams, 1955: 29).

Blacks welcomed at the Cape
From the late 1830s we first find evidence of the settlement of a community of Blacks at the Cape86, probably those driven from their fatherland in the Mfecane by the warring Zulus. The Cape government initially clearly approved of their employment in town for the Pauper Establishment Report of 1841 recorded that seven of them be ‘accommodated by the government for a few days until they could obtain employment…’ (Saunders in Saunders and Philips, 1984: 19). The next major group of Blacks to come to the Cape arrived here from mid 1857 by ship from East London as a result of the sad cattle killing episode in the Eastern Cape. Quite a few of them had received the standard sentence of three years of imprisonment and transportation, often on petty grounds like ‘stealing of mealies out of a garden’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:19). Until early 1858 some two thousand of them came after a formal letter of welcome by Sir George Grey, the High Commissioner, to one of their tribal chiefs, Delima. In fact, some of these new labourers were given VIP treatment. The Cape Argus of 24 March 1858 reported that ’upwards of thirty Kaffirs’, who had been imprisoned at the Amsterdam Battery, were invited to a dinner at the occasion of the foundation stone ceremony of the South African Library and Museum in the (Company) Gardens. After a demonstration before the event how to eat with beef and mutton with knives and forks, ‘the Kaffirs were entertained in first-rate style’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:21).

Battles around burial rites and cemeteries
The perceived interference in Islamic burial rites played a big role not only in cementing Muslim opposition to the government of the day, but it also contributed to the conversion of undecided slaves and to the consolidation of Islam. These rites created a sense of equality and dignity for the Cape Muslims, which was denied to them in the society at large. The final ablution rite for the deceased is a compulsory ritual in Islam, irrespective of social standing and no matter how the body might be deformed or destroyed by the cause of death. To deny Muslims these ablution rites or the dignity of carrying the corpse to its last resting place, were interferences that the Muslim community could not tolerate.
The smallpox epidemic of 1858 focused attention on urban cemeteries. The Cape Town Municipality received a letter of complaint with regard to the health hazard that urban cemeteries presented. A special committee on cemeteries was elected. This special committee recommended in December 1858 ‘that health and safety of the inhabitants imperatively demand that no further internments should be tolerated in the present Burial Grounds and that a general cemetery should be established...’ (Municipal Cemeteries Commission Report of 1858, cited by Davids, 1980:68).
These recommendations were not acted upon, possibly because of the sensitive nature of the issue. In 1873 another special committee was elected to look into the matter. In 1875 the Cape Town Cemetery Bill was gazetted. But parliament referred it to a Select Committee, after strong petitions, notably from the Dutch Reformed Church. The Parliamentary Select Committee heard evidence from all interested parties. The Cape Muslims were represented by an educated cab driver, Abdol Burns. He came to play an important role as negotiator for the Cape Muslims from 1875 to 1886 in their dispute with the Cape Government on the cemetery issue.
From his evidence before the Parliamentary Select Committee, it became clear that Burns was not prepared to concede any of the rights of the Cape Muslims on cemeteries. Burns’ central argument was that Muslims must carry their dead to its last resting place. This he put as a religious law, sacred to all Muslims. ‘The cemetery riots of 1886 are probably the most significant expression of civil disobedience of the nineteenth century Cape Muslim community... The closure of their cemeteries, in terms of the Public Health Act No. 4 of 1883 moved them to an emotional frenzy which united them to ward off what they regarded as external interference in their religion’ (Davids, 1980:62).
A spin-off was the spread of Islam to other parts of the country. Thus Achmat Effendi left for Kimberley after the riots.

Xhosa chiefs get VIP treatment
Sandile, the paramount chief of the amaNgika, fought the British in 1848 and 1850. Sir George Grey, the governor, pardoned him on the promise of obedience. He was subsequently divested of all real authority and stripped of much of his land. Grey hereafter traversed a path that was successfully practised by the apartheid regime to subdue the Blacks. The governor hoped to let the chief function purely as a figure head, but effectively stripping him of his power.
During a visit to England in 1850, Sir George Grey persuaded Queen Victoria that a visit by a member of the Royal Family to South Africa might be a good diplomatic move to subdue the Xhosas in this context. She agreed to send her second son, Prince Alfred. After his arrival on 24 July 1860 in Simon’s down on Board the Euryalus, Sir George Grey escorted him around the country inspiring fervent displays of loyalty everywhere they went. In the Eastern Cape the governor spontaneously invited Sandile to join them on the voyage back to the Cape. The amaNgika chief was hesitant at first, because other Xhosa chiefs including his relative Maqoma, were in confinement on Robben Island at this time. Eventually he consented on condition that Rev Tiyo Soga, the country’s first ordained Xhosa, and Mr Charles Brownlee, the Ngika commissioner, would accompany them. Soga summed up Grey’s motives: ‘It was to give Sandile confidence in himself and in the kindness of the English people. It was also designed to give Sandili an opportunity of seeing to some extent the greatness and power of Great Britain; so that from what he would see in Cape Town …, he might learn something for the future good and peace of his people…’ (Chalmers, 1878:125).
Soon hereafter Cape Town had the rare experience of Whites clamouring to get a seat in church to listen to a Black preacher. The occasion was the visit of Rev. Tiyo Soga, who accompanied Prince Alfred from the Eastern Cape to the Mother City. Arriving on Saturday, 15 September 1860, the Presbyterian pastor preached at Caledon Square in the morning the next day and in the evening at St Andrew’s to overflowing congregations (Chalmers, 1878:213). Rev. Morgan was still the minister at St Andrew’s in Green Point. Soga had made a deep impression everywhere he came. Rev. W. Thomas, his host during his stay, was the minister of the church at Caledon Square. Twice Rev. Soga occupied the pulpit there. ‘The chapel was crowded to excess, and great numbers were not able to gain admission’ (Chalmers, 1878:216). Soga preached at different other venues, for example at the Dutch Reformed Church in Wynberg (The Cape Argus, 27 September 1850, noted by Hodgson in Saunders and Philips, 1984: 71). Rev. Thomas gave the following glowing testimonial: ‘I know not how it was, but the presence of our friend ever suggested to me the names of Cyprian, Tertullian and Augustine and others of North Africa., embalmed in the memory as among the noblest men of the primitive Church, and as the first-fruits unto God of the rich harvest which this continent has yet to produce’ (Chalmers, 1878:215).
Sandile and his party were made much of in Cape Town. The idea of African royalty making a state visit to the city appealed to the local White population, temporarily forgetting the hostile Xhosa on the Eastern Frontier. Sandile was treated as an ally and not as a threat like his countrymen, who were still imprisoned on Robben Island. The Breakwater Ceremony on September 17, 1860 was the most impressive of all the functions. Sir George Grey had the courage at this occasion to suggest to Prince Alfred in his speech ‘if only he would marry Sandili, he would have the merit of ending Kafir wars for ever’ (Cited in Hodgson, 1984: 60).
His suggestion was not completely void of a vested interest, the investment of the education in her - one of only two girls at Zonnebloem. Grey feared that ‘if this eligible daughter of a chief was allowed to return to her people she would probably married off to some heathen husband without her having any say in the matter’ (Hodgson, 1984: 62).

An example of the effect of oral History
The sons of the Xhosa chiefs at Zonnebloem got some of the best education of the time. The liberal spirit of the British operated here at its best as became apparent in the history taught. Even though they knew that their future was at the mercy of Sir George Grey and while on of the aims of their education was to inculcate a sense of all that the governor stood for, an essay written by one of them illustrates how freely they were allowed to express themselves. Comparing Maqoma and the Gaikas with other warring parties about which they were taught, the Zonnebloem scholar wrote about their hero: (the British) ‘…saw that he was a brave and clever man. I consider him that he was as brave as Napoleon or Duke Wellington …’ (Cited in Hodgson, 1984: 64).

Race prejudice cemented
The ‘climate’ of cordiality gradually changed, e.g. when the Xhosa labourers of the Amsterdam battery protested against their treatment in various ways. It appears that many of them were probably kept much longer than their sentences required. Men such as Willem, who had been sentenced to three years for stealing a blanket, complained at their continued imprisonment and at the brutality of the warders.
Other Blacks came to the Cape freely, some of them joining the ‘Prize negroes’ (who had been on the ships when the slave trade was abolished in 1808) and their descendents in places like Papendorp. There were some problematic reasons such as the sons of chiefs who were brought to Bishop’s Court and Zonnebloem by Sir George Grey to give the colonial government ‘hostages for the good behaviour of their fathers’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:23), after people like Maqoma had been imprisoned on Robben Island.
A new influx of Blacks occurred in the late 1870s because of the 1877-78 Cape-Xhosa war. Individuals like the Thembu Ngangeliswe were rewarded for neutrality in the war by an invitation to a show in the Theatre Royal ‘from the best seat in the house,’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:23), but general goodwill towards Blacks started to dissipate after nearly four thousand had been transported by the government from the Ciskei and Transkei between April 1878 and January 1879 (Saunders, 1984:24). To house the new arrivals in the Mother City, the government established a ‘Kafir Depot’ in April 1878, with George Steven as ‘Contracting and Pass Officer’.
More Xhosa’s arrived after a long walk overland in search of relatives. The flooding of the market by ‘cheap labour’ led to terrible abuse like no cash wages for the six months of indentures, which ran for three years. Some of those employed were housed in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. In July 1879 Dr Clinton, who was appointed as Medical Officer to the Africans, brought the squalor-type living conditions to the attention of the government, which had started developing. Fever broke out among the new inhabitants of Papendorp, where they were ‘huddled together in miserable cottages’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:26).
Furthermore, not all Blacks from the Eastern frontier found employment. Soon the Cape Town Council was complaining of Xhosa’s ‘perambulating the streets of Cape Town’ (Saunders, 1984:25). George Stevens of the ‘Kafir Depot’ suggested that a ‘native location’ be built for the supervision of Africans in Cape Town and District ‘with a view to affording them proper houseroom, to obviate their generation and spread of disease, as well as the very desirable end of inducing them to remain in these parts and accustom them to work for an honest livelihood’ (Cited by Saunders, 1984:26). Referring to a piece of land he earmarked towards this end, ‘locations’ still had a neutral connotation.
Towards the end of the century racist Capetonians started clamouring that the African migrants should be separated in ‘locations’.

Worker Protest87
Cape dock workers appear to have been the first labourers countrywide to come up in organised protest in defence of their interests. Mfengu dock labourers were recruited in the 1890s. In the aftermath of their renewed segregation in a location during the plague epidemic in February 1901, their protest included a strike. This time it was against their employers, the Table Bay harbour Board. From the middle of the year they also became involved in a long running dispute over whether they would have to pay the passage money involved in bringing them to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape.
There was a distinct difference to earlier disputes. This time there were many written protests and the
dock workers also appointed Alfred Mangena as their ‘Senior Secretary’ in negotiation with the Board. He took up issue around the conditions in the docks location and he accused the Board of preferential treatment of ‘Coloured’ dock workers. (Mangena was a night school teacher, saving to study law in Britain. He returned from there in 1910 as the first Black in South Africa to qualify as an attorney). The battle of the dock workers was not without success. Thus the cost of the passage money was eventually borne jointly by the Harbour Board and the Cape Government Railways, which also employed Black migrant labour. The dock workers also managed to resist an attempt by the Board to reduce their wages in November. The presence of banners during an unsuccessful strike was proof that education and literacy were beginning to be weapons at their disposal. The docks would also be the venue from where Clement Kadalie would start South Africa’s first Black trade union in 1919.

Great Strides for Jewry at and from the Cape
With the arrival of Rev Joel Rabinowitz in 1859, the Jews of South Africa for the first time acquired an active and fully recognised spiritual leader. He visited every part of the Cape colony and became acquainted with Jewish settlers wherever they went. Rabbi Joel Rabinowitz initiated benevolent compassionate co-operation between Jews like no other compatriot. Already in April 1859 he submitted for consideration to the members of the Cape Town Synagogue a society for the relief of distress. The rabbi was nicknamed the ‘Greatest beggar that ever came to South Africa’, a genius at collecting funds for every charitable or humane object (Hermann, 1935:198). He could tirelessy stress the spirit of benevolence and freedom so that he could openly and frankly say “I am a Jew” (Abrahams, 1955:27). Good seed was sown so that there was hardly any animosity at the Cape between Muslims and Jews until the end of the 20th Century. Rabbi Ornstien, in his Jewish New Year’s address of 1883 could say that in this country Jews ‘have freedom to make an honest livelihood, undisturbed by the persecutions to which their race was exposed in some other parts of the world’ (Cited in Shain, 1983:5). Boer and Jew even enjoyed an intimate relationship on the countryside. But all this was before the influx of East European Jews from the mid-1880s. However, possibly evoked by envy of Jewsih material prosperity, anti-Jeish feeling increased, also among people of colour.


A Special Clan
The Solomon clan was one the most distinguished families at the Cape for decades, many of them involved with the philantropic movement, in which Christians and Jews worked cordially side by side. Saul Solomon was decribed as a ‘fearless negrophilist’, hosting at his home Cetschwayo, the Zulu king who was defeated by the British in 1879. He was instrumental in inaugurating many of Cape Town important institutions. He advocated Voluntaryism, a principle which called for the discontinuance of State aid to religious organisations, introducing the Ecclesiasticl Grants Bill to this end in 1854. After lack of success also a second time, Solomon’s determination bore fruit when the bill became law in 1975, ‘a monument to his perseverance…’ (Abrahams, 1955:39). He was also a founder of the colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society, the Cape Town Gas company, the Cape Savings Bank and the Equitable Fire Office.
The bulk of the Solomon clan turned to Christianity – without however severing their Jewish roots. Henry Solomon, having learned Hebrew in his youth, went on to study Arabic and he devoted much of his energy at one period to social work amongst the Cape Muslims – notably together with the Rev. Joel Rabinowitz, another gigantic Jewish personality at the Cape. Marischal Murray suggested that Henry Solomon ‘deserves to be known as the father of Green and Sea Point’ in her book about the area (Murray, 1964: 34). He became an ‘ardent adherent of the Congregational Church,’ living for 56 years at Sea Point Cottage. Another brother, Edward, even became a minister. Three of his sons were knighted, Sir Richard, Sir Edward and Sir William (Murray, 1964:47). Henry possessed a good knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic, devoting himself to various religious and philanthropic causes, including social work among the Cape Muslims (Abrahams, 1955:40).
Henry and Saul Solomon became apprentices in the printing trade. Saul joined George Grieg and Co., booksellers and printers. (George Grieg joined John Fairbairn and Thomas Pringle in the fight for freedom of the press. The first newspaper of South Africa appeared in Cape Town in 1824, the South African Commercial Advertiser. Fairbairn and Pringle successfully fought the dictatorial moods of Lord Charles Somerset, even though the first newspaper was not granted a long life-span. Their endeavours achieved freedom of the press for the Cape Colony and South Africa when it was still a luxury in other parts of the world.)
The two Solomon brothers worked together in a printing firm in which Saul became a partner. The two brothers took over the firm which became known as Saul Solomon and Company, succeeding in getting the contract for printing the Government Gazette in 1841. In 1857 they became the printers of the first Cape daily newspaper, The Cape Argus, which they took over in 1863. Saul influenced public opinion for many years as editor.
The physically diminutive Saul Solomon, a product of the Lovedale educational heritage of the Glasgow Mission, became a prominent politician. He had to stand on a box when addressing Parliament. He was possibly the greatest Cape Jew ever. Having been trained alongside people of colour, ‘his leading characteristic was his desire to champion any section suffering under any disability whatsoever – civil, political, or religious… He was an earnest and powerful protector of the natives, and was frequently referred to as the negrophilist member…’ (of Parliament, Abrahams, 1955:40). Against the background of the traditional legacy of the deceit and lies of politicians, he was known to have ‘less cunning but more foresight.’ Already in 1855 it was said of him: ‘If ever he loses the support of his constituency … it will be in consequence of his being too truthful to his convictions and too uncompromising to expediency’. (Hermann, 1935:87).Saul Solomon was offered the Premiership of the Cape Colony in 1871 when it received responsible Government, but he refused.
The breed of the Jewish background Christian, who was linked to St George’s Cathedral, was rare indeed.

Polemics in the Press
The major round of polemics in the press was torevolve around aliens at the turn of the century. An influx of Jews from Eastern Europe started after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Anti-Semitism at the Cape grew to significant proportions. Certain sections of the general press assumed an aggressive attitude towards aliens. A Cape Town weekly, The Owl, became the chief exponent of anti-Jewish sentiments. The South African Review, motivated by party political considerations to discredit the Afrikaner Bond or the South African Party administration, likewise criticized the alien influx vehemently. Also the Cape Times lowered its standards at this time by printing a series of anti-Semitic letter and articles. Possibly an all-time journalistic low followed when the editor himself penned a vicious generalisation: ‘…the rapacious foreign Hebrew who never risks his own life or safety… (Cited in Shain, 1983:21). The Jewish Chronicle, the first English language Jewish newspaper of the country, which started on 7 February 1902, had a hard time trying to counter the onslaught on aliens, especially when the impression was given that Morris Alexander, a young Jewish lawyer, was writing in The Owl. The polemics continued till at least the elections of February 1904. The immigration problem was however far from solved when the Progressive Party came to power under the controversial L.S. Jameson.

A geographical base for political action
Even more important was however Lovedale’s contribution to Black political empowerment. The missionary newspaper Isigidini Sama Xhosa – which started in 1870 as the Kaffir Express – acquired its first African editor, Elijah Makiwane with its name change in 1876. Some of the first large scale attempts at the registration of voted emanated from Lovedale (Odendaal, 1984:6).
The ninth frontier war of 1877-78 marked a turning point in Black politics in South Africa. There was suddenly an upsurge of political activity with the formation of political and other voluntary organisations. The first known association was founded in 1879, the semi-political Native Educational Association (NEA), which was thus established well over thirty years before the formation of the Teachers’ League of South Africa in 1913. The NEA grew in strength when it adopted an elaborate constitution, starting to publicize its activities in the press. The laudable aim was ‘the improvement and elevation of the native races; to promote social morality and the general welfare of the natives’ (Odendaal, 1984:7).
Along with the start of the African-run newspaper the first generation of extra-tribal Black political leaders came to the fore. The next association to emerge was the Imbumba Yama Nyama, formed in Port Elizabeht in September 1882. The Imbumba was an explicitly political organisation which aimed to unite Blacks so that they could band together for national rights. It was formed in response to the growth of the Afrikaner Bond. Interesting was how they contested the White Afrikaners’ claim to a link to the soil of the continent: They claimed that their organisation was the real Afrikaner Bond while the organisation of the Afrikaners was merely the Boeren Bond (Odendaal, 1984:8). No wonder that certain missionaries, ‘perhaps feeling that their paternalistic control was slipping, criticised the movement for its political involvement’ (Odendaal, 1984:7). One of the main concerns of the Imbumba was the divisive effects of the interdenominational church conflict and rivalry as various local groups sprang up in an effort to develop political awareness.

John Tengo Jabavu
The local groups lacked the means and the organisation to spread their ideas. It was around a newspaper editor, John Tengo Jabavu, that Black political activity started to flourish. Born in 1859 near Fort Beaufort, he developed a prodigious memory while at school at Lovedale. Because there was neither table nor lamp in his parents’ hut, he could not do homework. He just had to memorise his lessons. The Healdtown prodigy became a teacher at the age of 17 years, apprenticing himself to a local newspaper while he studied further. Sual Solomon encouraged his alma mater.
Jabavu took over the editorship of Isigidini Sama Xhosa in 1881. But he soon left because the mission would not allow political matters in the paper. He also became prominent in the Native Educational Association, of which he was the Vice-president. From these platforms he protested against discriminatory practices. Actively canvassing Black support for the independent James Rose Innes with his liberal views in the election of 1884, Jabavu succeeded getting him elected to the alarm of the two main political groupings. Using his own newspaper Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Opinion), South Africa’s first independent Black newspaper, he established himself as the leader and spokesman of Black opinion. He got unfortunately embroiled in a political mix-up at the end of the century, estranging himself from large sections of Black opinion by supporting ‘Onze Jan’ Hofmeyr via his newspaper. For the first time Blacks were now divided along political lines, widening the tribal lines between the Mfengu and the Xhosa’s. The tension had been simmering ever since the former group was co-opted by the colonial forces in the frontier wars. Up to this point in time Blacks were more or less united in support of the British because of the perceived racism and condescension of Afrikaners towards them. Jabavu furthermore resisted the formation of a strong African political organisation to protect black interests, fearing that such a move could be regarded as a threat by Whites and thus retarding the development of non-racialism (Odendaal, 1984:15).
His White rivals were jealous of him, unwilling to credit Imvo’s leading articles as Jabavu’s work. Thus the Port Elizabeth Telegraph ridiculed it as containing ‘sesquipedelian words that no Kafir on side of the Tropic of Capricorn could understand or would use’ (Cited by De Kock, 1982:115). He was one of very few who resisted the temptations via Ceceil John Rhodes. Jabavu consistently showed Rhodes the door because he knew it meant eventual control (De Kock, 1982:115). It however led to the establishment of a rival Black paper by Rhodes.
Jabavu displayed an astounding understanding of the tension between Afrikaners and the British as well as displaying extraordinary political acumen. Prophetically he anticipated during the South African War that ‘the new order of things’ would change the country dramatically.

Voice of the People
In 1898 a rival newspaper was formed, Izwi Labantu (Voice of the People) A.K. Soga, the first editor. He was the son of Rev Tiyo Soga, the country’s first ordained Xhosa minister and the most prominent of the earliest group of educated Blacks. Izwi Labantu was backed by Cecil John Rhodes after he failed to get Jabavu’s support in the 1898 elections.
Along with Rev Walter Benson Rubusana, a Congregational minister, the younger Soga opposed John Tengo Jabavu. In time, Rubusana eclipsed John Tengo Jabavu as the leading Cape Black politicianWith the newspaper to publicize their activities, the Izwi group set about reviving vigilence Associations at different places, also in Natal and Transvaal. In 1898 they organised an electoral convention, calling itself the South African Native Congress (SANC), where it was decided to support Cecil John Rhodes’ Progressive Party in the forthcoming elections. At this time it was still very much an Eastern Cape affair. But the Cape newspapers were circulated to other provinces, influencing matters there. Both Izwi Labantu and Imvo Zabantsundu had a significant role in the aftermath of the Bambatha rebellion in Natal after two White police officers had been killed in February 1906 by a party of armed Zulus. The initial cause was the poll tax on all Natal male Blacks at the end of 1905. The nation-wide reaction to the Natal disturbances was ‘a cogent factor in promoting the idea of inter-African political co-opeartion throughout South Africa’ (Odendaal, 1984:68). The South African Native Congress placed the blame for the disturbances squarely on the Matal government, declared that the imposition of tax without representation was a crime.
The church however served as a breeding ground for new non-racial ideas also in the other provinces. The small class of educated Blacks were Christians, who were at the helm of Black political organisations, which were formed. All of them put a high premium on political equality regardless of colour. At the Act of Union deliberations it was specified that no matters relating to ‘native policy’ could be changed at either provincial or municipal level. In anticipation of this shift in power, black leaders came together in 1909 in Bloemfontein for the South African Natives Convention under the presidency of Rev Walter Benson Rubusana. The body represented the first attempt of Black leaders from the four colonies to undertake unified political action.

Room for liberal critical views
Over the years the columns of the Cape Times gave ample room for liberal views. Thus Leonard Barnes contributed a frank and outspoken series of articles on the subject of racial prejudice. For a newspaper circulating mainly in the White community and operating in a colonial context, the Cape Times was quite radical, giving significant space to Black viewpoints, like Dr D D.T. Jabavu declaring that Hertzog’s policies were based on ‘brute power of conquest and armed intimidation, maintaining white domination by brute force’ (Cited in Shaw, 1999:41). Already in 1930, when other newspapers expediently remained silent about rising racial tensions, the Cape Times dared to report fully how a riot developed when an angry crowd of thousands of ‘native and coloured’ demonstrators tried to march to parliament to protest against the restrictive terms of Oswald Pirow’s Riotous Assemblies Amendment Bill. The crowd demanded an interview with Pirow, the Minister of Justice. A few years later the esteemed Cape Times however possibly got to its lowest journalistic point when its editor blew into the horn of xenophobia in his attitude to Jewish immigration. Since 1921 the Cape Times was a ‘vigorous proponent of steps to control immigration from certain countries by means of a quota’ (Shaw, 1999:63).
In the run-up to World War II the sister newspaper The Cape Argus got into the hot seat when its editor Dominic McCausland got not only increasingly sceptical of the diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime minister, but he also dared to criticise Britain’s appeasement of the two dictators, Hitler and Mussolini. Having studied Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he had no illusions about the evil intentions of the German chancellor. A critical leading article of McCausland was published in the Daily Telegraph of London just at the time when the chairman of the Argus board, John Martin, was there. He cabled the Argus management and as a result McCausland was given the option of resigning with a year’s salary or dismissal with six months’ payment. McCausland resigned.

Resistance to Self-censorship
McCausland’s removal caused a lot of upheaval for the Cape Argus, ‘more odium than anything else in its history’ (Shaw, 1999:116). But also other newspapers in South Africa started targeting the dictators Hitler and Mussolini. The German regime protested, demanding from the South African government to compel newspapers to abstain from negative comments on the Nazi regime. Called in by Prime Minister Hertzog for his views on a Bill he wanted to introduce to debar South African newspapers from commenting in an unfriendly way upon the affairs of a foreign country, George Wilson, editor of the Cape Times, predicted a storm of indignation, suggesting even that the government might split because of such a move.
Herzog went ahead with the proposed bill, giving Wilson a draft copy of the censorship Bill a few weeks later. George Wilson convened a meeting with other Cape newspaper editors including A.L. Geyer of Die Burger, the Afrikaans morning daily. They agreed to stand together in opposition to the Bill.
As it happened, Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition in the British House of Commons, predicted there that the Czechs would be swallowed up in the Nazi regime. President Roosevelt denounced Hitler in the US congress in the most scathing terms. Hertzog’s draft bill would have made it impossible for any South African newspaper to publish such remarks.
By March 1939 Hitler was in Prague, thus vindicating Dominic McCausland and Winston Churchill By mid May 1939, however, Hertzog seemed to be having second thoughts, coming up with a suggestion which was to be rehashed in the apartheid days by Mr P.W Botha. Hertzog suggested that the newspapers should voluntarily agree to put restrictions upon their comments on foreign affairs or else he would be compelled to proceed with the legislation.
In June 1939 a representative congress of newspapers was called, in which the South African press vowed to resist by all means at their disposal any attempt at restrictions by the government (Shaw, 1999:19). George Wilson was elected as chairman of the Society of Editors. The creation of a society to defend the freedom of the press of course presented an awesome challenge to Hertzog and his government.
In 1960 the issue of censorship surfaced once again. The same day of the big march from Langa on 30 March 1960 a state of emergency was called by the government, giving them sweeping powers to detain people without trial and to close down newspapers which offended by publishing ‘subversive’ material. This was defined so widely that it would include almost any reporting of Black political protest or incidents of violence. Morris Broughton, the editor of the Cape Argus, bravely went ahead to publish the names of the first batch arrested under the emergency powers given to the government. The Cape Argus also dared to publish in a front-page report how a baby was shot dead on its mother’s back at Nyanga. An Anglican priest, Father Stanley Qabasi, who phoned through the information, had all the church bells in the township ringing out in protest (Shaw, 1999:165). The mother, Beatrice, had been trying to pass through an army cordon round the township to take her sick baby to the Red Cross Children’s hospital for treatment.

Xenophobia takes root
Things changed dramatically for East European Jews at the end of the 19th century, with the focus of resentment loaded on the pedlar or smous. The Jewish trader was now often ridiculed and scorned for his competitive manner and persistent methods. Soon Jews were regarded as undesirable when the problem of poor Whites got more into the media attention. Thus the Sued Afrikanische Zeitung, which targeted the growing Yiddish-speaking community at the Cape, cautioned countrymen, wishing that ‘the dirty proletariat from the Polish Russian borders would “avoid our land” where Asian problems were sufficiently serious without the addition of other people’ (Cited in Shain, 1983:5). If not a criminal, the alien was charged with unpatriotic, reaping the benefits of the British Empire. The cosmopolitan Jew was accused of working hand in hand with the other foreign threat, the Chinaman. The Jewish links to mining interests suited the charge of parasitic exploitation perfectly.
J.Gordon Sprigg, who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, emerged towards the end of the century as the champion of the destitute among the ranks of the refugees, many of whom were guilty of political offences. ‘With masterful eloquence and vigour Sprigg defended white immigration and expressed the hope that the colony’s renown as a home for refugees and the politically persecuted would be maintained’ (Shain, 1983:5).
At the Afrikaner Bond Congress of 1897 a proposal was passed to request the government to limit immigration and even the Anglican Dean of Cape Town, Rev. William Barnett-Clarke, climbed onto the dubious bandwagon with an unprovoked attack on Jews during his Good Friday sermon of 1899. Referring to the fellow citizens who were observing the Passover, he warned that they were castigating the Christians for they would not ‘countervail the truth that their forefathers crucified Christ on that day’ (Cited in Shain, 1983:50). The reported speech caused alarm in Jewish circles. After meeting with Rabbi Bender, the Dean made a lengthy apology, which Bender read from the synagogue pulpit subsequently.
A significant increase in unemployment obviously found a quite understandable drum to beat through the influx of foreigners. Numerous meetings expressed the need to control immigration. At a meeting in Woodstock in January 1904 a speaker was cheered who noted that the Cape colony was ‘infested from right to left with undesirable aliens’ (Cited in Shain, 1983:54).

Anti-Semitism followed by peaceful Co-existence
The Jewish community was now divided into two distinct language and cultural groups, the Anglo-German Jews on the one hand and the Yiddish-speaking East European Jews, who were pejoratively called Peruvians. Differences in religious practice and ritual led to a split as early as 1888.
With the outbreak of the South African war the Jewish population almost doubled to ten thousand, the bulk of them refugee paupers from the Transvaal. The increase in numbers via the East Europeans led to a rapid growth of a positive Zionism. However, the health authorities were also alerted to the Jewish influx at a time when the community was acutely sensitive to the dangers of plague and slum conditions.
An anti-alien sentiment, already exacerbated by the Jameson Raid at the end of 1895, for which Jews got a very unfair amount of blame, flared up in sections of the general press as well as in the Legislative Assembly. Clearly targeting the East European Jews, Yiddish was discriminated against. An Immigration Act was passed in 1902 to keep out those who could not write in European characters. Possibly in response to this a branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association was re-established in Cape Town. The executive comprised mostly of members of the local Hebrew Congregation with Rev. Bender using all the diplomacy he could muster, to counter the unsavoury attacks and accusations. The diplomatic approach was seen as insufficient by many of the East Europeans. In 1900 the New Hebrew congregation or Roeland Street Synagogue was established by the East European Jews. These Jews settled in District Six, Vredehoek and Gardens, whereas the Anglo-Germans resided in Green and Sea Point. The latter group got easily assimilated into the rest of the (White) population.
Rev. Bender ‘ignored or did not regard as serious, the growth of anti-Semitism at the Cape Colony’ (Shain, 1983:14). This gave rise to the need of an organ to ‘safeguard their communal interest’ as The Jewish Chronicle stated in its inaugural editorial on 7 February 1902 by the editor Lionel L Goldsmid. Bender’s ‘phlegmatic optimism… spurred Goldsmid on to greater efforts regarding his newspaper’s self-appointed role as communal guardian’ (Shain, 1983:41).
A challenge to Bender’s leadership gradually emerged in the person of Morris Alexander, who was destined to leave a significant imprint on South African politics after 1910. Alexander contributed a brilliant series of articles on Judaism in The Owl, the weekly which had contained so much anti-Semitism up to that point in time. The tide turned in favour of Jews however only changed when sympathy grew after the Kishinez atrocities in Russia became known. At a mass meeting in the Good Hope Hall in Sea Point, attended by the Anglican Dean of Cape Town, the outrages in Russia were denounced. In a special tribute, Olive Schreiner sent a letter which was read at this occasion: ‘I would welcome the exiled Russian Jew to South Africa not merely with pity, but with a feeling of pride…. (Cited in Shain, 1983:49).
With ‘no less than nine synagogues’88 in District Six, according to a prominent Jew, Dr Issy Berelowitz, who grew up in the area - as well as a Jewish bookshop in Canterbury Street - that part of Cape Town was seen as the heart of Jewry in the Mother City in the first half of the 20th century. Lithuanians are also known to have lived in the area around Chapel Street. The religious-wise tolerant and multi-racial character of that part of the growing metropolis is demonstrated by the fact that Buitenkant Street had a synagogue, the Tafelberg DRC and the (Coloured) Methodist Church in close proximity to each other, with other churches and mosques nearby.

Other feats of Jews
Jews were found among the newcomers to South Africa who ‘have exerted the greatest influence on the destinies of their adopted country.’ Two of them were the Cachet brothers, along with the Solomon clan. Ds Jan Lion Cachet, the brother of Ds Frans Lion Cachet, became a professor of Theology. It should be said however that much of their efforts was directed at the liberal theological views. These were concurrently corrected in and during the revival, with which the well-known Ds Andrew Murray became associated.
The literary activity of the Cachets was only one of quite a few feats of Jews in the field of publication. Joseph Suasso de Lima, who came to the Cape in 1816, wrote profusely in different genres, including poetry. From his hand appeared the first manual of Cape history published at the Cape, Geschiedenis van de Kaap de Goede Hoop in 1825. About the same time as John Fairbairn – who was heralded as the ‘Father of the South African Press’ - De Lima started De Versamelaar, a weekly paper and was responsible for the start of a Lutheran private school (Coetzee, 1975:??). 89 Although possessing a thorough command of Hebrew, he did not practice Judaism. In fact, he taught Christian doctrine to slave children. Not recognizing the pitfalls, he was simultaneously an enthusiastic Freemason. A masonic yearbook was one of his publications.
Another significant Jewish personality was E. Henry Solomon. Louis Herrman describes him as ‘perhaps the most active person about 1860’ (Hermann, 1935:197) in the Cape Town Jewish community, apart from Rev Joel Rabinowitz. He subsequently settled in the Eastern Cape where he founded the first synagogue. There he became one of the stalwarts of the Jewish community in Port Elizabeth.
A Jewish authoress of note was Sarah Gertrud Millin. She influenced literature in the country profoundly especially by highlighting race relations at a time when people of colour were hardly recognized. Her view of people of colour in The South Africans, (1926) was not unproblematic. On the one hand the ‘Coloured’ man is ‘more civilised than the European peasant… or the poor white’ but on the other hand she states quite categorically: ‘in no circumstances however can the coloured man hope to pass the white man’s equal.’
The first Jew to become a mayor of Cape Town was Hyman Liberman, who was in office from 1904-1907. He had a compassionate heart. When he died in 1923, a big sum was donated from his bequest for a reading room and other facilities in District Six. The Liberman Institute in Muir Street became a beacon of light. From there not only a Library operated, but UCT students in the Social Sciences also did their practical work there. The building provided a neutral venue for many a meeting in the struggle against apartheid.
Some Jewish individuals maintained relations with their Jewish family. One of them was J.C. Juta,90 whose wife was the brother of Karl Marx, the founder of Communism.91 The name of Juta – along with that of Maskew Miller – became synonymous with school books.
Due to the efforts of David Goldblatt and Morris Alexander, Yiddish was recognised as a European language for the purposes of the Alien Immigration Act. This became part of the run-up to the Jewish Board of Deputies, which was to represent all Jews in the country.
Abe Bloomberg was another mayor of Cape Town with a Jewish background, who was sympathetic to the cause of the poor, the oppressed and the needy. He also served as a ‘Coloured’ Representative in Parliament. However, the latter post occurred not without much controversy. In a sense Bloomberg was possibly elected by default because the Unity Movement called on ‘Coloureds’ to boycott the elections during which he was voted into Parliament.

Communist Factions at the Cape
In the post-1924 years the CPSA was turning more and more to organizing black workers, a process which caused it to lose most of its white members (and with it its financial backing).
In 1927 James la Guma, a Capetonian, was the CPSA delegate in Brussels at the Conference of the League against Imperialism, along with Josiah Gumede of the ANC and Daniel ?? of the Trade Union Congress. He and Gumede were invited to Germany and the Soviet Union. He was hardly back in South Africa or La Guma was invited to the Soviet Union once again. In a discussion with Nikolai Bukharin, the brilliant Russian strategist, the idea of an independent Black republic, which was to be ruled by a black majority, became prominent. Back in South Africa in 1828, he not only joined the ANC, but also the Black Republic slogan was propagated forcefully. Initially Gomas regarded the latter slogan as racist. Later the CPSA spoke more and more of a Black Republic, even though Gomas was still quite amazed at the slogan. At first he could not understand how someone like La Guma, after having sacrificed months of his life in prison for fighting against segregation, could now turn his back on that glorious past and identify himself with a separate Black state. Later Gomas accepted the slogan of Black Republic as a vehicle to ‘brainwash’ young people.
Johnny Gomas was to bear a grudge till old age, when he was not only overlooked, and three Whites sent to Moscow to represent the country at the 1928 Communist International. The Whites in the CPSA understandably had problems, especially when La Guma continued to call for Black leadership of the party. That Gomas and La Guma were also working together with other groups, was not appreciated by the CPSA leadership. When the two comrades organised a strike at the African Clothing factory in Roeland Street, they were not only called to book, but the Party leadership utilised the occasion to get rid of all troublesome guys, those who were not toeing the Stalinist line.

Unheeded warnings
The threat of the passing of the Riotous Assembly Act, clearly as an intention by the government of the day to curb the opposition, led Gomas and La Guma to organise a massive march down Adderley Street on 16 December 1929.92 Both of them were marked men. Even James La Guma’s wife was sacked at the tobacco factory where she worked, because of the trade union activities of her husband. The support of the ‘Coloured’ community – which was to become such a hallmark of the strikes in the 1980s - came to the fore when a sympathetic shopkeeper sent a weekly parcel of groceries for the family.
When other newspapers expediently remained silent about rising racial tensions, the Cape Times dared to report fully how a riot developed when an angry crowd of thousands of ‘native and coloured’ demonstrators tried to march to parliament to protest against the restrictive terms of Oswald Pirow’s Riotous Assemblies Amendment Bill. The crowd demanded an interview with Pirow, the Minister of Justice. ‘Church Square last night was turned into a battleground… A coloured man, whose name was given as John Gomas…told the crowd that ‘six million people had no direct representation in the House of Assembly’ (Shaw, 1999:66). Sadly, ‘these advance notices of even more serious unrest to come’ in the Cape Times were not heeded.

Gomas found himself fighting conservative elements in the ANC at the Easter 1930 national congress to get Josiah Gumede, re-elected as leader. Gumede and Gomas lost out. Also at the Cape the radical Gomas lost against Thaele, the Western Cape leader. At an ANC meeting in June 1930, CPSA members were barred from speaking from the platform. Gomas was heard saying: ‘… we should burn the passes and.fight against the slave laws.’ Along with three other radicals, Elliot Tonjeni, Daniel Leepile and Bransby Ndobe who opted for ‘active extremism’, Gomas formed the Independent ANC (I-ANC). They lashed the ‘good boy leadership’ who in their opinion had become ‘a mere tool of the government, sabotaging the attempts of the masses to free themselves’ and propagated the Black Republic. Tonjeni and Bransby toured the Western Cape and the southwestern districts, establishing branches with great success.
At this time La Guma founded what he called the Fifteen Group, coming together for all sorts of discussions around the liberation struggle in his backyard in District Six. To this group belonged Abdurasiet Brown who had been charged for criticising the new South African flag as well as Christian Ziervogel. The latter was the librarian at Liberman Institute and an autodidact who was called professor by all and sundry.
When the franchise was given to White women but not to Black women in 1931, there was a slight upsurge of opposition, but the ANC sunk into inactivity at the Cape while trade unionism virtually died out because of the government oppression.
By 1934 The Lenin Club was formed in Cape Town. It was dubbed ‘Trotskyist’, even though they were by far not adhering to the ‘permanent revolution’ notion of the famous socialist. The Lenin Club nevertheless split the Cape communists in two camps, Johnny Gomas went to the Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA), which gradually became less influential. After Gomas was imprisoned at a stone-throwing incident during a strike because of retrenchments during the 1931 depression, Dr Abdurahman was called in to treat him after he had contracted pleurisy. He objected initially to be examined by Dr Abdurahman because he despised the APO politician at this time, calling him ‘the arch-lackey of the ruling class.’

Cape Communists make their mark
The Communist Party was the most non-racial party at the Cape during the first half of the twentieth Century. Also in Johannesburg this was the case until a major purge in the early 1930s.) In different ways they networked with trade unions and other groups who fought for the underdogs. Thus one could find them supporting the Women’s Enfranchisement League. On 21 January a meeting was held in a (Methodist) church hall in Green market Square with Ruth Alexander in the chair, along with Mrs. Roman, a ‘coloured’ school principal and Nellie Abdurahman, the wife of the APO (African People’s Organisation) leader (Alexander Simons, 2004:56).93 The role of communists in the acquisition of the vote for women in 1930 has not generally been appreciated.
An Afrikaner academic, Jean van der Poel, translated the Communist Manifesto into Afrikaans (She was to become a prominent historian at UCT in the 1960s and 1970s, a successor to no less than Professor Eric Walker). Eddie Roux was another Cape Communist academic. At the end of March 1930 he was dismissed by the Ministry of Agriculture because of his political activities. He decided to launch a new paper. He obtained a printing press from Sydney Bunting, a leading communist who had been expelled during the internal feuding in the party. Umsebenzi (The worker) was finally launched on 18 April 1930. It exposed the new oppressive laws – including the 1930 amendment to the Riotous Assemblies Act which enabled Oswald Pirow, the Minister of Justice, to banish and arrest people. On 16 December 1930, Umsebenzi and the Communist Party appealed to Blacks to burn their passes on the day called Dingaan’s Day. The apartheid government later changed it to the Day of the Covenant and later to Day of the Vow.
Trade unionism was very much in the doldrums at the Cape when Solly Sachs, another Jew, made his mark.94 He was banned from the Communist Party in the early 1930s, but his wife was the typist of Moses Kotane, the dynamic General Secretary of the Communist Party and Cape ANC leader. Kotane lived in Clifton with the communist activist Eddie Roux in the pre-Group Areas days. The stalwart Jewess Ray Alexander helped start a union for female laundry workers as a fifteen-year old, only days after arriving in the Mother City in November 1929 (Alexander Simons, 2004:50). She was prominent in the revival of the trade union movement in the 1930s and 1940s until she was banned in October 1953. Like a Jack in the box she rose, ‘turning her energies to organising a national movement designed to bring together women across racial lines to fight against racial and economic injustice.’ (Alexander Simons, 2004:10).

Christianity, Judaism and Islam co-existed next to each other fairly amicably in the 20th century at the Cape till the advent of apartheid’s Group Areas legislation, notably in District Six. The synagogues best known were those in Buitenkant, Constitution, Roeland and Van der Leur Streets and two in nearby Vredehoek. Even today many Muslims are still working with and for Jews without any feelings of rancour, although isolated radical elements within the Muslim community did try to stir up anti-Jewish sentiments from time to time for example when discrimination towards the Palestinians in Israel tarnished the image of Zionism towards the end of the century.

Destruction of indigenous culture?
Before we take a closer look at mission work in the 20th century, it is appropriate to consider missiological tenets of the work at the Cape over the years. Humanist anthropologists have been claiming that mission work destroys the indigenous culture. To some extent, this has indeed happened at the Cape. However, with regard to the Khoi, the contrary is more true to fact. One can safely assume that the pioneering work of Georg Schmidt probably saved the local Khoi from extinction at that time. In fact, word got around so widely about this aspect of the Moravian work at Baviaans Kloof, that Schwinn - one of the three Moravian missionaries who arrived in 1792 - was asked to come and assist Kicherer and the LMS work at the Sak River. There was no transport available to bring him to the interior. He utilised a unexpected offer to return to Europe in stead.
A tragic tendency can be observed in the preaching of the Gospel in general. The pastors approached the slaves with ‘the European mentality of superiority’ (Cilliers, J.I., 1997:164), which could hardly have given them credibility with the indigenous people. Furthermore, discrimination was the order of the day, also in the church. A condescending attitude towards the natives was the common pattern. Not much has changed since then. They hardly gave any encouragement for the indigenous people and slaves to read or interpret the Bible themselves. Yet, there was also the occasional exception. In one of his sermons, Rev. Morgan of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church acknowledged class distinctions in the early church, but he stressed that ‘they were utterly repudiated and condemned by the Apostles, and in the Church of Christ there is to be ‘no respect of persons’ (Cuthbertson, 1981:60.).
The Gospel that was preached was also being castrated in another respect. The individualistic European pattern of that time was the vogue. Sadly also the missionaries at the Cape negated the New Testament principle and practice of full sharing - that is so near to traditional African communal custom - to all intents and purposes.
The majority of missionaries at the Cape definitely had an imperialist spirit, being more interested in winning souls for their own denomination than bringing people to a living faith. This obviously had a negative effect on Muslim Outreach. This may be one of the causes of the cowardly mutual tolerance, which prevails to this day: ‘You have your religion, I have mine.’ The latter attitude - combined with indifference of Christians - effectively prevented them from sharing the Gospel with their Muslim neighbours in areas like District Six. A negative factor was the emphasis on spreading ‘civilisation’. Thus one found that even within the confines of the S.A. Mission Society (SAMS) this was stated as the motivation for mission work. None less than Dr James Adamson of St. Andrew’s was quoted, saying that mission work was imperative ‘ter beschaving en bekering der wereld’ (cited in Els, 1971:31) noting the order of civilisation before conversion as typical of the sense of priorities. The aforementioned attitude and the indifference of the church led to the deceptive deduction in due course that the Islamic Allah and the God of the Bible are identical. That the New Testament portrays God as the Father of Jesus, clearly distinguishes Him from the aloof Allah of the Qur’an who has no Son. 95
The early missionaries understood much better to incorporate their converts in the spreading of the good news. George Barker examined five women in 1816, prior to their baptism. He discovered that ‘not one of them attributed the beginning of the work of grace in their hearts to the preaching of the Missionaries, but to their own people (Hottentots) speaking to them’ (Quoted in Elbourne, 1992:9). In fact, if the missionaries had been open to learn something from the so-called ‘primitive’ African communal life style, interesting dynamics might have developed. Even in the late 1970s scorn and opposition was encountered when it was suggested that Europeans could learn from Africans. At the beginning of the new millennium that would probably still be the case in many circles.

Cecil John Rhodes – a genius but a shrewd imperialist
The joining of forces between Jan Hofmeyr and his Afrikaner Bond with the party of the premier Cecil John Rhodes to keep people of colour out of the parliament of the Cape Colony, was definitely not divinely inspired. This also happened with the so-called ‘ticket of four’, when four White candidates pooled their resources to stand against Achmat Effendi, the son of the imam who came from Turkey. The four - T.F. Fuller, J. Brown, H. Beard and L. Weiner - fought the elections under the same banner, to make sure that Effendi would be kept out of the legislative venue.
The feats of Cecil John Rhodes, after floating the De Beers Mining Company and who entered Parliament in 1881 at the age of 28, were regarded as startling. His maiden speech was revolutionary – mentioning fellow members by name - but this was quite a dicey issue for the young parliamentarian. Amalgamating the Kimberley diamond mines and forming the British South Africa company were feats, which brought prosperity to the country. His methods were described as employing rather more finesse than the statesmen of Downing Street’.
To achieve his goals Rhodes were all too often unethical, using underhand methods. His plan called for the isolation of Paul Kruger’s Transvaal, denying the Boer Republic an outlet to the sea. In due course the Transvaal would thus be forced to join South Africa. Shrewdly and clearly calculatedly Rhodes befriended ‘Onze Jan’, J.H. Hofmeyer, the leader of the Afrikaner Bond, well aware that the latter’s support was essential if his schemes were to be backed in the Cape Parliament.
At the age of 38 Cecil John Rhodes already wielded immense power. He was by then the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and a mine magnet with many shares and leadership in the gold and diamond fields.

An unholy alliance
The unholy alliance of Hofmeyr and Rhodes were doomed and described as immoral and ‘bonds of dishonest association’. The Christian Express editorial of September 1894 which used these words, prophesied that the combination, along with Rhodes’ role in the infamous Glen Grey Act, would inflict its own punishment. The editor castigated Rhodes and his clique for this ‘iniquitous’ Act, admitting the ‘vicious principle of legislation by proclamation’ and allowing ‘eviction from the land on wholly frivolous grounds.’ The same periodical had been critical 8 years earlier, after the Glen Grey lands – which had originally been given to a section of the Tembu tribe in 1852 by Sir George Cathcart – had been sold. The 1886 move was nothing than pretence for land robbing, which Rhodes tried to legalise. The Christian Express editorial of October 1886 described this clearance of a region of its population as ‘a crime as well as well as a blunder.’
The Glen Grey Bill would be part of a series of laws, which gives credence to Van Schoor’s (1951:13) statement that the Cape ‘laid the foundation of the modern Colour Bar system’. The mines of Kimberley were according to him furthermore ‘the birthplace of ideas and practices which were later to become the law and policy of the land.’ Aptly, according to Majeke, the Glen Grey Act can be said to mark the end of one period, the military conquest of the Africans, and the beginning of the period of economic exploitation. Rhodes made no secret of his motives, White supremacy, in similar style as Verwoerd a few decades later: ‘If the Whites maintain their position as the supreme race, the day may come when we shall be thankful that we have the natives with us in their proper position.’ He explained what he meant by the latter phrase in the same speech, part of the second reading of the bill: ‘Now I say, the natives are children…They have human minds and I would like them to devote themselves wholly to the local matters that surround them.’
In fact, although Verwoerd has been dubbed the architect of inferior Bantu Education, he may have taken his cue from Cecil John Rhodes, who said way back in 1894 after a visit to Lovedale ‘These people will not go back and work… The regulations of these industrial schools should be framed by the government, otherwise these Kaffir parsons would develop into agitators against the government.’
The discrepancy and simultaneous dishonesty of Rhodes came to the fore when he first called for equal rights for every White man South of the Zambezi, but then tried to bribe Kimberley’s ‘Coloured’ voters when he changed ‘White’ to ‘civilized’. Aptly Van Schoor deduced that the period 1870 to 1910 as the ‘final destruction of the independence of the indigenous peoples.’ He also summarized: ‘The Act of Union was the gravestone of Non-European political rights, fashioned by Carnarvon, Selborne and Milner, and put into position by Botha and Smuts.’(Van Schoor,??)
In a similar fashion the ‘liberal’ Cape parliament of the late 19th century passed a law which legalized the possession of properties in the city centre, which prevented descendants from claiming back the properties of their forefathers. Thus ‘Coloureds’ who possessed the title deeds of the land on which the Barclays ABC Branch was built, had no rights to claim anything. Dullah Omar, the Minister of Justice after 1994, revealed this about one of his clients when he was still practicing as a lawyer.

Start of the Cape Times
Frederick St. Leger, the Anglican clergyman who started the Cape Times - the new Cape Town morning paper in 1876 - was at first sceptical at the possible clash of interests. Thus the Cape Times said on 18 July 1890: ‘whatever success Rhodes had attained was due to in the first place to honourable and courageous enterprise’, but warned that circumstances could arise where the colony and the British South Africa Company could be at variance in matters of detail. The independent St. Leger had been editor of the short-lived Daily News, refusing to write a leading article according to instructions. The Cape Times was the first daily in the country (Other papers established before 1976 like the Cape Argus and the Natal Witness were started as weeklies or bi-weeklies and became dailies after the Cape Times was well established.)
Before long, St. Leger was vindicated with regard to these reservations. Rhodes compounded his conflicts of interest in the folly of the Jameson Raid. It is tragic that Rhodes indeed tried to buy influence. From its inception, St. Leger modelled the Cape Times on The Times of London. He scorned following its thrice-weekly competitor, the Standard and Mail, in featuring gossip and scandals, which he denounced as ‘the literature of the gutter’ (Shaw, 1999:2).
St. Leger’s successor, Edmund Garrett, continued the lofty ideals of journalistic excellence and political independence. Revolted by the gross manifestations of racial prejudice, he lashed out against the brutal violence against Blacks which he encountered at the Cape.
Both St. and Leger Garratt insisted on high standards in public administration in local or central government. It was the Cape Times which exposed the Logan scandal, when Rhodes fraudulently gave a railway contract to a friend, Mr J.D. Logan.

Birth and growth of the Newspaper Press Union
In September 1880 the big-hearted Saul Solomon was struck by tragedy when his five-year old daughter and her governess drowned. Solomon, who married late in life and adored the child, lost interest in the Cape Argus. The upright Saul Solomon had hardly given up the control of the Cape Argus, when Rhodes put up the money for Francis Dormer to buy the paper. Rhodes did this in the strictest secrecy via an agent in the middle of the Grand Parade in July 1881 (De Kock, 1982: 110). Basil Williams, one of Rhodes’s biographers, suggested that the deal was intended to make sure of a paper that would always print his speeches and ‘… at the same time assuring the editor would never attempt to interfere with the opinions expressed in its columns’ (Shaw,??). Having been a teacher originally, Francis Dormer fought in the Ninth Frontier War (1877) as well as in the Zulu War two years later. He simultaneously reported on the wars in the later case for Saul Solomon’s Cape Argus.
At this time the press in general was scattered, ‘at the mercy of vested interested and of government, often sued in court and with the threat of new tighter libel laws hanging over its head’ (De Kock, 1982:10). Into this scene stepped the 28 year old Francis Dormer, the founder of the Argus Company. De Kock describes him as ‘possibly the most important newspaperman in overall terms’ of South Africa’s press history, possessing the ‘rare combination of journalist, who could toss off a leading article in brilliant style, and far-sighted administrator.’ This foresight brought him to organise a press congress in Grahamstown in November 1882 with a colleague, R.W. Murray of the Cape Times. This press congress was the birth of the Newspaper Press Union (NPU). What was so amazing that they could get twenty six men from vastly different political persuasions – only a year after the fierce fight at Majuba. Amazingly, the men in Grahamstown included the editor of Die Afrikaanse Patriot, the newspaper recognised as having led the Transvaal sentiment, which culminated in Majuba. In South Africa’s divided press Dormer was a bridge-builder, setting a standard that many presidents of the NPU would emulate. A sad black spot transpired when the 1912 congress of the NPU insensitively brushed aside the contribution of John Tengo Jabavu, barring Black editors and proprietors of membership.
The upright Francis Dormer, an inveterate traveller, was unwittingly soon ensnared in Rhodes’s imperial scheme. He formed the Argus Printing and Publishing Company in 1886 with him one of two directors. Rhodes was represented by a nominee. In 1889 he acquired the Eastern Star in Johannesburg.He reconstituted the company, starting newspapers as far away as Rhodes’ territories. He also coined the name Rhodesia when he began the Rhodesia Herald.

Moral Decline
Worst was to come when Rhodes declined to demand the resignation of Sir James Sivewright, a Cabinet Minister. The latter had fraudulently given a railway contract to a friend, Mr J.D. Logan, for bars and refreshment rooms along the railway line from Cape Town to the Free State. Within a few months the first Rhodes Cabinet broke up. He lost the services of Rose Innes, the Attorney-General, J.W. Sauer, the Colonial Secretary and John X. Merriman, his treasurer. Some have seen his refusal to fire Sivewright as the turning point in Rhodes’s career, marking a moral decline and an increasing carelessness about the means used in achieving his aims. In this context the first great mistake of Rhodes can be regarded as an important step to create the circumstances, which made the catastrophic and underhand Jameson Raid possible.
Rhodes got into a position of influence at the Cape Times when a close friend of him, Dr Rutherford Harris, was allowed to put capital into the newspaper in 1892. St. Leger, the founder of the paper, saw this paper merely as a financial transaction, which he however had to regret. Harris, who had been a doctor in Kimberley and an early associate of Rhodes, was ‘unscrupulous and unprincipled in politics’ (Shaw, 1975:??) He became deeply embroiled in the conspiracy which preceded the Jameson Raid. This severely embarrassed the Cape morning newspaper which had built up an excellent reputation, ‘easily the greatest organ of opinion in South Africa.’ (G.A.L. Green, who became a distinguished editor of the Cape Argus, as cited by Shaw, 1975:44.) In no time Rhodes was in control of the Argus Company, which included - apart from the influential Cape Argus and the Star in Johannesburg - ‘at least one paper in every state or colony south of the Zambezi’ The freedom of the press got a big blow, although Rhodes appeared not to interfere too obviously.
Furthermore, the imperialist Rhodes encountered the spirit of independence from the Western Cape when he wanted to get rid of ‘an opposing political gadfly’ (De Kock, 1982:12). Rhodes offered J.E. de Jong the owner of the Boland newspaper the Worcester Advertiser a huge sum. The Dutch master printer responded with : ‘Mijn pen en mijn ink verkoop ik niet’.
Francis Dormer took the painful step in 1895 to leave the company he founded, convinced that Rhodes’s shares in newspapers was driving the country to disaster. By then Rhodes had wrapped himself firmly around many sections of the press. The first daily newspaper to appear in Afrikaans/ Dutch, Het Dagblad of Ds. S.J. du Toit, was another scalp. Dormer’s offer to buy back all Rhodes’s shares in the Argus Company was declined.
Dormer met Rhodes in 1897 in De Aar, where he tried to stop the polarising forces which Rhodes had unleashed among the press. When Dormer pointed out how his successor at The Star R.J. Pakeman ‘was doing incalcuble harm to very cause which it was supposed to advocate’, forcing the Transvaal government to suppress the paper, Dormer was stunned by the callous reply: ‘That is exactly what I want: it will be another nail in their coffin’ (Cited in De Kock, 1982:114). He concluded sadly that Rhodes was guilty of a ‘vulgar pasion for personal revenge’ and capable of ‘working untold eveil in the land’ (F.J. Dormer, Vengeance as Policy in Afrikanderland, a plea for a new departure, 1901 p.21).

Birth of a language
It honours Afrikaners that from their ranks, Theo du Plessis dared to point out, through his research into the history of Afrikaans, that the monument for the start of the language should have been built in Bo-Kaap and not in Paarl. Achmat Davids, a resident of Bo-Kaap hereafter showed in his doctoral thesis how Afrikaans was first written in Arabic script in Bo-Kaap.
Opposition to the policy of Anglicization has been recorded as early as the 1830s when Ds Herold, who came to Stellenbosch from George, wrote a letter to the Colonial Secretary, stating that the Dutch parents were not prepared to send their children to a teacher incapable of conversing in the Dutch language. Yet, the language issue did not weigh that heavily yet. At the private school which was started by the Rhenish Mission society in Stellenbosch, German and English were used.
Arnoldus Pannevis, a Dutch school teacher who came to the Mother City in 1866, noticed that the people at the Cape were speaking a language which was quite distinct from Dutch. He was driven by a passion to see the Bible translated into the language spoken by the people. However, he was met with derision for his idea to have the Bible translated into a patois, a kombuistaal.96 Pannevis’ plea with the British and Foreign Bible Society was flatly refused: ‘We are by no means inclined to perpetuate jargons by printing them.’ Ds S. J. du Toit, one of his pupils, was joined by Casparus P. Hoogenhout in the founding of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners.
The Jewish-background Ds Jan Cachet later became one of the stalwarts in the fight for the recognition of Afrikaans. It is significant that this warrior - who was born and raised in Holland - encouraged Afrikaners to fight for the preservation of the language. He did this at a time when the Afrikaners were about to give up the fight for their language (Dekker, Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis, 1980:32). When they discovered that an Afrikaans Bible would be useful for Whites as well, Pannevis’ idea suddenly was good enough to pursue. The Genootskap’s official organ, Die Patriot, written in Afrikaans, gave the fledgling language its decisive push. In 1889 Ds S.J. du Toit made it his life’s work to translate the Bible. Because many South Africans opposed his political views, his Bible translations were unpopular.
An important contribution to the movement for recognition was that of the Capetonian Melt Brink, who was born on the corner of Long and Strand Streets of the Mother City. Significant was that he had actually only had three years of formal schooling. A work of prose by Gustav Preller in 1906 about Piet Retief, the famous Voortrekker, seemed to give some breath to the movement, but with the death of Ds S.J. du Toit in 1911, it seemed as if the momentum was lost, as if it as had run out of steam.
In the meantime another language was coming into its own. The small missionary-educated class of Blacks, especially those who came through Healdtown and Lovedale, were more and more convinced that the press provided them with a good channel for political expression. The missionary newspaper Isigidini Sama Xhosa – which started in 1870 as the Kaffir Express – was on hand for this purpose.

The idolising of the language
It is tragic that the Afrikaners made an idol out of the language, even building a monument for it in Paarl. In terms of spiritual warfare, we discern how easily Satan can turn a worthy cause into idolatry,97 which is often linked to lies and deception. This was also the case with the monument in Paarl. The deletion of Nederduits from the name of the Dopperkerk, the Gereformeerde Kerk, signals the effort of an indigenization process, which was surely a healthy development. However, the way in which Ds Jan Lion Cachet and his Cape colleague, Ds S.J. Du Toit went about matters was not lovingly enough to prevent tensions with other Afrikaners. Du Toit and his compatriots like ‘Onze Jan’ Hofmeyr, who started the Afrikaner Bond in 1881, could not prevent an ugly racism and xenophobia being fostered. The germ of resentment - against verengelsing, i.e in opposition to British imperialism – provided the breeding ground for the Uitlander problem, fifty years after Somerset’s enforcement of English as the only official language. When Indians and East European Jews entered the country in numbers of consequence, the foreigners were seen as a problem, instead of regarding them as a blessing and a challenge for mutual enrichment. That should have been the biblically inspired reaction.
The idolising of the language and the mythologizing of the Dutch-Voortrekker heritage on the one hand along with the British imperialist spirit, which had one of its most ardent proponents in Cecil John Rhodes, would ultimately combine to lead to war between the two main European language groups of the subcontinent at the end of the 19th century, the South African or Anglo-Boer War.

Paternalism breeds secession
In the attitude towards people of colour there was a lot of goodwill among Whites at the turn of the century. A problem was that even radical thinkers among them hardly ever consulted people of colour. Proper consultation could possibly have averted many a crisis. From the earliest days at the Cape the ‘natives’ were regarded as inferior, their culture despised. Paternalism was rife.
This gave rise to the secessionist ‘Ethiopian movement’. The ‘Ethiopians’ have been typified by the sentence: “We have come to pray for the deliverance of Blacks’ (Cited in Elphick et al, 1997:212). The ideological link went back to the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 and the church, which developed in that country without mediation of Western Churches. The term ‘Ethiopian’ was derived from the concept that the first indigenous church on African soil started in Ethiopia. The ‘Ethiopian’ movement started in different parts of South Africa as breakaway congregations from the Methodist churches. Disillusioned by the imperfections of colonial society, they withdrew from white-dominated structures to from exclusively African organisations. Their policy was to throw off the shackles of White domination and reassert their former independence, while retaining at the same time what they considered to be the best elements of European civilisation. The secessionist ‘Ethiopian movement’ really took off when the separatist ideas spread to the Witwatersrand after the discovery of gold. The first ‘Ethiopian church was established in Pretoria in 1892 after black Wesleyan (Methodist) ministers had been excluded from a meeting of White colleagues. In a sense the good teaching of the Methodists backfired when they tried to make the indigenous independent, because the missionaries kept on patronizing their congregants of colour.
By 1902, Ethiopianism was used for the entire indigenous church movement. For the ‘rebel’ Black churchmen, Ethiopia was the model land where Blacks were ruling their own country. In America a separate church had been started among Negroes as the American Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). It was only natural that the ‘Ethiopian’ Methodists of South Africa linked up with them. Bishop Levi Coppin was sent here as the first Black bishop. The AMEC headquarters were to be in District Six.

The missionary drive slowed down
Secessions affected all denominations (Odendaal, 1984:26). Significant was the missionary drive of the new separatist church. The secessions start seems to have drowned the desire to bring the Gospel to the rest of the continent, even to the Sudan and Egypt. James Dwane, who was earmarked to be ordained as the first South African bishop of the merged AMEC, reflected on the broad aims of the movement: ‘Africa must not be evangelised by Europeans, not even by American blacks, but by real Africans’ (Cited in Odendaal, 1984:26). A negative facet of Ethiopianism was the tendency to polarise, by blackening everybody who did not join them. Lovedale-trained Elijah Makiwane concluded: ‘Those who refuse to join this movement are now called white men or Britons’ (Cited in Odendaal, 1984:83).

Empowering the underdogs
The AMEC played a significant role in the liberation struggle, by enabling South Africans of colour to study in the USA. Among the very prominent ones were the social worker and teacher Charlotte Maxeke and Frances Gow. Charlotte Maxeke toured the USA in the 1890s with an African choir. She remained in the States to study at Wilberforce University in Ohio, where she graduated with a B.S. in 1905, the first Black woman from South Africa to earn a bachelor’s degree.98 After her marriage to a South African overseas and their return to the country, the couple impacted many Blacks. The couple was worldwide surely of one the first instances when indigenous folk opened a Bible School as they did on behalf of the AMEC in 1908. One of these persons influenced at the Cape was Rev. Zaccheus Mahabane, who was to become an influential personality in the ANC for many decades. Charlotte Maxeke founded the women’s league of the ANC.
Cape-born Frances Gow returned from the USA with a doctorate, becoming a bishop in the denomination in 1956, one of the first western-trained bishops on the continent who was not self-appointed. The AMEC denomination - with its origins among the Negroes of the USA - was a great propagator of the indigenisation of the church at the Cape. Under Dr Gow’s leadership – he only became their bishop in 1956 - the church expanded rapidly, at least numerically, with churches in different parts of the Peninsula.
Another influential figure at the Cape was Henry Sylvester Williams, a black lawyer who hailed from Trinidad in the West Indies. He came to Cape Town in October 1903, with the intention to build Pan-Africanism and to see British status coming into being for all Black people in the British Empire. When he and Bishop Levi Coppin saw how the ‘Coloureds’ were distancing themselves from the ‘Africans’, they thought that the ‘Coloureds’ might be the next to be segregated residentially (Blacks had been dumped in Ndabeni in 1901). They discerned all the ingredients of divide and rule when John Tobin, one of the early leaders of the African Peoples’ Organization (APO), looked for reconciliation between ‘Coloureds’ and Whites who also spoke Afrikaans. Tobin and his supporters were angered by what they regarded as the betrayal of the British in the run-up to the Anglo-Boer War.

Assistance in Resistance from Abroad
An interesting feature of the resistance against oppression of all sorts was the assistance by foreigners. A move at the Cape supplied the seed for the birth of Pan Africanism on South African soil. F.Z.S. Peregrino was a West African who had an office in Tyne Street, just off Hanover Street in District Six. As a recruiting officer for Jamaicans, he not only looked after their interests, but he also sought to promote broader Africanism. In the draft constitution of the ‘Coloured Men’s Protectorate and Political Association…of the Cape of Good Hope,’ which he founded in 1890 (??), an article states that the organization wanted to ‘become part of the Pan African Association of England.’ Towards the end of 1900 Peregrino launched another African-controlled newspaper, the South African Spectator. He said that it was an organ for all ‘the people who are not white’ (Cited in Odendaal, 1984:49). The paper adopted a high moral tone, carrying no advertisements for alcohol, fortune telling or other activities he though could undermine the morals of the populace. To instil race pride in Blacks, articles were published n teir world-wide advancements and achievements.
The slogan ‘Africa for the Africans’ has often been branded as Black racism. It is hardly known that a White missionary from New Zealand was actually one of the first protagonists of the principle. Joseph Booth, who was born in Derby, England, wrote a booklet with the title Africa for the Africans in 1897. He worked as a farmer in New Zealand until he experienced a missionary call in 1892. His unorthodox approach to mission work and his schemes for African self-help and advancement eventually created friction with colonial authorities. He was barred from Central Africa around 1903 as an alleged supporter of Ethiopianism or African religious separatism (Karis and Carter, Volume 4, 1977:10).
Another influential figure was Henry Sylvester Williams, a black lawyer who hailed from Trinidad in the West Indies. He came to Cape Town in October 1903, with the intention to build Pan-Africanism and to see British status coming into being for all Black people in the British Empire. When he and Coppin saw how the ‘Coloureds’ were distancing themselves from the ‘Africans’, they thought that the ‘Coloureds’ might be the next to be segregated residentially. (In 1901 Blacks were dumped in Ndabeni.) They saw all the ingredients of divide and rule given when John Tobin, one of the early leaders of the African Peoples’ Organization (APO), looked for reconciliation between the ‘Coloureds’ and White Afrikaners who also spoke Afrikaans. John Tobin and his supporters were angered by what they regarded as the betrayal of the British in the run-up to the Anglo-Boer War.

Africa for the Africans
John Langalibele Dube was a Zulu patriot but an opponent of ‘narrow tribalism’ simultaneously. The rising generation of militant African nationalists came to look upon him as a parochial figure. Looking back in history, we discern that the country had been blessed with a gifted Christian, whose potential could not be fully exploited because of racial prejudice. As a sixteen year old Dube went to America where he also travelled and gave talks on self-help for the Blacks of South Africa. He returned to the USA in 1897, this time to study theology for three years. Ordained in the Congregational church, he was one of the delegation to London in 1909, to lobby against the colour bar in the Act of Union. Unable to attend the founding conference of the South African National Native Congress (later the name was changed to the ANC), he was elected in absentia as its first president.
Joseph Booth was in Cape Town in 1912-13, living from rent off boarders in his home. One of these boarders was the great D.D.T. Jabavu. Booth drew up an ambitious scheme which would train Blacks in modern skills and give them a base for greater self-assertion. He enlisted support from Sol Plaatje and Rev. John L Dube, but nothing came of the schemes. In 1914 Booth went to Basutoland (today’s Lesotho) where he worked as an independent missionary (Karis and Carter, Volume 4, 1977:10).
But also clergymen who thought along similar lines were side-lined, although not to the same extent. One of the most prominent second half of the 19th century church leaders was Bishop John William Colenso of Natal. In the eyes of many church people he was suspect because he ‘advocated revolutionary and unpopular missionary policies’ - which included his advocacy on behalf of the unjust treatment of Langalibele, a Zulu leader. Colenso also asserted very firmly that the Christian gospel possessed definite social implications. He was for many Whites too radical when he tried to ‘leaven African culture and its social system with the gospel’, as De Gruchy worded it so aptly. Thus he was very critical of Bishop Robert Gray’s effort to turn Xhosas ‘into good Anglicans fitted for English society’ by taking them to Zonnebloem College in District Six for training.

Prayer as the Key to the Missionary Problem
Dr Andrew Murray put in practice what he had taught about ‘waiting on the Lord’ when he was invited to be a speaker at the World Missions conference in New York, 1900 - billed as the biggest ever to be held. (At this time the effect of the Enlightenment and rationalism had significantly diminished belief in unseen forces like the Holy Spirit.) Andrew Murray had no inner peace about going to New York, not even after the organizers tried to use his famous friend Dwight Moody to entice him. Moody invited Murray to join him in outreaches in the USA after the World Missions conference, but Murray was not to be swayed. He felt morally bound to stay with his people because of the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). We may safely surmise that Murray was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, only wanting to take instructions from the Lord.
Murray’s subsequent absence at the conference ironically became the biggest cause of missions in the 20th century. After he received the papers and discussions at the conference, Murray wrote down what he thought was lacking at the event in a booklet: The Key to the Missionary Problem. This book had an explosive influence on the churches in Europe, America and South Africa. In the booklet Murray referred prominently to the 24-hour prayer watch of the Moravians. It called seriously for new devotion and intensive prayer for missions. Murray powerfully stated that missionary work is the primary task of the church, and that the pastor should have that as the main goal of his preaching. These sentiments were repeated in a small booklet he called Foreign Missions and the week of Prayer, January 5-12, 1902 - formulating that ‘missions are the supreme end of the church’. He furthermore suggested that ‘to join in united prayer for God’s Spirit to work in home churches a true interest in, and devotion to missions (is) our first and our most pressing need.’ (??)
One of Andrew Murray’s classic statements of the early 20th century was that ‘God is a God of missions.’ He wrote powerfully in his book The Kingdom of God in South Africa (1906): ‘Prayer is the life of missions. Continual, believing prayer is the secret of vitality and fruitfulness in missionary work. The God of missions is the God of prayer’ (Murray, 1906:??).
It is surely no mere co-incidence that revivals broke out in different parts of the world in the years hereafter - in such divergent countries as Wales, Norway, India and Chile.99 (The effect of the Welsh revival on Korea has been highlighted by Patrick Johnstone. That country is fast becoming the second biggest missionary sending nation of the world in the 21st century.) The Cape was used in this way by God to get missionary endeavour as a worldwide priority, an important spur to the conference at Edinburgh in 1910. In turn, this conference can be regarded as a forerunner of the World Council of Churches. (An interesting fact is that William Carey had proposed a hundred years earlier for a missions’ conference to be held at the Cape of Good Hope.)
Andrew Murray summarized the link between the Holy Spirit and missions as follows: ‘No one can expect to have the Holy Ghost unless he is prepared to be used for missions. Missions are the mission of the Holy Ghost.’ The first of the triennial General Missionary conferences was convened in 1904, very much prepared through prayer. These conferences surely contributed greatly in the run-up to the world event in Edinburgh in 1910.

More blows to the legacy of Murray
The Anglo-Boer War brought estrangement between groups, which had worked together closely, although many Afrikaners which had been interned during the war, offered themselves for missions thereafter. This was counter-acted by a positive spirit that was fostered by triennial General Missionary conferences, the first of which took place in Cape Town in 1904, chaired by Dr James Stewart of Lovedale fame, spawned the creation of a feeling of unity. This was previously non-existent. The promotion of missionary comity was thus founded upon a better acquaintance and appreciation of one another.
The legacy of Murray was given a serious blow when Professor Johannes Du Plessis of the University of Stellenbosch was accused of heretic teaching and finally axed to all intents and purposes in 1930. The way in which the inquest was conducted was far from fair, actually sad when one considers that Du Plessis had written the standard biography of Andrew Murray.
Nevertheless, at least one of Andrew Murray’s disciples, Petrus le Roux, did not inherit this negative trend. He was deeply influenced by Murray to become a missionary to the Zulu’s and ordained eerwaarde100 (i.e. as a Dutch Reformed missionary) in 1893 at Wakkerstrooom in the Eastern Transvaal.Within seven years Le Roux had 2000 members, attributing his success to ‘good, earnest, native preachers’ (Hofmeyr, Pillay, 1994:187).
Furthermore, the S.A. War also brought estrangement between denominations that had previously worked together closely. This was the direct cause for Rev. Pepler to ask at a meeting of the SAMS directors on 17 February, 1920 whether the S.A. Gestig should not be linked to the mission commission of the DRC. This finally led to the formerly interdenominational blessed outreach from the Long Street fellowship joining the Sendingkerk in 1937. Just as tragic was the lack of historical perspective when a book Moeder van ons Almal was published by the denomination in 1965 at the tricentenary of the Groote Kerk, with very little mention of the two greatest ministers the denomination ever had, Dr van Lier and Andrew Murray, who graced that pulpit.

The Schreiners: a special missionary contribution
The contribution of descendants of missionaries could fill volumes. The Schreiner siblings have a special place in this regard. Interesting personalities at the Cape were the novelist Olive Schreiner and her brother, William Philip Schreiner. Their eldest sister (H)ettie was a less well-known sister whose married surname Stakesby-Lewis, was passed to posterity in the Stakesby-Lewis Hostel of District Six’s Harrington Street. The close links between Judaism and Christianity in the Cape colony before 1875 is represented in the ancestry of the Schreiner siblings. Their father, Gottlob Schreiner, was a German missionary at the Wittebergen Mission Station. Their mother was British and said to be of Jewish descent in family tradition. If the Schwabian-born and Basle (Switzerland)-trained missionary seemed to have been quite dull, later quitting the ministry and thereafter venturing unsuccessfully in retail business, the devout mother, born Rebecca Lyndall should go down into mission annals as one of those special unknown women who raised exceptional children.
Olive Schreiner distinguished herself through her love for the Afrikaners. The family furthermore had an ear and eye for the underdogs of Cape society. Through her novels Olive Schreiner put South Africa on the literature map of the world. That Olive did much towards reconciliation between the two main White people groups of South Africa, became widely known, but few know of her contact with Anna Tempo, a daughter of Mozambican slaves. Tempo went on to start the Nanniehuis in Bo-Kaap, a ministry of compassion to ‘fallen’ young women and prostitutes. She became the matron of the Stakesby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street. With this move that started in District Six, care was taken of unwedded mothers and prostitutes

An underrated politician
Very little became known about the contribution to racial reconciliation of Olive Schreiner’s brother William Philip Schreiner, who became Attorney General in the cabinet of Cecil John Rhodes. Her husband Samuel Cronwright Schreiner and his brother-in-law brought the rare touch of integrity back into Cape politics. In the intense discussion prior to and during the National Convention it was these two who fought valiantly for the franchise of people of colour. In 1893, probably when W. P. Schreiner was considering entering politics, Olive wrote to her brother: ‘… the very number of opponents you have… makes me feel how straight and independent you have stood…You have none of the vices that are almost indispensable to a successful politician…’ (Rive, 1987:227). It surely was a complement to his integrity and impartiality that she wrote – probably referring to his practice as a judge. ‘I really shouldn’t be afraid of being tried by you if I were a Kaffir’ (Rive, 1987:227).
South Africa profited greatly that he did not heed her advice, albeit that a bit more negotiation at entry into politics might have stood him in good stead. (Cecil John Rhodes invited W.P. Schreiner to become Attorney General not so long after the three moral musketeers of Parliament (James Rose-Innes, John Xavier Merriman and Jacobus W. Sauer) had resigned in protest from the Cabinet against the action of a party colleague James Sivewright.101 He quarrelled with Rhodes because of the unfortunate Jameson Raid. The Cape Times (1 January 1896) denounced the move, which Rhodes sanctioned, as ‘a colossal blunder.’ A leader of the same newspaper at the time turned out to be quite prophetic, warning that it might bedevil relations between the Afrikaner and English. This eventually led to the South African War in 1899.
In 1898 W. P. Schreiner became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, succeeding Cecil John Rhodes. He however resigned after only two years in office. His cabinet split because of the disenfranchisement and treatment of the Cape rebels in the South African War and the application of martial law in the Colony. (Influential men were being arrested arbitrarily – even in districts where no military operations were in force – and were being thrown in jail without trial.)
Schreiner blotted his copy-book when he resisted the request of the Coloured Men’s Political Protection Association, a group which resented their exclusion from defending the city. When the ‘Coloureds’ forwarded a resolution, asserting their loyalty and willingness to ‘repel the treacherous foe’, Schreiner did not dare taking the risk of offending the White electorate.
Another error occurred when Schreiner referred to Blacks as ‘our greatest enemy’. Yet, the quality of the trust he enjoyed amongst influential Blacks was shown when Jabavu bailed him out on this occasion in his newspaper Imvo. Schreiner amply made good these lapses in his valiant fight for the franchise of all people. In the reaction to the first session of the National Convention, he agreed with his brother-in-law Samuel Cronwright Schreiner that northerners were only too anxious to disenfranchise the Cape Natives. Therefore he fought with much realism, asking ‘that the Cape non-Whites should retain their existing right to sit in Parliament’ (Thompson, 1960:341). Merriman, the Cape Prime Minister, who opposed every motion in this direction, sarcastically jotted in his diary: ‘… after Schreiner had expressed his opinion 64 times’ (Thompson, 1960:345). This shows how passionately W.P. Schreiner fought the cause of the voting rights of people of colour. When the draft South Africa Act was put to the vote in the Cape Parliament, it was carried with ninety six for and only two against, that of W.P. Schreiner and J. Gordon Sprigg, another valiant principled Cape politician, who was Prime Minister four times in his career.

A costly catch-22 situation
In 1908 W.P. Schreiner defended Chief Dinizulu after the Bambata Zulu Rebellion. In order to do this Schreiner resigned from the work of the National Convention. This must have been one of the most difficult decisions ever for him. The Zulu rebellion was caused by the poll tax, which was an effort to relieve the shortage of labour on the White farms and the mines. From 1 January, 1906 the government of Natal had ordered every male over the age of eighteen years – irrespective of race - to pay one pound sterling per year. Disaffection and resistance grew throughout Natal because of this. Africans were charged and sentenced for trivial reasons, which of course increased the discontent which grew into a rebellion. After the old chief Bambata had been put on the ‘wanted’ list of the government, Dinizulu declared his support for the rebels. On 18 April 1906 he however sent a letter to the government, saying that he was prepared to assist in suppressing Bambata. This caused confusion. In the lengthy trial Dinizulu was acquitted of the major charges but found guilty of high treason and sentenced to five years imprisonment for harbouring and concealing not only Bambata’s wife and children, but also the ringleaders Bambata and Mangati. His sister Olive ‘reflected how she and thousands of others had done much the same thing during the Boer War’ (First and Scott, 1989:259)
Schreiner’s ‘quixotic decision’ to defend Dinuzulu and not attend the first sessions of the National convention, proved costly for all people of colour in the country. The ‘staunch supporter of Africans … would have stood to his guns in the convention’ (Thompson, 1960:146). He would have put a much better fight for a Federation of States where each province could have kept decisive powers in important matters. Only the Natalians fought for this course, but they did it so unconvincingly that those in favour of Union – instead of Federation – easily won the day.
The memory of W. P. Schreiner should be honoured by all South Africans. For the second time he led a non-racial delegation to London in 1909, this time to fight the colour bar in the Union constitution. The mission was fortunately not successful. Schreiner became a Senator after Union and from 1914 until his death he was High Commissioner in London.

A fighter on behalf of the underdogs
The memory of Olive Schreiner was tosurpass her brother by far, even though her contributions to humanity were only really discovered deep in the 20th century. South Africa is indebted for this especially to Ruth First, the wife of Joe Slovo, who was killed by one of the most brutal of the apartheid machinations - a letter bomb. That circumstance helped perhaps to highlight the Olive Schreiner biography which she and Ann Scott wrote in 1980. Their study provides testimony of Olive Schreiner’s ‘continuing ability to speak to new generations’ (Rive, 1987:vii). All her life she fought against injustice, also that against women. Her love for the Afrikaners and her role in the Women’s enfranchisement movement was highlighted here and there. However, her change towards intervention on behalf of the new underdogs after the South African War - Indians, Blacks and the Chinese who had been imported by Lord Milner - is hardly known. Her copy- book is somewhat blotted on this score because she had become embittered after rejection by both groups of the White race. She wanted independence for South Africa from Britain and freedom for all races. Both sides, imperial and republican were committed to creating a political system with unrestrained White power. Her annual trips to Cape Town kept her in touch with national politics. When she sensed that principles were at stake she was quick to protest, ‘especially against race bigotry’ (First and Scott, 1989:253). At a protest meeting on 1 July 1906 against progroms against the Jews in Russia, Olive’s ‘Letter on the Jew’ was read by her husband. Well ahead of her time in South Africa, she state her unequivocal principles in an interview with the Transvaal Leader (published on 22 December, 1908): ‘I am of the opinion that … no distincition of race or colour should be made between South Africans. South Africa must be a free man’s country.’ How much human tragedy would have been avoided if her warning in that interview were heeded. The ‘Native Question’ was the root question, she opined, and ‘as is our wisdom in dealing with it, so is our future’ The Blacks ‘are the makers of our wealth, the great basic rock on which our State is founded – our vast labouring class… If blinded by the gain of the moment, we see nothing in our dark man than a vast engine of labour; if to us he is not a man but only a tool …then I would rather draw a veil over the future of this land.’
Very significant was Olive Schreiner participation in the Cape Women’s Suffrage movement, although she was aware that politicians were merely interested to use it as a lever for petty gain. The Women’s Enfranchisement’s League (WEL) was proud to have her as member and of her influence on women in Britain. When the alignment in national politics was copied in the WEL – the Transvaal and Natal societies insited that the goal should be for the vote to be given to White women only, she resigned.
Olive Schreiner described her turnabout after the Boer war in highly sentimental terms: ‘I’m always with the underdog, not with the top dog. When people are big and successful (or causes either) I don’t feel very much interest in them. They don’t need me’ (First and Scott, 1989:339).

Olive Schreiner – a forerunner in many ways
D.L. Hobman (1954:2) said that ‘there was a time when this woman was acclaimed as poet, prophet and pioneer.’ Olive Schreiner’s prophetic role in human relations should be highlighted. This was accompanied by thezeal of a reformer. ‘In a continent bitter with the separateness of English and Dutch and Jews and Indians and native black inhabitants, her voice proclaimed that all in the world is one’ (Hobman, 1954:2). Even on world politics she wrote prophetically, for example in 1919: ‘But America and Russia are the two points at which the world’s history is going to be settled.’ Her keen interest in science made her prophesy atomic energy in 1911, albeit that it was still to take a few decades before Albert Einstein would make the breakthrough: ‘Already today we tremble on the verge of a discovery … when through the attainment of a simple and cheap method of controlling some widely diffused … natural force.’ More accurate was her suggestion in the same book Woman and Labour, ‘The brain of one consumptive German chemist who, in his laboratory compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of modern people that ten thousand soldierly legs and arms’ (All quotes from Hobman, 1954:3). Olive Schreiner ‘took gigantic leaps; from religion into freethinking; away from colonial racism and segregationist white politics to advocacy of the African cause; out of the suffocating limits imposed upon women and into the exploration of female psychology and sexuality (First and Scott, 1989:339).

Protest in Mamre and Freedom songs in Elim
The South African War also had a ripple effect within churches. This was especially the case with mission churches that originated from Germany. Moravian missionaries e.g. indicated sympathies with the Boers in their resistance to British Imperialism. With older people of colour who still experienced slavery, the hope for equal rights under British rule was very strong. In fact, it was ‘just as strong among the people of Elim as the fear of new oppression’ under the Boers (Krüger/Schaberg 1985:72).
When news came about the liberation of Mafeking came, there was big celebration by singing and dancing in ‘Coloured’ communities everywhere, also in the streets of Mamre. The German missionary Kunick responded rather unwisely when he cancelled the Holy Communion of Pentecost in 1900 in the tense climate at a time because his support for the Boers was already suspected.
The problems were not adequately dealt with when the Bubonic plague broke out in the city early in 1901. (Horses for the British troops were imported from overseas. With a shortage of teff for the animals, this was shipped in as well. The arrival of fodder was accompanied with the infestation of fleas, rats and mice. Like the smallpox which had ravaged among the Khoi, the Bubonic plague was thus also ‘imported’ from Europe.) The health measures included the carrying of passes for anyone who wanted to leave the city. This revived memories of slavery. Matthew Heathly, one of the Mamre church members, openly defied the measure by refusing to carry a pass (Krüger/Schaberg 1985:74). A spirit of antagonism against Whites amongst ‘Coloured’ people hereafter spread like wild fire. The relationship to the missionaries became strained because Rev. Carl Schreve, the German missionary of Mamre, who had just taken over from Kunick, was required to issue the passes. He resorted to cancelling the Holy Communion at Pentecost, just like his predecessor had done a year before (Krüger/Schaberg 1985:72).
Around the time of the formation of the Union of South Africa, a faction on the mission station led by a certain Johannes Adonis, openly opposed the missionaries (Oberholster, 1972:60). An interesting feature of the strife at Mamre was that the two indigenous teachers, Daniel Joorst and Nathanael Jonas, stayed aloof in the controversy (Krüger/Schaberg 1985: 71). Was this part of their Genadendal training, to stay ‘out of politics’? (In due course, this became the line of Joorst’s children and grandchildren in The Teachers’ Educational and Professional Association (TEPA), the teachers’ organization which broke away from the highly (over-?) politicized Teachers’ League of South Africa in 1943.)
The missionary counterpart at Elim had similar problems. One of the church members, Martha Jantjies, saw the missionaries as allies of the Afrikaner Bond. She exhorted the people of the mission station to boycott the ‘Bond’ church and the ‘Bond’ school. In the evenings she gathered the young people, composed and sang ‘freedom songs’ with them, accompanied by a guitar. In these songs they glorified Queen Victoria and ridiculed the Boers and the Germans. One Sunday just as the bell rang, which was calling the congregants to worship, she marched with 90 followers to one of the few neighbours, the field-cornet Veale, a supporter of the Progressive Party.

Other places affected by the War
Also other mission stations and towns in the Cape were affected by the war. The worst was perhaps the Wesleyan (Methodist) station Leliefontein, which had been founded by the remarkable missionary Barnabas Shaw. In an example of ruthless Boer aggression against the ‘Coloured’ mission station that had to be punished for the sympathies towards the British Crown, General Manie Maritz attacked Leliefontein. This mission station had become a centre of anti-Boer activity. The settlement was destroyed and some 30 of the inhabitants killed.
An atrocity of similar magnitude was the treatment of Abraham Esau in Calvinia in 1901. He was regarded by the Boers as a ‘traitor’. Born in Bushmanland in 1855, he was taught by Wesleyan missionaries. That he adopted English as his home language, refusing to speak Afrikaans, made him suspect in their eyes already. After he organized victory celebrations by ‘Coloureds’ on the town square on May 19, 1900 after the Boer siege of Mafeking, the whole ‘Coloured’ community of Calvinia was branded by the Boers as collaborators. After Esau had organized a ‘highly effective intelligence network in the Northern Cape, keeping the British appraised of Boer movements’, he was regarded as the ‘most poisonous Hottentot in Calvinia’ (Du Pré., 1994:45). Abraham Esau was imprisoned after leading an uprising of ‘Coloureds’ against a Boer commando, which was led by Charles Nieuwoudt. After being dragged from there, Esau was beaten, smeared with dung and flogged. After further cruel torture, Esau fainted. When he was untied, he collapsed. Over a period of two weeks he was repeatedly lashed, beaten and stoned by Nieuwoudt’s men. Just out of town he was shot (Du Pré, 1994:45).
When news of this atrocity reached the outside world, pro-Boer newspapers in the Cape claimed that he was shot in self-defence. The Cape Times however described the incident as a ‘horrible crime’ perpetrated by ‘heartless wretches’ (cited by Du Pré, 1994:45).
The Afrikaners were deeply offended that the ‘Coloureds’ fought on the side of the British although they spoke the same language. In varying degrees of genuine concern, the liberals put forward - as one of the reasons of the British interference in the affairs of the Transvaal between 1896 and 1899 - the fact that ‘Coloured’ people did not have the franchise in the Transvaal (Du Pré, 1994:47). The real reasons were obvious: sheer greed because of the gold deposits on the reef and the imperialist dreams of Rhodes. But a precedent was set. The franchise of ‘Coloureds’ became a political play ball. After the South African War the British reneged on their promise when responsible government was granted to Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Britain reinforced and backed up Afrikaner racism, by allowing them to continue excluding all non-whites from the vote.

The race factor at the turn of the 20th century
Parallel to the influx of Whites into the Mother City because of the War, there was an increase in racism as the battle for employment opportunity grew increasingly race orientated. Race prejudice and even oppression spiralled. In such a situation the poor often have no recourse to other resources. Blacks were excluded from participation in the politics of the country already long before the formation of the Union in 1910. Blacks in the Boer Republics Blacks had no franchise, and one of the clauses of the peace treaty of Vereeniging after the South African war was that voting rights for ‘Natives’ would not be decided before the introduction of self-government in the former republics. Long before the notorious four ‘Native Bills’ of Hertzog in 1926, the same spirit gave birth to the 1913 Land Act.
An influx of Whites to the Mother City due to the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902) - following the earlier increases, because of the discovery of diamonds and gold in other parts of the country - significantly diminished the proportion of Muslims. On the other hand, the Mother City had already been completely cosmopolitan.102 The overcrowded poor areas like District Six became even more so. Apart from the poorer Coloured, ‘Malay’ and Indian inhabitants which had been there already, refugees from the Reef included poorer-class Portuguese, Italians, Levantines East European Jews and Blacks who were all fairly filthy. When the Bubonic plague came to the Cape with forage from Argentine, the conditions were almost perfect for the spread of the epidemic. The blame was expediently given to the Blacks.
At the outbreak of the bubonic plague that hit the Mother City in 1901, there was a handy pretext for Blacks to be promptly rounded up and dumped in the ‘location’ at Uitvlugt, near to present-day Pinelands. Later it was renamed N’dabeni, which thus became Cape Town’s first official Black ‘location’– a term which was hereafter loaded. Yet, the liberal cosmopolitan tradition of the Mother City was now shaken in its core. Widely differing identities divided the town’s population by class, wealth, occupation and ethnicity. (In the 1980s a new variation was added when the former Roggebaai, near to the docking area of the port, became the residential locality of prostitutes. This group moved into the area after the ‘Coloureds’ moved out in the wake of Group Area legislation. In the latest dispensation this residential and night club area formed the core of the ‘Gay capital of the continent!’)
The run-up to the formation of the Union of South Africa after the war united ‘Boer and Brit’ on the one hand to some extent, while estranging all people of colour as never before. In between, the insular British endeavoured to swell their own numbers. Out of fear that their men might marry Boer or Black women, the British Women’s Emigration Association assisted ‘gentlewomen’ to find work as ‘lady helps’ or ‘family friends’, partly also as a solution to their domestic problems, to alleviate poverty in Britain.

Dr Abdullah Abdurahman enters the arena
The ‘Anglo-Boer’ (1899-1902) War indirectly influenced the situation at the Cape. Because of the war and the run-up to it, many refugees streamed to the Cape. The population of the Mother City more than doubled from 1891 –1900 79,000 to 174, 000). Most of the refugees were White (their number grew from 41,000 to 104,000). Of the rest of the population influx, many were Black. One may assume that there would hardly have been Muslims among them.103 Furthermore, the number of Cape Muslims had been significantly reduced because of various epidemics. Suddenly the Cape Muslims had become a minority in the city by a big margin. Lightfoot mentioned 11,105 in the Cape district that were recorded in a census of the time (Lightfoot:1900:32), whereas Kollisch (1867:44) numbered the ‘Malay population’ at the Cape at about 12,000 more than thirty years earlier.
At this time Dr Abdullah Abdurahman returned from Scotland, where he had qualified as a medical doctor. The plight of people of colour influenced him to get politically involved at the beginning of the 20th century. The stature of Dr Abdurahman, the dynamic medical doctor, grew meteorically as a politician after he had witnessed the merit of Blacks during the Bubonic plague in 1901. He became one of the ‘plague doctors’, treating many of them. Abdurahman saw how this issue was abused, dumping the Blacks in the ‘location’ of Ndabeni. After a protest in which a few imams were involved (the names of Mogamat Taliep, Maji Mahomed and Imam Adukeep are mentioned), concessions were issued to them with a stern warning: ‘if disturbances continued, Muslims would also be placed in a location’ (Van Heyningen, 1984 [1981]: 101). In politics things sometimes turn around very quickly. Dr Abdurahman gained a seat in the Cape Town City Council through the backing of the Afrikaner Bond (Davids, 1980:181). He started the African People’s Organisation in 1904. Calling the party he helped to establish, the African Peoples’ Organization (APO), the roots in the Black continent was emphasised. Non-racialism was to be the hall-mark of the District Six based party. Abdurahman would dominate the politics for the disenfranchised at the Cape for the next 30 years.

Cooperation of disadvantaged races
Sometimes the impression is still spread superficially that apartheid only started in 1948. However, Blacks were excluded from participation in the politics of the country already in the run-up to the formation of the Union in 1910. After a draft constitution was made public in February 1909 at the deliberations of the National Convention, Black leaders formally came together in March 1909 for the South African National Convention. Their objections were echoed by the African People’s Organisation (APO) in Cape Town, who decided to send a protest delegation to England. They agreed for the first time that ‘The time has arrived for the cooperation of coloured races’ and to unite to protect the rights of all ‘Coloured’ races and ‘secure an extension of civil and political liberty to all qualified men irrespective of race, colour or creed throughout the contemplated Union’ (Cited in Welsh, 2000:370).
Abdurahman wrote a letter on 31 May 1910, i.e. the day on which the Union formally came into being. Referring to the ‘insertion of a colour line into the Constitution Act,’104 he noted that the Whites could commemorate the event ‘by making the day one of thanksgiving.’ However, ‘… no Coloured person could do otherwise than regard the day as one of humiliation and prayer.’
As president of the African People’s Organisation Dr Abdurahman left no stoned unturned in the fight for political rights for all people. Thus he petitioned the government in 1923 ‘that such provision be made as may be necessary for the removal of the colour bar in South Africa, by granting to non-european subjects franchise rights in all the provinces of the Union of South Africa, and the right to of being elected as members of the Legislature’ (Cited in Alexander, 1953:127).

The Pentecostal revival found its way to the Cape
At the beginning of the 20th century God also used the American Negro William Seymour at the famous Azusa Street Pentecostal revival to bless the world. Ripples of that found their way to the Cape via the Apostolic Faith Mission. Initially the speaking in tongues was however not universally accepted, causing a lot of dissention. The Black church started by a missionary couple in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, was soon attended by Whites after one of the servants had been healed under the powerful ministry of John Lake. ‘Similar miracles followed and before long, black Africans found themselves standing around while their white employers were blessed’ (Du Plessis, 1977:106). The Bree Street Tabernacle in Johannesburg grew out of that ministry. That became the pristine beginnings of the Apostolic Faith Mission Church, led from 1914 to 1943 by the first missionary protégé of Andrew Murray, the above-mentioned Petrus le Roux. The mainline churches gave free publicity to the work by preaching against it.
The faith healing ministry at the Bree Street Tabernacle of Johannesburg brought another Cape-born into the frame. After the father of David (Mr Pentecost) du Plessis had been healed, the family moved out of the DRC. David, who had been born at a place called Twenty Four Rivers near Cape Town in February 1905 among a ‘commune of Christian believers that grew out of a revival led by a Norwegian evangelist’ (Du Plessis, 1977:7). The birth of David was wrought by pray as his faither related: ‘Before he was born, his mother and I prayed every day, ‘Lord, give us a son for our first born, and we promise we will bring him up for your service’ (Du Plessis, 1977:42). 105

Struggle for justice and equality
Coppin and Henry Attaway, another American, who headed the Bethel Institute in Blythe Street, District Six, returned to the USA. The hopes that had existed at the end of the Anglo-Boer war were disappearing quickly. Racism, segregation and repression increased. Henry Sylvester Williams, the Black lawyer, found himself boycotted and ostracized by his White colleagues and blocked in his work. (Saunders, 2001:152).
The American Negroes had a special contribution in the early liberation struggle of South African Blacks when scholarships were offered to John Dube, Solomon Plaatje and D.D.T. Jabavu to study at their universities. In the same vein the conferences were valuable which W.E.B. du Bois, yet another American Negro and an intellectual - calling for equal opportunities - organized between 1919 and 1945. The militant black consciousness views of Marcus Garvey - who haled from Jamaica - did not tie in with the the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) ideal of a multiracial country. Also atheistic socialism or communism could not excite the SANNC with its strong Christian background.

Resistance against Government intervention
Sometimes the impression is created superficially that apartheid only started in 1948. However, Blacks were excluded from participation in the politics of the country already in the run-up to the formation of the Union in 1910. On the long run all this helped to bring the gigantic stature of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman to the fore. In another way, Blacks played a role in Abdurahman’s meteoric rise.
Abdurahman gave a minority group of Bo-Kaap and District Six great self-esteem. Though Muslims were a minute minority in the Cape Peninsula at the start of the 20th Century, they held their own, especially through the self-respect that Dr Abdurahman gave them. Although the religion was very much on the defence at this time, no less than 22 mosques were built or finished during his time of political office. That was only going to be eclipsed by the first decades after the implementation of the Group Areas Act (and later after 1994 when oil money, notably from Libya, facilitated the building of new Islamic buildings.)

Failure of Efforts at Reconciliation
From the birth of the Union on 31 May 1910 to the advent of the Republic in 1961, politics at the Cape and countrywide were dominated by two issues: the stresses and strains of English-Afrikaans relationships and the fact that the majority of the population was practically unrepresented in parliament. On the first issue the Afrikaners were intent on achieving a republic with as little ties as possible to Britain and on the second one there were Black activists in the 1920s at the Cape like the young Cape ‘Coloureds’ James La Guma, Johnny Gomas and the radical Black Native Peoples’ Congress leader J.J. Gumede.
Almost the first act of the regime of Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister – on the day Union was inaugurated – was to authorise the release of the Zulu Paramount chief Dinizulu from jail in Natal, where he was serving a sentence for complicity in the 1906 Bambata rebellion. This augured well for race relations, applauded from all over the world.
The efforts to reconcile the English and the Afrikaners by failed because of the upsurge of nationalism, linked to the Afrikaans language. The outbreak of World War I, and Botha’s determination to stand with Britain inflamed the nationalist opinion further. The almost idolatrous attitude to their language and a false sense of racial supremacy – sometimes linked to fear of being swamped by ‘Blacks’, were going to haunt the nation again and again.

A strange mix of romance and politics
At the beginning of the 20th century Hyman Liberman and Morris Alexander were Jews who worked side by side with people of colour in District Six as fighters against racialism. While studying at the famous Cambridge University in Britain Morris Alexander was at tea with the family of the famous Dr. Solomon Schechter when their 12 year old daughter Ruth proposed to him: ‘I am going to marry you Morris Alexander. You must not engage yourself to any other girl when you return to South Africa’ (Cited in Hirson, 2001:21). Baruch Hirson suggests that ‘this precocious declaration appears to have resulted from the fact that her father had been praising the young man.’ Morris apparently ignored the eleven year age difference, hereafter entering a lively correspondence with Ruth Schechter. In 1907 he travelled to New York to claim his bride.
Back in Cape Town the young bride’s circle extended outwards not only to White University lecturers, but also to men and women in District Six. The latter acqaintances were probably a by-product of her electioneering for her husband, who was MP for Castle (which included District Six). The acqaintances at the University of Cape Town would lead to her ostracism when she fell in love with Benjamin Farrington, a newly appointed lecturer in Latin and Greek. The daughter of a renowned theological scholar ‘broke a deep-seated taboo - she divorced her husband to marry Farrington, an Irish Protestant’ (Hirson, 2001:xix). This was unacceptable to so many of her friends, except those in District Six, that she almost became an outcast.
The big exception among Whites would surely have been Olive Schreiner, to whom she had a close friendship. At the time of her divorce, Olive was no more. She had already died in 1920. Olive was one of the big three personalities in the life of Ruth Schechter-Alexander. The other two were her father and Mahatma Mohandas Ghandi. Her involvement with Ghandi and the Cape Indians was linked to her husband’s political involvement on behalf of the downtrodden and discriminated Indians in Natal and Transvaal. (The Orange Free State refused Indians entry into their province).

The Cape Indians and Passive Resistance
Before the South African war there were not many Indians at the Cape. The numbers swelled as those Indians found their way to the Cape from the regions where fighting was taking place. A somewhat concealed zenophibia was expressed more openly via demands that the immigration os Asiatics be limited or stopped. This gave rise to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1903. Two political bodies were established in the wake of discriminatory legislation introduced after 1903, to limit entry into the Cape and to limit the number of traders and hawkers. These were the British Indian League and the South African Indian Association. The former was led by Adam H Gool, a surname that was to become well known in District Six via the medical profession and in politics.
Morris Alexander showed little interest initially in the plight of Indians when the Immigration Restriction Act of 1903 was first introduced. His concern at this time was to protect the right of the Jews fleeing from pogroms. Alexander’s attitude was to change, probably especially because of his wife, Ruth, who hero-worshpped Ghandi. After 1910 ??? (Hirson, 2001: Ruth Schechter)
Hermann Kallenbach, a well-known German Johannesburg architect as well as a fervent supporter and co-worker of Mahatma Ghandi, was a frequent visitor, to the home of Morris Alexander. Kallenbach’s involvement in the Indian movement ‘undoubtedly played a significant part in Ruth’s political awakening’ (Hirson, 2001:47).

Cape Trade union organisation
Before 1912 artisans from different races worked separately because Whites objected to working side by side with ‘Coloureds’. South African prejudicial ‘way of life’ was more or less fixed, however without job reservation. ‘The same contractor would have in hand at the same time one building with nothing but skilled white and another with nothing but skilled coloured men’ (Cited by Pieter van Duin in James and Symons, 1989:97). As a rule white artisans were organised in trade unions while skilled ‘Coloured’ workers were not till this time because the trade uions employed a colour bar policy. This was self-defeating, especially when many White artisans left the country in the wake of the severe depression which lasted till 1909. Already the Master Builders’ Association resolved in July 1908 that it was considered ‘absolutely impossible to eliminate coloured Skilled Labour from the Building Trade’ (Pieter van Duin in James and Simons, 1989:100). However, racism still had a field day. Thus, rather than working with ‘Coloured’ plasterers, the whites abandoned the field, leaving the trade to the ‘Coloureds.’ By 1907 the White Operative Plasterers’ Society had already gone out of existence to all intents and purposes because of this attitude.
In the second half of 1913 labour unrest came to dominate the South African scene. Groups of workers at the Cape started to move to achieve better conditions. Groups of ‘Coloured’ building artisans made the first steps to organise themselves. Already in that year the Cape Operative Bricklayers’ Society was formed, one of the first by people of colour. The First World War enlarged the field for ‘Coloured’ skilled labour in the Peninsula because Whites enlisted in greater numbers. After the return of the troops in 1918 there was no notable reversion of the position.
A Spanish influenza epidemic in 1918 forced eight cinemas (called bioscopes in those days) in District Six to close down. By the 8th October the most popular Cape Town theatres had closed down. These entertainment institutions remained closed till 30 October, bringing Isidore William Schlesinger, the owner the African Theatres Trust (A.T.T.), to his knees when musicians refused to return to work after the A.T.T. had applied the principle of ‘no play, no pay.’ Schlesinger had become a big-time capitalist after he bought all the assets of Empire Theatres Company and Africa’s Amalgamated Theatres in the wake of the recession preceding 1909 and the subsequent crisis in the entertainment industry. The one time small grocer-shop owner, pedlar and insurance salesman was destined to play a leading role in the economic life of Cape Town and the country generally (Evangelos Mantzaris in Saunders and Phillips, 1984:115). Three demands of the musicians were clear and significant: Payment of their three weeks’ wages and salaries; A twenty per cent increase of their wages and Employment of union people only in their bioscopes. Significant of this strike was the massive support it enjoyed from the general public, packing the few independent bioscopes and boycotting those linked to Schlesinger’s empire. Heavy weight labour leaders like Alfred F. Batty of the Labour Union addressed a mass crowd in front of the Alhambra theatre. In the ensuing negotiations the strikers nowhere achieved their demands but the stand against economic exploitation was nevertheless significant.
A major role in the trade union movement regard was the formation of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU) in 1919. This was the first time that Black and ‘Coloured’ workers flexed their economic muscles. By 1922 a large number of trade unions recognised that a policy of joint, non-racial organisation was imperative if the White artisan was to survive on the Cape labour market (Pieter van Duin in James and Symons, 1989:104).

Women implement their own strategies
The record of a few White women like Emily Hobhouse and Olive Schreiner fighting for their own rights and for the underdog is so much better known than the early twentieth century Black female compatriots. This is of course very much a part of typical male chauvinism. Thus no records reveal the level of women’s participation in the inaugural meeting of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in Bloemfontein. Yet, it is perfectly clear that women of the nearby Waaihoek location resolved to take firmer actions on their own. First, they circulated a women’s petition throughout the Orange Free State towns and villages, then they sent an all-female delegation to confront the government on the question of women’s passes (Wells, 1993:40). Rev. Walter Rubusana and Senator W.P. Schreiner assisted in securing an interview in Cape Town with Henry Burton, a Cabinet Minisiger on 3 April 1912. Typical of the male hypocracy was when APO leaders criticised the delegation for not consulting with them first (Wells, 1993:40). A member of the delegation, Katie Louw, the twenty-three-year-old President of the Methodist Women’s Prayer Association, was soon to emerge as the leader of passive resistance.
On the afternoon of 28 May 1913, women held a mass meeting in the Waaihoek location and concluded that a passive resistance campaign was the only course left to rid of the despised passes. They were thus pre-empting the ANC and PAC campaigns of against the hated ‘domppasse’ by a few decades. In the ensuing saga, eighty women were arrested, followed by a ‘dancing, singing, shouting procession of 600 womenthrough the centre of white Bloemfontein to the Magistrates’ Court’. There they pleaded guilty but refused to pay any fines. The sympathetic magistrate Ashburnham dismissed all the charges, averting a major crisis.
The Mayor of the city, Mr Haarburger, hereafter led the women to believe that there would be no further arrests for pass offences, but later he had to concede that the the Town Council had no authority to change these laws in any way. While municipal officials became increasingly irritated by the women’s campaign, support from the oppressed communities blossomed.

The National Impact of Women’s Resistance
The bravery of the Black women of Waaihoek set a precedent that was to have a national impact. Faced with little sympathy from local officials, they continued to buy monthly passes, and suffered imprisonment during an exceptionally cold July winter of 1913, after being sent to prison for two months, after being accused of public violence and refusing to pay any fines. Thirty four women were arrested after they had resisted brutal police attacks by retaliating.
After being quite sceptical about the wisdom of the women’s methods, political leaders like Solomon Plaatje, the secretary of the SANNC and APO leader Dr Abdurahman began championing their cause. The latter boasted ‘Six hundred daughters of Africa taught the arrogant white a lesson that will never be forgotten.’ (Cited by Wells, 1993:43).
Mayor Haarburger’s reading of the women’s resistance was a harbinger of the apartheid government’s reaction later in the century, giving the blame to instigating outside forces. Haarburger assumed that ‘the elite men controlled the women’s campaign’ (Wells, 1993:46). Just like the oppressed of the UDF in the 1980s ‘the women maintained their female solidarity and refused to be divided along class lines.’ Similarly, ‘the resisters’ commitment was bolstered by increasing support from the black community nation-wide as well as from a section of the white public’ (Wells, 1993:47).
In March 1914, Louis Botha, the Prime Minister, appointed a select committee to investigate the pass laws throughout South Africa. A draft Bill was passed in June 1914 which allowed the Union government to sidestep responsibility for deciding whether or not women should carry passes, passing the buck to local municipalities. The outbreak of World War I pre-empted any debate over or the passage of the bill.
The Black women heroically battled through to victory, albeit a pyrrhic one. Early in 1919, tensions exploded in Bloemfontein. The women’s pass merged with general unrest over thze coast of livingas residents declared an end to their watrtime moratorium on political activity.
Other parts of the country were soon joining in the resistance. In March 1919, a major anti-pass campaing began among male workers on the Rand, using passive resistance. In July miners in Kimberley won higher wagessimply by threatening to strike and in Cape Town the successful dock workers strike led to the lauching of the ICU (Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa).

A Malawian joins the cause of equality for all
Clements Kadalie, a national of Nyassaland, as Malawi was called, was a teacher who did not remain in Johannesburg like his compatriots. He met Alfred F. Batty in 1918, who was about to contest the Cape Town harbour constituency as a Labour candidate. Batty suggested to Kadalie to start a trade union in the Cape Town docks for ‘non-white’ workers. At that stage the bulk workers of colour were still not yet organized, whereas their White counterparts had been flexing their muscles in a big way. They now learned the hard way to reckon with Black labour power. Kadalie started the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU) in 1919.
After World War I there were serious food shortages in Europe. South African stockists thought this was their chance to push up the prices. The dock workers decided to refuse to handle export produce in response to the spiraling food prices. The annual address of Selby Msimang in 1921 at the meeting of the ICU in Ndabeni even got press coverage, albeit that the White-owned papers did not rise above the familiar ‘Natives and their grievances’. A rare exception was the S.A. Outlook (August, 1921), which noted his moderation ‘and some evidence of statesmanship’, that ‘it offers the skeleton frame, at any rate, of a policy.’ By 1922, the Western Cape leaders of the ICU were making efforts to contact workers on the countryside.
Blacks at the Cape were now also subjected to all the degrading laws under which the Transvalers had already been suffering for decades. Josaiah Ngedlane, an active Communist Party member, was on hand to launch a CPSA branch in Ndabeni.

A Caribbean contribution
Walter Winckler, the son of German missionaries, who was born in Jamaica and who laboured in Surinam (South America) as a missionary, worked alongside indigenous ministers of the Moravian church to achieve independence from Germany. Winckler, who later worked in Mamre, linked up with a gifted ‘Coloured’ minister, Daniel Joorst, in the battle of the South African branch of the denomination to get autonomy from Germany.106 The Western Cape Moravian South Africans became the first of the former mission fields worldwide to be granted independence in 1960. Another stalwart in this fight was the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) man Rev. Daniel Wessels. Their efforts were crowned with success when the Western Cape Province of the denomination was given the status of autonomy in transition in 1949, the first worldwide of the former European dependencies. They would be granted 450 pounds sterling annually to be decreased gradually until 1960 with full independence.

The battle for equal education
As in so many other areas, District Six was countrywide also the cradle of the battle for equal education for all. Henry Sylvester Williams, the Black lawyer from Trinidad who came to Cape Town in 1903 organized a meeting in District Six on 22 March 1904 to protest against the treatment of people of colour in the new colonies. The hall was filled to capacity and hundreds had to be turned away. Williams pointed especially to the discrepancy in funding for education. It was all was of no avail.
Williams returned to England disillusioned. There he organized a Pan African conference. His contribution to the struggle for justice and equality at the Southern tip of Africa was nevertheless invaluable. South African Blacks were encouraged to see that their struggle was not an isolated one, but part of a worldwide movement against racial oppression (Saunders, 2001:154).
Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, the leader of the APO, made the same point in a speech in District Six on 23 February 1905, protesting against the School Board Act. He was also the person behind the founding of the first High School for ‘Coloureds’ in the country, Trafalgar High School in District Six, but also the brain behind the first Teachers’ association, the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) in 1913. The bulk of the fighters against racial discrimination at the Cape over the next decades were to come from the ranks of the teaching profession. A tragedy was to follow when the tactics of resistance became the cause of a split, with the Teachers’ Educational and Professional Association (TEPA) breaking away after a major clash at a teachers’ conference in 1943 in Kimberley.

Success of Genadendal Kweekskool spawns envy
Theofil Renkewitz became principal of the Genadendal Kweekskool, the teacher training school, in 1882. He had the courage of his convictions to take decisions, which were apt to cause tension in the White farming community. First of all he changed the medium of teaching to English and then he substituted White assistant teachers by ‘Coloureds’ to achieve more continuity. When Dr Muir, the head of the Cape Education Department offered to pay a part of the teachers’ salary, Renkewitz declined because he feared the Moravians would compromise their independence in that way.
The success of the Kweekskool unfortunately also caused envy in some quarters, especially when in due course it did not have a German as principal any more. Led by the indigenous David Kroneberg, the institution achieved excellent results with no less than 7 first class passes in 1921 (Schmidt, 1935:19). The White-led education department under the otherwise progressive Dr Muir, initially refused to allow the three German-based missionary societies, to have separate training schools. They were now required to have only one institution between the three of them. At the 1925 conference in Worcester of the Berlin (Lutheran), Moravian and Rhenish missionary societies, five of the commission who were looking into the matter, voted for Genadendal (Schmidt, 1935:20). Agitation by ‘Coloureds’ from Worcester however, with support of their Provincial Council member, put pressure on the Superintendent of Education. As a result, the Genadendal Kweekskool was stopped in 1935, with the Rhenish Mission starting the Söhnge Training School in Worcester. The Moravian model was emulated by the Methodists (Wesley) in Salt River, the Anglicans (Zonnebloem), the Congregationals (Dower in Uitenhage) and the DRC (Battswood), supplying teachers for ‘Coloured’ schools at a time when the government was not doing much in this regard for people other than White.

Racial and national background church separation
The Baptists had their share of creating confusion when two different missionary sending institutions planted churches in District Six. The Americans started the Shiloh fellowship in Arundel Street in 1890 in the same year when the British-based Wale Street mother Baptist Church started one in Jarvis Street, only a few kilometres away in Bo-Kaap. Worse was to come when the energetic Wale Street Baptist church planters started a daughter church in Sheppard Street, only a few hundred meters away from Shiloh. This was apart from the racially inspired churches which were springing up all over the show. Thus the Methodists had a ‘Coloured’ church in Buitenkant Street, less than 200 meters from Green Market Square where they had their Central Church for Whites.
The Salvation Army had a hot welcome in the Mother City. On 4 March 1883 Major and Mrs Francis Simmonds with Lieutenant Alice Teager ‘opened fire’ in Cape Town. Initially vilified by Cape Society, young men would for example turn up in droves to their services, only to disrupt them. The newspaper Lantern,107 usually protecting the values of the lower middle-classes, bemoaned that the new group was bringing the Gospel to the streets in unfamiliar ways, ‘degrading the dearest sensibilities of the Christian Faith and of the Christian names to the commonest and vulgarest of music-hall tunes, the women glib in blasphemy and mouthing in illiterate dialect the most daring orations to appropriate music-hall gesture and demeanour’: Band members were arrested by the police and town councillors suggested that their open air services should be ruled a breach of peace (Worden et al, 1998:233).
A pattern of internal bickering by religious leaders and denominational rivalry has been plaguing the Mother City ever since, grieving the Holy Spirit and preventing a spiritual breakthrough. Luckily there was also another side of the coin, which however took decades to come into its own: low-key ecumenical co-operation and mutual support.

Evangelism takes off in the Mother City
Mr Frederick George Lowe came to Cape Town in 1896 as a concerned Anglican and a businessman who sold cheap clothing. Inspired by the ministry of David Nasmith, the founder of the Glasgow City Mission, he soon got involved with loving outreach to the poor and needy, especially at the time of the Bubonic plague in 1901. Lowe started what he called the City Slum Mission in 1902, assimilating into his own ministry what was left of that of Robert Campbell, combining compassionate outreach with evangelism. He started his evangelical meetings in Coffee Lane and Commercial Street. When he moved to Well’s Square, one of the most notorious spots of Cape Town that was known as a venue for drunkenness and prostitution, he had meetings that drew hundreds (Martindale, 2002:20).
Lowe’s outreach nevertheless remained fairly obscure, until the Bubonic plague hit the Mother City once again in 1915 - especially the areas of Salt River and Woodstock. The compassionate work of the City Slum Mission now became more widely known. Lowe lived sacrificially in a downstairs room in Aspeling Street, District Six.
Frederick George Lowe’s death on June 2, 1924 hit the headlines. His funeral from the City Hall was probably only eclipsed again at the Cape in 1969 when the corpse of Imam Haron was carried from the City Park Stadium.108 For Lowe’s funeral two special trains were chartered to take mourners to the Maitland cemetery (Martindale, 2002:18). After Lowe’s death the mission got its present name, the Cape Town City Mission. In later years churches and all sorts of homes were started all over the Peninsula. The combination of evangelism and compassionate outreach – which they took from their models, the Glasgow City Mission and the Salvation Army, became an integral part of their ministry. (This remained the case until the 1990s when the evangelistic sector became a part of Kingdom Ministries, led by Pastor Alfie Fabe, which started sending out missionaries to different counties of the world.)
There was also an outreach established in Hanover Street, a heritage of the pioneering work of Dr Andrew Murray. It was a subsidiary of the Groote Kerk with Dr Andries Dreyer in a ‘gemengde gemeente’ (a racially mixed church). Problems had started after an influx of poor Whites. Dreyer weathered the storm of ‘onrust en kwaad gevoel’ 109 during a movement for church unity in 1911 (Hopkins, 1965:233). The congregation had a separate Sunday School for about forty neglected street boys, amongst whom there were also Indians and ‘Malays’.
Significant was at this time the outreach of the Dutch Reformed Church in District Six by Ds G.B.A. Gerdener who worked there from 1911 to 1917. Gerdener was instrumental in eight Muslims coming to the Lord and he also had the fore-sight to stimulate the buying of a building for the discipling of converts from Islam. The building called ‘Uitkoms’ in Virginia Street, District Six, never really served the purpose for which Gerdener had intended it. It became a children’s home which was of course also necessary, but the impact that a house for converts could have made on Cape Islam can now only be guessed.
‘Coloureds’ moved from the Cape to the mines on the Reef, taking along with them some of the liberties they had enjoyed. Just before the Easter recess of the House of Assembly in 1914, a petition was signed by some 1600 ‘Coloureds’ from the Transvaal, calling for a change in the Mines and Works Act of 1911. They suggested that wherever the word ‘White’ occurred, it should be replaced by the word ‘competent.’ They were however unsuccessful to bring about a change in the legislation.

Mainline Church ‘Evangelism’
The mainline churches operating at the Cape at the end of the 19th century hardly had a vision for evangelism. In fact, to preach conversion was regarded as sectarian. A description which typifies the mission work – in this case of the Anglicans - is aptly described by the aim of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG): ‘The primary aim of the SPG was to save Anglicans from lapsing into paganism, but a subsidiary aim (my emphasis) was to convert non-Christians to Anglicanism’ (Suberg, 1999:15).
In a similar way the Congregationals, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians and Presbyterians and a few other Protestant churches appeared to show little interest in bringing people into a living relationship with Jesus, apart from a few individuals from these groups. They were just happy to keep their flock together, usually quite contented to bring into their fold those from other denominations who were disgruntled for some reason or another. In these churches conversion became almost a swear word. The Dutch Reformed Church did use it but there bekering was confined to all intents and purposes to a tradition – one gets converted at Pentecost, full stop! A life of holiness was not preached, regarded as overdrawn. Backsliding became the order of the day. The term ‘born again’ became suspect in due course.
The evangelistic outreaches of the Baptist Church, which started in 1876 with nine members, first peaked at the end of the 19th century. Apart from the White churches from the denomination which started in Mowbray, Claremont and Wynberg, two daughter congregations got off the ground as the result of mission work in Jarvis Street (Bo-Kaap) and in Sheppard Street (District Six). No less than the “Prince of Preachers”, Charles Spurgeon, was involved in training and sending out the first Baptist ministers to the Cape.
Andrew Murray and Spencer Walton of the South African General Mission (SAGM)110 had also organized conferences at Wellington, which became known as the South African version of Keswick. After attending a Keswick Convention in England in 1935, Mr A.J.A. Rowland, of the Cape Town Baptist Church took the initiative to start the Cape Keswick Convention in 1937. This annual convention continued for over forty years, with Rev. Roger Voke responsible for the organization of many conventions during the last years of its existence.
At events with international preachers in the Old Drill Hall in Darling Street, one could invariably reckon with some Muslims in the audience. Many from the ranks of Islam were attending Christian schools in Bo-Kaap and District Six. (Pastor Gay, a Scottish missionary laboured tirelessly at Bethany in District Six and in Bo-Kaap until the 1990s, not without success. He was known by many a patient in different hospitals, as he shared the Gospel with them until his death in 1993.)

St Monica’s Home established.
The 1914 Anglican Diocesan Mission Board report to their synod mentioned the establishment of a ‘temporary shelter for women and girls returning to the Christian faith, or who desire to become Christians but are without Christian friends and relations with whom to take shelter’ (Cited in Pratt, 1998:132). Rev. Garabedian hoped that by accepting these girls into a Christian shelter, they would not resort to marrying into Muslim families. The shelter was at 56 Bryant Street under Miss Stollard and was opened in January 1914. In 1915 the house next door was acquired so that up to ten women could be accommodated at one time. Miss Stollard, the Rev Stephen Garabedian and a new assistant, the Rev Paul Dimishky, also did pastoral visits in the surrounding districts to investigate cases of lapsed Christian who had been absorbed into the Muslim community.
In January 1917 Miss Frances Edwina Shepherd suggested to the Muslim Mission Committee of the Diocesan Mission Board (DMB) that she begin training suitable ‘Coloured’ women as midwives. She had already instructed several women when they had accompanied her to deliveries. She approached Dr Murray, the Secretary of the Western Cape branch of the Medical Association, in order to get this instruction recognised. He stressed that training should really take place in a Maternity Home. Miss Shepherd realised that such a home could serve three purposes. Firstly, it could train ‘Coloured’ women to be midwives, secondly, it could offer a service to the entire community in the area of the Bo-Kaap and thirdly, the trained midwives could be useful as evangelists.
A committee was set up by the DMB under the chairmanship of the Rev Canon S W Lavis with the Rev S Garabedian, Mrs Garabedian, Mrs Herford (secretary) and Miss Shepherd. They recommended the setting up of a training institution for ‘Coloured’ midwives. This was approved by the DMB and Garth House, 108 Buitengracht Street was opened on 1 April 1917.

Female pioneers of Muslim Outreach
From 1920 onwards women were treated on a more equal footing with the priests in the Anglican Church. During the 1950s the entire work of the mission was done by two women, Miss Leslie and Miss Manning. Women were nevertheless seen as stop-gap workers until fulltime priests could be afforded, yet they still played an important role in changing the missions policy. Because the women workers came into direct contact with Muslim women and girls seeking social assistance rather than conversion these workers were instrumental in the gradual change of the policy of the Mission from theological confrontation to caring, Christian witnessing.
Fulltime worker in Claremont Miss Hilda Adams became the new Diocesan correspondent for the SWM. In May 1924 she wrote a short report on the mission’s work. She described how in the previous five years she had done house-to-house visiting in the southern suburbs of Cape Town and the door had been closed in her face only about four times. Miss Adam’s home visits marked a change from the previous policy which had concentrated on preventing marriages between Christians and Muslims. Miss Adams found that she was generally welcomed in Muslim homes and her visits appreciated. She felt that most Muslims girls were starting to question their faith but, because of cultural attitudes, were kept in ignorance about Islam. She did, however, feel that few would convert because they were fearful of being ‘Malay- tricked’. The so-called ‘Malay-tricks’ were a witchcraft which many believed that Muslims, and in particular black Muslims from Zanzibar, practised. Such tricks were also greatly feared by ‘Coloured’ Christians. This fear was aggravated by the dismissive attitude the White community workers had towards them. They failed to understand a real fear which existed among the Christian neighbours of Muslims.
In 1930 Miss Mary Attlee replaced Miss Hilda Adams as full-time worker at Claremont. Previously she had worked at the native women’s hostel, St Clare’s Hostel, Zonnebloem. Her work divided into four areas: Sunday School work, Social work, Clubs for young women, boys and girls, and evangelistic work among the Muslims. Miss Attlee stated that ‘there are few listeners now on Sunday out in the open’. Thus presumably she had previously run some ‘market place’ evangelism. The number of Muslim listeners had dropped because the local Imam had told them not to listen as he considered it ‘dangerous’. Miss Attlee reported that over the ten years from 1930 till 1940 she had brought only six Muslims to baptism. Although she was now retired she was still in close touch with all six and one in particular played a major role in encouraging enquirers and bringing back to Church ‘several careless Christians’. Miss Attlee used the sewing class for Muslim girls as an opportunity for friendship and instruction.
It was Miss Attlee who, during one of her visits to England, managed to convince Father
Albert Hampson to come to this country as priest-in-charge of the Mission to the Muslims. Through her guidance, her influence and some financial support, Hampson was able to do a special course in England for his work, before he came out to this country.
Miss Attlee brought to the mission to Muslims a programme of social upliftment. The direct confrontational attacks between Christians and Muslims, which her predecessors seemed to encourage, were being avoided. In her obituary in the South African Outlook it stated ‘Her concern for the coloured people led her to inspire the formation of Christian Unity, a society the aim of which is to work for closer understanding among people of different colours and creeds.’ Miss Attlee worked to establish ‘a real community centre for the coloured’. After working for the Cape Town Diocese Mission to the Muslims from 1930-1940 she remained in Cape Town, founding the Cape Flats Distress Association (CAFDA) in Retreat.

Impact of Student Christian outreach
A significant spiritual influence at the Cape was John Mott’s Student Christian Movement, along with the Edinburgh meeting of evangelicals in 1910 that became the forerunner of the World Council of Churches. All this looked set to spur worldwide evangelisation significantly. The Cape was in the thick of things through the presence of Dr Andrew Murray. John Mott, the renowned preacher and leader of a global divine work among students and who mobilised many of them for missions, spoke at the city’s Huguenot Hall at the beginning of the century. This ushered in the establishment of the Students’ Christian Association (SCA) with its motto ‘Make Jesus King’. The work of the SCA at the Victoria College - that was to become the University of Stellenbosch and at the forerunner of UCT (South African College School) - had a significant impact on individuals. One of the most notable influences was on Jan H. Hofmeyr, who was poised to become the successor as Prime Minister of Jan Smuts, if the Nationalists had not come into power in 1948. Hofmeyr, who attended the Cape Town Baptist Church in Wale Street, was a fervent supporter of the SCA.
Bringing together Christians of all races in one fellowship of worship and service, the SCA was the harbinger of an exciting movement towards a new South Africa. The lordship of Christ and his saving work in individuals ‘engendered a common commitment to the creation of a more Christian society’ (De Gruchy, 1979:200). B.B Keet and Alan Paton are other great sons of the country who were influenced by this tradition.
A related ministry in the 1920s was the Oxford Group, started by Frank Buchman, an American with a German background. Edgar Brookes (1977:44), one of South Africa’s greatest liberal politicians of the apartheid era, described the influence of the Oxford Group as follows: ‘Undoubtedly its first impact on South Africa was that of a genuine religious revival, and this made itself felt quite remarkably in the field of race relations.’ Brookes concedes that evil forces destroyed much of the original rush of new life in the Oxford Group,111 but ‘no one who lived through the years 1929-30 can gain-say the reality of the spiritual revolution then produced.’ He records how the SCA called together a Youth Conference at the Black campus of Fort Hare in 1930. ‘To a large extent through the Oxford Group in the Universities, Afrikaans-speaking as well as English-speaking, young white students came to Fort Hare in an outgoing, courageous and receptive spirit.’

Racism stifles Revival among students
Brookes bravely suggests that he contributed to its failures by publicly recanting the doctrines of separate development he had set forth in his History of Native Policy seven years before the SCA conference. The bigoted racist reaction of Die Burger, the Cape nationalist neswpaper, has possibly to be given the greater blame. After a rugby match there between Whites and the ‘Africans’ present, Die Burger came out with headlines Die Flater op Fort Hare.112 Under Dutch Reformed influence ‘the head committee of the SCA… beat a hasty retreat’ (Brookes, 1977:45). A similar intrusion of apartheid ideology in 1966 led to the decline of the SCA and the formation of the University Christian Movement (UCM), after the SCA changed its constitution to divide into separate ethnic organizations (De Gruchy, 1979:154).
In the 1960s and 1970s the Oxford Group played a significant if not so overt role in racial reconciliation under its new name Moral Rearmament. Ds George Daneel, who died at the end of 2004 in French Hoek, a Dutch Reformed clergyman and a former rugby Springbok, was the face of the movement for many years, even though the movement worked low-key to bring people from different races together. The movement got politically stained among the Cape ‘Coloureds’ through the participation of people like George Golding, principal of a primary school in District Six. Golding was attacked as a traitor by radical ‘Coloureds’ who opposed collaboration with government-sponsored institutions. (Nevertheless, the author was deeply impacted by a book about some of its work of Moral Rearmament (MRA) in the country with the title South Africa, what kind of change, which was given to him as a gift in 1977.) Peter Hannon, the author of the book, was operating from the Fish Hoek MRA centre of the movement in the Western Cape for a number of years).

The Black Peril bogey once again
On another side of the political spectrum, problems were mounting in the early 1920s, whose growth had been obscured by the war. In a public meeting at Ndabeni on 8 March, 1920 the local branch of the Cape Province Native Congress, i.e. the former name of the provincial ANC, noted with ‘gravest alarm the death of no less than eleven of their countrymen… in connection with the recent strikes… in Johannesburg.’ The meeting furthermore warned the government and the employing classes against settling labourers’ strikes by victimization of the leaders and threatening repatriation of the strikers. Almost needless to say, the warning was not heeded, to the peril of the country ever since. Instead, the Black Peril bogey was used again and again, which became more famous later by its Afrikaans translation swart gevaar.
The so-called ‘Rand Revolution’ of 1922 was the outcome of the greatest of these. Faced with rising costs and shortage of labour, goldmines proposed to use Blacks in certain skilled worked. To consider abolishing the colour bar was looking for trouble among the Whites. The Trade Unions which were predominantly White – apart from Clements Kadalie’s ICU, which was still to blossom, came back with their own version of the communist manifesto: ‘Workers of the World, fight and unite for a White South Africa’ (cited in Marquard, 1969:147). The strike by the white miners was put down by the Defence Force. On the long run the ‘Rand Revolution’ was toinfluence labour relations detrimentally till deep into the 20th century and into the next one. Cases were quoted where experienced long-service Blacks had to show White men their work, train them and then work under them. In the Transvaal and Orange Free State no person of colour could get certificates of competency. Because of the fear of White miners that the industrial colour bar would be abolished, a clause was added to the Mining laws of the Union of South Africa that ‘certificates granted to any coloured person in any other province, shall not be available outside that province.’
The effects of the ‘Rand Revolution’ reverberated throughout the country. A gold lining of the cloud at the time was the role of Jan Smuts, the Prime Minister. He praised the forbearance and good behaviour of the Blacks under the greatest possible provocation: ‘the Natives kept their heads, and they were one of the most stable elements on the Rand…I think the White people of this country are in duty bound to recognize the proper attitude of the Natives throughout this very great crisis.’ Unfortunately Smuts lost out completely when he also suggested that ‘Europeans should feel humiliated, and that the Natives had taught them a lesson.’ He had become a ‘kafferboetie,’ about the worst title for an Afrikaner, next to the label of being in league with the rich. And the illiterate Blacks could not read his complimentary statement. Among Black and White mine workers he was seen as being in coalition with the imperialist mine magnates and in the eyes of the poor Afrikaners, he supported the English. Generally, those who had voting power thought that he was not protecting the Whites.
An immediate result was the Pact government in 1924 when a predominantly English-speaking party, the Labour Party, and an Afrikaner-based Nationalist Party, formed an election pact. Jan Smuts, a Cape Afrikaner with a ‘British heart,’ was pushed out of power.
Few and far between were the real liberals like Professor R.F.A. Hoernlé of the University of the Witwatersrand, who had the courage to challenge the Black Peril bogey. In his articles he not only challenged anti-Semitism as a disease of society, but any form of racism, fascism or discrimination.
Long before President Roosevelt, spelt out the freedom from fear as one of the big freedoms, Hoernlé warned against the dominant, deep-seated and irrational fear of race inter-mixture of South African Whites. He was so outspoken already in the Rand Daily Mail on 29 June 1933 along these lines, dreaming that the day would break ‘when fear of race-mixture can be ruled out from the motives determining native policy…’113

Liberal critical views and innovation
Over the years the columns of the Cape Times gave ample room for liberal views. Thus Leonard Barnes contributed a frank and outspoken series of articles on the subject of racial prejudice. For a newspaper circulating mainly in the White community and operating in a colonial context, the Cape Times was quite radical, giving significant space to Black viewpoints, like Dr D D.T. Jabavu declaring that Hertzog’s policies were based on ‘brute power of conquest and armed intimidation, maintaining white domination by brute force’ (Cited in Shaw, 1999:41). Already in 1930, when other newspapers expediently remained silent about rising racial tensions, the Cape Times dared to report fully how a riot developed when an angry crowd of thousands of ‘native and coloured’ demonstrators tried to march to parliament to protest against the restrictive terms of Oswald Pirow’s Riotous Assemblies Amendment Bill. The crowd demanded an interview with Pirow, the Minister of Justice. A few years later the esteemed Cape Times however possibly got to its lowest journalistic point when its editor blew into the horn of xenophobia in his attitude to Jewish immigration (Shaw, 1999:63).
5. Cape Political Ferment


Tension in Cape Islam
Party political issues were not foremost in Muslim minds. Hadji Effendi, who was the secretary of the APO at its founding, worded their feelings appropriately: ‘In reference to political affairs ... we shall not bind ourselves to any party but we shall support the most progressive and fairest policy towards the Muslims’ (Van der Ross, 1975:6). Their religion was more important to the bulk of them at the beginning of the 20th century. Married to a Scottish national of whom I could not find evidence that she embraced Islam, Abdurahman does not seem to have been a staunch Muslim. ‘It is noticeable that where Abdurahman made a religious reference, it was always from the Bible, never from the Koran’ (Van der Ross, 1975:6).
However, disillusionment followed the founding of the Cape Malay Association. Not quite surprising, the first Afrikaans translation occurred at the Cape. Imam Mohammed Baker, who qualified as a teacher from Zonnebloem College in District Six, was responsible. After becoming principal of the Muslim Mission School in Simonstown, he started with the translation in 1956, completing it in 1961 (Mahida, 1993:80). It is furthermore worth noting that the Cape Muslims clearly aligned themselves to the ‘Coloureds’ and not e.g. to the Cape British Indian Association for much of the 20th century (Davids, 1984:195).

Cape Muslims organize themselves politically
The formation of the Cape Malay Association in 1923, based in Bo-Kaap, was the first attempt by Muslims at the Cape to organize themselves politically. The discriminatory character of South African society along racial lines called for protest. As the South African National Native Congress (SANNC) had become the mouthpiece of the Blacks in 1912, the African People’s Organization (APO) was that for the ‘Coloureds’. Yet, Abdurahman fiercely opposed the disenfranchisement of Blacks in 1929, refusing to agree with the Coloured Persons’ Rights Bill of 1929. He discerned that it implied the removal of the political rights of Blacks.
Abdurahman was far-sighted to see the formation of Muslim schools as an important tool of resistance against the oppressive government structures. He ‘wished to modernize religious teaching ...without sacrifice of their own values and beliefs’ (Ajam, 1986:210). Abdurahman also visualised the use of Arabic in these schools to bring the pupils beyond mere ritualistic wrote learning of the Qur’an (This however only slow got off the ground in the 1990s. Arabic equivalents rather than Malayu words, e.g. shukran instead of ‘tremakassie’, only then started to be used widely by Cape Muslims).

Black Consciousness imported
Apart from the local version of Black Consciousness, which was started by the Peregrino’s, father and son, the other version was imported, the one wielded by the Jamaican Marcus Garvey. By the end of 1921 there were four branches of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the Cape Peninsula. Eventually divisions existed in Goodwood, Parow, Claremont, West London (Rondebosch) and Cape Town. Black unity, Black consciousness and Black liberation were the slogans of the movement.
Two personalities were instrumental in spreading Garveyism at the Cape. One was S..M. Bennett Ncwana, who started the paper The Black Man in 1920. The second was ‘Professor’ James Thaele, to whom was attributed by the South African Police ‘intensely anti-white in sentiment’ He stated openly that he does not trust or wish to associate with any white man. As president of the Cape branch of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the forerunner of the ANC, Thaele infused symbols and rituals of Garveyism into the organization. Already in 1918 a mass meeting rejected the principle of segregation. Bitterness was expressed more vigorously in 1923 when the Urban Areas Bill came before parliament. Selope Thema of the SANNC told Jan Smuts, the Prime Minister, in Cape Town: ‘We have a share and a claim to this country. Not only is it the land of our ancestors, but we have contributed to the progress and advancement of this country… we have built this city’ (Cited in Bickford-Smith et al, 1999:90). A crucial factor in politicising Cape Town’s Black population was the Native Advisory Board, set up in terms of the 1923 Urban Areas Act. Under this system Langa got a board consisting of six members – three elected by the residents and three nominated by the local authority.
The ANC in the Western Cape was virtually defunct when La Guma was elected secretary. In no time he reorganised things, starting an office in Caledon Street and launching the ‘African Labour College’, a night school where the students were taught socialism and the politics of the labour movement.
It is interesting that the Malmesbury area from which the great stateman Jan Smuts and the arch protagonist of apartheid Daniel Malan hailed, also gave the country one of its greatest unsung heroes. The Anglican mission station Abbotsdale, once started by Bishop Gray, produced a boy with the name of Johnny Gomas, who was to influence matters at the Cape and countrywide in no small way. As a juvenile Gomas was taken to Kimberley, where he was attracted to the militancy of the ANC, as it was demonstrated in the strike organized by them in 1919. When the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) moved their party newspaper Umsebenzi to Cape Town, Johnny Gomas became a regular contributor. At this time, the existence of a large number of unskilled and unemployed ‘poor Whites’ posed a danger to the state. Because of mechanised production, there was resistance by White artisans who now saw unskilled Black and ‘Coloured’ workers as an even greater threat. White trade unions rejected co-operation with Black unions after 1924, producing strong anti-Black worker policies instead. The Pact government of 1924 had set out to protect the Whites. According to the ‘Civilized Labour Policy’ it was now made sure that Blacks were hired last and thousands of them were sacked to make way for ‘poor Whites’. Gomas displayed exceptional optimism to ignore anti-Black attitudes and social exclusivism of the White unions. In his writings via the pages of Umsebenzi, he emphasised the temporary nature of the obstacles to class solidarity.
Three months after the Native Administration Act114 was passed in December 1927, three Blacks were accosted in Paarl by one Bleeker, a White policeman, who demanded to see their passes. When they ran away instead, shots were fired, one of them was killed. A second person was seriously injured, dying in hospital ten days later. Johnny Gomas created a tradition of political agitation at the commemoration of the dead e.g. at funerals, by distributing pamphlets for a meeting on Christmas Day, 1927: ‘Show your respect to your Dead and injured comrades by attending in thousands’ (Musson, 1989:36). This led to a public meeting in Huguenot, near to Paarl, attended by about 400 people of colour, addressed with words which were described as ‘highly inflammatory.’ After the low-key beginnings of Peregrino in District Six in the 1880s and 1890s, Paarl became a major seedbed for radical Panafricanism and Marxism. In the early 1960s the violent POQO had their Cape stronghold in Paarl.
By 1930 Garvey’s appeal in Cape Town was waning. One reason for the decline was the belief of many adherents of Garveyism that Hertzog’s segregation offered opportunities for black self-determination.

Political Ferment among Whites
The effect of the ‘Rand Revolution’ at the Cape was especially felt as an influx of workers came into the cities from the ‘Native homelands’ and from the farms. White trade unions saw a threat to their standard of living, especially after Clements Kadalie had formed the ICU. In the Cape Province Blacks still had voting power on the common roll. Both Smuts and Hertzog handled Kadalie with care, but with equal determination not to allow the matters to get out of hand.
The Pact Government remained in power till 1933 with little common ground except their dislike of Smuts and his supposed association with finance capital. The great economic depression of 1931 was directly responsible for another shift in party alignments. The two Cape-born politicians Smuts and Malan formed a coalition government with Hertzog as Prime Minister. Daniel Malan, a Nationalist of the first hour, was however not enamoured by the idea of coalition. He declined a Cabinet portfolio. Shortly thereafter, Malan withdrew with his supporters to form the ‘purified’ National Party, i.e. a party purged of non-Afrikaner elements. The Afrikaner front was broken for a second time when Smuts and Hertzog joined forces to form the United Party (The first time Hertzog had broken away in 1912 from the South African Party (SAP) to form the National Party.) Hertzog compromised his republican ideal. He regarded the independent dominion status, which he had achieved for the country at the 1926 Imperial conference, as equivalent to the status of a republic.
Entry into World War II brought yet another rift. Five years after the United Party had been established, it split open on the war issue. Smuts was in favor of full participation and Hertzog stood for benevolent neutrality. In the five years prior to the World War, a Broedertwis (quarrel between brothers) of Afrikaners had raged between the followers of Malan and Hertzog, respectively the Natte and the Sappe, the latter term coming from the SAP (South African Party) origins of the United Party. Because of the war issue, a happy reunion of ‘ware Afrikaners’ seemed on the cards. They indeed combined, the new party being called the Herenigde Nasionale or Volksparty. The World War, which brought them together in the first place, was still raging when the next hot potato surfaced. Both parties agreed on a republic as the desirable aim, but Hertzog insisted that it could only come in co-operation with English-speaking South Africans, and only by the ‘broad will of the people’. Malan thought that it could also be achieved by a simple majority of parliament. The result of the new feud was that Hertzog and Havenga broke away to form the Afrikaner Party.

Segregation formalized
The Afrikaner Broederbond, which was founded in 1918, had sound ideas. It was basically an effort to secure the survival of the Afrikaner. The Freemason concept of secrecy, which was already present in its pristine beginnings, was to bring them down. On 26 August 1921 the members voted formally to become a secret organization and in 1932 the Broederbond ‘went decisively underground’ (Lewsen, 1988:21). Born not only from the yearning to see Afrikaners uplifted, but also inspired by resentment towards the English because of racialism and ridicule, there was also a fair amount of divine destiny that drove the founders. One of the Broederbond chairmen said in 1944: ‘The Afrikaner Broederbond is born from a deep conviction that the Afrikaner nation has been planted in this country by God’s hand and is destined to remain here as a nation with its own character and mission’ (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:21). The negatives of a secret organization took over in due course; the historical prejudice towards people of colour had found fertile ground to germinate and grow like cancer.
A sad legacy is that racial segregation was not only practised in many Cape churches, but it received also its big ideological push from men who were born and bred in the Cape. Jan Smuts was raised in the small Boland town of Riebeeck Kasteel near Malmesbury before he went to Stellenbosch and England for further studies. As a young man he still spoke in the debating society of Stellenbosch on Pan Africanism. He however became a prominent strategist and propagator of segregation, mentioning e.g. in the 1930s that ‘mixed housing’ was undesirable. The United Party under Jan Smuts was nationally in government when a first effort was made to evict the ‘Coloureds’ from District Six.
It is ironic that General Hertzog, his predecessor and also his successor as Prime Minister, an Afrikaner with the English first names James Barry – but born in the Boland town of Wellington - was the one to oppose Smuts on this score. He was the only Afrikaner who tried to break the Afrikaner Broederbond before it became too powerful, accusing the Bond in 1935 of inciting racial hatred which could become ‘irreconcilable aversion’. Hertzog went to study for the ministry at the Kweekskool in Stellenbosch, but later he switched to law. In a famous speech in Smithfield he lashed the Broederbond: ‘has the Afrikaner nation sunk to so hopeless a level that it must seek its salvation in a secret conspiracy for the advancement of racial hatred?’ When Smuts decided to go to war with Britain in 1939, Hertzog broke with him, retiring to his farm where he died in 1942. That decision also revived the Boer-Brit enmity among Afrikaners; the Boer war suffering was invoked to underscore the British aggression and to downplay Nazi atrocities. The political hostilities between Afrikaners and British were going to endure for decades, strengthening Afrikaner cohesion simultaneously.

Fascism and Anti-Semitism at the Cape
In the Koffiehuis next to the Groote Kerk the country’s largest fascist organization, the South African Gentile National Socialist Movement was founded in 1933 by a National Party parliamentarian. When Adolf Hitler became the German chancellor the same year, it was apt to have ramifications in this country, especially the Mother City, with a sizeable German population. The title ‘father and Apostle of hatred against the Jews’ was given to a Mr Beamish, a South African mining engineer living in Rhodesia(Berger, 1979:11f). Before him nobody had so clearly manifested hatred of Jews on the African continent. He eagerly relayed and distributed the poison from Germany.’ The Jews were strangely condemned for being Pacifists but they were also accused of being eternal instigators of wars. Nazi propagandists repeated ancient prejudices, agitaing e.g. that Jews were drinkers of Christian blood. Soon pro-Hitlter demonstrations were to become fashionable and were organised throughout the country. In far-away Port Elizabeth the accusations against local Jewish leaders and world Jewry could have been very serious indeed. A conspiracy by world Jewry was ‘uncovered’ to destroy Christianity (Berger, 1979:15). Die Rapport the official organ of the South African National Socialist Movement recorded what transpired at the rural Easter Cape village of Aberdeen at a public meeting addressed from a large wagon decorated with grey shirts and Swastikas and with participation of delegates from the bigger centres in April 1934. A clergyman mounted the wagon amid great applause in at the meeting of the Grey Shirts, with the audience of over 2000 responding with the Nazi salute. The speaker appealed to the ‘Nordic people to form an organisation in self-defence against such occult alien organisation as are harboured in the Jewish Synagogues’ (Berger, 1979:15f). The ‘documents’ from which he read to prove his point, were compiled by an ignorant forger.
The Jewish community rejected the accusations in a united way – every shade of opinion, the Reformer and the Orthodox (Berger, 1979:15) - with Rabbi A. Levy sueing three leaders of the Grey Shirts. The court proceedings received prominent local and overseas press coverage. The ‘documents’were denounced in court as forgeries and the three accused found guilty. A big blow was dealt to the Grey Shirts, but unfortunately not fatal.
Pro-Hitler demonstrations became fashionable, organised throughout the country. Swastikas appeared on walls in different places. South African Fascists even found their way into Parliament via the Purified National Party, led by the Cape politician and former DRC clergyman Dr D.F. Malan, who later became the first NP Prime Minister. He announced publicly: ‘We are not race-haters, but anti-Semites. We shall follow the same course as Germany, Austria and Italy. ..’ (Cited in Berger, 1979:53.)
At the end of October 1936 the chartered boat Stuttgart was due to arrive in Cape Town with Jewish refugees on board. 600 of them had managed to escape the Gestapo. Stellenbosch soon became a bastion of Fascism and Anti-Semitism. In the Dagbreek student residence a protest march was planned by academics including H.F. Verwoerd, a Dutch born but Cape-raised politician, who later became Prime Minister. On 26 October 1936 the Greyshirts, Cape Town’s largest fascist organization, held a well-attended protest meeting. As it happened, a few months before that Herman Böhler, the professor of electro-technology at UCT, had started the South African Nazi Party. Even within Jan Smut’s Cabinet there was a staunch Grey Shirts supporter in Mr Oswald Pirow who hailed them ‘the Storm Troopers’, the specially selected and trained strong arm of the Nazis.
In April 1937 the Cape Argus stated that ‘the National Party has gone over lock, stock and barrel to anti-Semitism’ (Berger, 1979:15). The Grey Shirts abused the arrival of an inconspicuous number of German refugees in 1937 for a storm of protests. Dr Malan hurriedly introduced to Parliament an outspoken anti-Semitic resolution, aiming at stopping the ‘influx’ of German Jewish refugees. Malan demanded that the Jews be kept segregated in order to protect the Afrikaner nation from foreign influence.

Opposition to Fascism
Cape Nazi's did not have it quite their own way. Malan's challenge to the House - that South Africa has a Jewish problem - received a firm rebuttal by Jan Hofmeyr, the Deputy Prime Minister, denouncing anti-Semitism as something hateful. ‘It is in conflict with the feelings of humanity, without which we cannot build up the soul of a nation’ (Cited in Berger, 1979:56). The minister of the Interior, Mr R. Stuttaford characterised Dr Malan’s motion as unabashed racialism. An interesting development was the formation of various ant-Fascist organisations including the ‘Friends of the Soviet Union’. To the credit of Dr Malan was that he did not follow through on his intentions when he became Prime Minister. But that was after World War II when Hitler was merely a bad memory. In a very strange switch, he became the first foreign Statesmen to visit the new state of Israel in 1953. With an obvious change of heart, he thereafter continued a policy of friendship towards the Jewish State.
The main opposition to Fascism and anti-Semitism came from a group of young UCT students who came together in 1938 to form the New Era Fellowship (NEF) - along with a few other intellectuals who were likewise influenced by the Trotzkyist variation of Communism. The movement which had its hub in District Six, reacted strongly against all the ‘ja baas’ men, who had links to the United Party of Jan Smuts and company, whom they dubbed collaborators and quislings.115 The elitist element was typical. The original Marxism was much closer to Christianity. In fact, his preference of poverty and exile to benefit mankind had been highlighted by no less than Olive Schreiner in her Letter to the Jew, which was read by her husband at a protest meeting in 1906 Cape Town against pogroms in Russia.

Early opposition against the apartheid theory
Geoff Cronje, one of a group of Afrikaners who studied in Nazi-time Germany, coined the term apartheid as a political concept in a book published in 1942. Apartheid was given a biblical justification in a book of essays by a prominent theologian, E.P. Groenewald (and edited by Cronje). The two Afrikaners cleverly high-jacked the ideas of the Dutch theologian and politician, Abraham Kuyper. Apartheid as ideology thus had a pristine link to Nazi Germany. The Ossewabrandwag movement, in which the Vorster brothers John and Koot were prominent, made no secret where their sympathies were in the war against Germany. Started in February 1939 as an off-shoot of the Great Trek centenary celebrations, it had a paramilitary wing, which claimed to have 100, 000 members in a few years. Eric Walker describes the Ossewabrandwag as ‘the most influential popular movement since the Great Trek itself’, Dr D.F. Malan called it the ‘greatest Afrikaner Association outside the Church’ (Walker, 1964: 678, 714). In this climate it is not so surprising that Ds J.D. Vorster, a member of the Ossewabrandwag, was found guilty of contravening the Official Secrets Act in 1940.
One of the ideologists from these ranks, Oswald Pirow, spelt out clearly the ‘New Order’ he envisaged. When he sensed because he could be expelled from Malan’s party, he withdrew to form the New Order Party. The views of this group contained little less than naked racism, White supremist Herrenvolk notions.

Professor R.F.A. Hoernlé of the University of the Witwatersrand, was the founder and president of the Institute of Race Relations. In 1936 he helped to organize the ‘Society of Jews and Christians’ and served on the editorial board of its journal, Common Sense. Hoernlé cleverly opposed all racist notions, defining cleverly what the ‘New Order’ should be like: ‘it is clear than any ‘new’ order should have to make an end of the master-race versus servant-race structure’. Completely against current trends, he went on to suggest that the franchise should be extended to Blacks ‘ultimately on the same terms on which whites possess it.’ For 1940 that was probably utopian, but indeed ‘Common Sense’, the name of the periodical of which he was the editor. He went on to say in the same edition (February 1940, cited by Lewsen, 1988:97): ‘But, more important even than the franchise, would be admitting individual Africans, as they achieved the required education, into all the professions, into the civil service, into leading positions in public life…and thereby to social equality with whites of similar standing while correspondingly whites would mingle with Africans through all the grades of skilled and unskilled labour.’ That sort of language will not have gone down well with the rank and file White, nor his prophetic statement in the same article: ‘the caste society cannot endure for ever. But it will be broken up, not under white leadership from within, but either by the impact of world events from without, or by Africans themselves gradually acquiring a unified group consciousness and taking their fate into their own hands.’ The other main source of opposition segregation theory from Whites at that time was in the houses of Parliament via the ‘native representatives’, who as a rule were linked to Hoernlé’s Institute of Race Relations where Donald Molteno, a young Cape advocate, the academic Edgar Brookes, Hyman Basner, Margaret Ballinger and Senator J.D. Rheinallt Jones all made significant contributions. However, where Jones was a conservative liberal, who hoped to reform without tackling the fundamental problems, Brookes on the other hand, had a convincing change of heart. He argued for a complete change of structure, politically as well as economically. Hyman Basner, who replaced Rheinallt Jones in 1943, harangued the Senate in a ‘frontal attack on the whole segregation system’ (Cited by Lewsen, 1988:27).
In the House of Assembly the outstanding other ‘native representatives’ for many years were Margaret Ballinger and Donald Molteno. With her fine insight she saw already in March 1939 where ‘the increasing violence of anti-colour propaganda … the main plank now in the Nationalist Party platform’ was leading: ‘… some of the rights of the coloured people will soon go the way of the rights which the native people once had here in the Cape Province (Cited by Lewsen, 1988:33). A special achievement of the ‘native representatives’ was when Deneys Reitz, the Minister of Native Affairs attacked the pass laws in 1942 in the Senate as the greatest cause of ill-feeling in race relations. He undertook to consult Jan Smuts, the prime minister and the cabinet, with the result that the application of the pass laws was eased somewhat; only if an intended crime was suspected, the police would ask for passes.
Unfortunately a series of strikes by Blacks caused public opinion to demand a stricter implementation of the pass laws. Reitz became a liability, removed from the Cabinet and posted to London as High Commissioner.

Evangelistic expansion
Probably the first indigenous church planting move at the Cape started in District Six. A strong element of ‘Coloured’ Nationalism was present when Rev. Joseph J. Forbes started his ‘Volkskerk van Afrika’ on 14 May 1922. This visionary had the courage of his conviction to start a denomination for the upliftment of the poor from the Cape to Cairo. That is the reason why he gave his church a continental name. In only 14 years there were already 13 branches, 6 normal schools (as opposed to night schools) and the orphanage at Jonkersdam, which was later transferred to the Lawrencia Institution, Kraaifontein. Very significant of this denomination was that they had a special anthem, which was sung at their annual commemoration that hailed the protea, ‘blom van ons vaderland.’116 The denomination made inroads in geographical areas where the traditional churches became slack. They even started a church in Genadendal, the first mission station of the Moravians albeit that this congregation broke away from the new denomination that was governed from Stellenbosch and expanded to places like Oudtshoorn and far-away Kimberley.
Evangelism started to expand significantly in the 1930s. The depression of the early 1930s appears to have caused a new fire for evangelism. The start of the Docks Mission is a case in point. When John Crowe listened to an open-air service of the Salvation Army in Adderley Street in 1932, he was touched. How happy his prayerful mother was when he shared that he had decided to follow Jesus! The ‘slightly Coloured’ family - as those with a fair complexion from that racial group used to be called - attended the Baptist Church in the Mother City’s Wale Street. Almost immediately the 18-year old John Crowe wanted to share the gospel with other people in the neighbourhood of Roggebaai - the area where Andrew Murray also evangelized. With his namesake John Johnson he soon struck a partnership, getting involved in open-air services at different places. Later they were especially active on the Grand Parade, Cape Town’s Hyde Park corner, where various political groups and others had their meetings. Harold, John Johnson’s brother, joined them at a later stage. When people started committing their lives to Jesus through their ministry, they asked for permission to conduct meetings in one of the Railway cottages that soon became too small. They then rented a wood and iron construction that was called the ‘Tin Shanty.’
An evangelistic outreach was gradually picking up via Bo-Kaap and District Six in the first half of the twentieth century. Open-air services were prominent in this drive, with the Salvation Army, the Docks Mission and the Cape Town City Mission in the forefront.
Soon also the ‘Tin Shanty’ had become too small. In the 1950s the fellowship was allowed to use the hall adjacent to the Holy Trinity Church in Harrington Street that belonged to the Church of England in South Africa.

Growth of Sects at the Cape
At the Cape the New Apostolic Church experienced phenomenal growth. Only in 1902 Wilhelm Schlaphoff was sealed and ‘commissioned to lay the foundation for the Lord’s work in Cape Town’ (cited in Duncan, 1978: 13) for the New Apostolic Church. German immigrants were the first to be reached and the services were conducted in German. Tertullian’s adage – The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church -with regard to persecution and opposition, also worked in their favour. The founders ‘were often in danger of their lives, they were pelted with dirt and stones and they were threatened repeatedly’ (Cited in Duncan, 1978: 13). In a comparatively short time congregations were founded in Kensington, Heathfield, Somerset West and Paarl.
On December 5, 1928 evangelist H.F. Schlaphoff, the son of the Cape Town pioneer of the sect, became the successor, ordained in Germany as an apostle the following year. By 1931 there were already 70 congregations under the jurisdiction of Schlaphoff, who was made responsible for work outside South Africa. Apostle De Vries was given great due for the rapid growth of congregations among the ‘Coloureds’. The group was well ahead of the mainline churches in the vision to empower indigenous people when they ordained District Elder S.M Bhulana to the apostle ministry on 12 October 1958. The Headquarters of the Movement in South Africa was established in Southfield, a suburb on the Cape Flats, where some of the living apostles have offices.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses is another sect which had major successes, especially among the Non-Whites. In the spiritual realm this sect offered support to Islam because doctrinally it also opposes the Trinity and the deity of Jesus.
The Seventh Day Adventist Church has traditionally been regarded as a sect. The legalism of the group may have contributed in a big way to this label, but the Church universal will in time have to look anew at her biblical origins. Church history has a big blot on this score when the 4th century emperor Constantine declared Sunday as a rest day in 321 CE. In South Africa the group has been strongest at the Cape among the ‘Coloureds’.
The doctrinally less burdened house church movement that started in China because of the atheist persecution was soon influencing things in different parts of the world. At the beginning of the new millennium such churches sprang up after committed members of mainline churches started to get together in homes for the purpose of fellowship and worship on week-days.

Spiritual vitality of praying women
The spurning and suppression of women with regard to leadership went a completely different route. Instead of getting bitter and resentful, Black women especially appeared to have accepted male leadership gracefully. Until the late 1940s church groups organised activities among these women. The manyanos (the Xhosa word for prayer unions) tended to focus at the Cape around church-based voluntary associations. They would often allow the men to formally open meetings, in which they participated as speakers. Thus one finds in a report of the Primitive Methodist Church how in an evangelistic campaign by women from Johannesburg in the Free State thirty three people were impacted under the preaching of three different women from Saturday evening to Monday, 22-24 September 1919 (cited by Deborah Gaitskell in Elphick et al, 1997:253). The manyanos turned out to be instruments of Black empowerment virtually second to none. Here women leaders would not only pray and preach, but here dignity and political awareness developed. A Xhosa female poet wrote about the praying women of a store boycott in the country town of Herschel:
‘Right from the start, manyanos the shield to ward
To ward off the white man’s arrows’
(cited by Deborah Gaitskell in Elphick et al, 1997:254).

The practice and hurts of apartheid society was possibly the reason for determined resistance in the 1950s to reshape their meetings to provide more practical instruction and community activism.
Whereas White and some ‘Coloured’ church women’s groups concentrated on fund raising, Black women amended their name soon to ‘Prayer and Service Union.’ The social and mutual support offered by prayer groups helped compensate for the isolation and poor social structures which Western missionaries held up as models. Testimonies, preaching and spontaneous prayer became the lifeblood of Black Christian groups. In the prayer groups they could develop their potential as orators without first having to be literate. In accepting a role in moral teaching of their adolescent children, Black Christian women turned their backs on pre-christian norms, by which female relatives other than the mother had provided sex education. In general, the spiritual life of manyano women appears to have been more creative and vital than that of the other racial groups. Dawn prayer and nights of prayer were quite common.
Among the ‘Coloureds’ at the Cape there were ‘gebedskringen’ in which both sexes participated but they appear to have kept social and political issues outside their meetings. Alcoholism and in the latter quarter of the 20th century drug abuse were exceptions. Racial mixing happened in the early part of the century, but increasingly the apartheid patterns became the order of the day. Whereas some two hundred women also included other races (than Black) attending the annual district manyano in 1930 in Ndabeni, White churches would at best provide garages and the like (not even their church halls) for the religious meetings of their domestic servants.

Racism and denominationalism amputate promising beginnings
South Africa was on the verge of becoming a world force in missions when the cancerous racism and competitive denominationalism hit the mission movement at the core. The Groote Kerk refused to rent their school building for the use of Muslim outreach by Ds. G. B. A. Gerdener. Luckily a hall could be rented from a certain Mr Lowe, possibly the founder of the Cape Town City Mission.
The blessed work ‘t Uitkomst, a house in District Six started by Rev. G.B.A. Gerdener in 1916 to accommodate converts from Islam, was closed around 1928. By this time it housed 30 neglected children in its successor in Gabriel Road, Wynberg (Plumstead). The cause of the closure was the lack of support of the `Moeder- en Sendingkerk.’
The anointed ministry of the gifted Rev. A.J. Liebenberg in the 1920s - who came to the Cape after a stint in Nyasaland (the present Malawi) - merely camouflaged the real situation in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). Apparently Liebenberg knew what he was in for. In December 1935 he described Muslim evangelism in the Koningsbode as ‘die moeilijkste sendingwerk wat enige mens kan onderneem’ and ‘die onvrugbaarste van alle sendingonderneminge’ - the most difficult work anybody can undertake and the least fruitful of missionary endeavours. This wise counsel would have saved a lot of frustration had it been generally known. Many a missionary and co-worker were still to be honourably wounded in the frustrating outreach to Cape Muslims in the subsequent decades of the 20th century.

Bigoted church politics
South Africa got to the verge of becoming a world force in missions when the cancerous racism and competitive denominationalism hit the mission movement in the core. White Christians unintentionally brought with them the baggage of racial superiority. Cilliers suggests aptly that they were themselves thus handcuffed (Cilliers, 1997:164). By the mid-19th century ‘racism had become an important ideological pedestal for the Western self-image of superiority’ (Esterhuyse, 1979:22). In this process pseudo-science gave valuable assistance. Darwin’s epoch-making work with the title On the Origin of the species of Natural Selection of 1859 had as sub-title the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
The teaching in the church seemed to have been lacking with regard to sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, e.g. the challenge that men of God should be at the right place at the right time. This happened although Dr Andrew Murray had taught the church worldwide in the teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit. Too often the arch enemy succeeded in luring gifted people to less effective ministry. Thus it might have looked strategic that the prodigious Ds Gerdener - who had been set aside especially for Muslim outreach - became a theology professor. Looking back, it is easy to see that Gerdener’s move to the Kweekskool at Stellenbosch, the theological seminary there, was not wise. He himself became handcuffed as his 1919 biography of Sarel Cilliers, a prominent voortrekker, demonstrates. This book served to entrench the myth of the covenant of Blood River (Thompson, 1985:181), that was tosow so much division and enmity between White and Black people the next few decades.
The DRC by and large lost its vision to reach out to the Muslims, even though Gerdener was hereafter one of the mentors to their future ministers for many years (By his own admission, Ds Davie Pypers, who studied under Gerdener and who became a pioneer missionary to the Cape Muslims in the second half of the 20th century, did not get his inspiration for Muslim outreach at Stellenbosch. This only happened after he had become a minister at St Stephen’s in Bo-Kaap).
At Stellenbosch Gerdener became closely aligned to the race policy of the National Party. In fact, Gerdener became so engrossed in the racist set-up that he became a member of the party commission, which helped with the drafting of the apartheid policy.117
In due course the very special mission centre of Andrew Murray at Wellington was diluted into racially segregated institutions when the theological training of the Sendingkerk started there in 1954. Nationals of colour were used by God outside of their home country later more by chance, after people of colour had left the shores of the country because of other reasons, e.g. due to apartheid repression or through bursaries for overseas’ studies.

Muslims hear the Gospel... however not clearly
At events with international preachers in the Old Drill Hall in Darling Street one could invariably reckon with some Muslims in the audience. Many from the ranks of Islam were attending Christian schools in Bo-Kaap and District Six anyway. Often enough Wayside and other Sunday schools were attended by some of them, although not always with the permission of the parents.
The Anglicans had in Reverend Stephen Garabedian someone with an oriental background and knowledge of Arabic. A.R. Hampson joined this mission to Muslims in 1936. However, the negative approach of the outreach to Muslims by the Anglicans through the clergymen Hampson and Garabedian in the 1930s - by way of pamphlets that could have been counter-productive to Muslim evangelism - hardly seems to have held up the deterioration of Islam at the Cape. Nor was the effect significant from a competitive spirit that was present between the churches of Bo-Kaap and District Six at this time.

Stellenbosch as the new vanguard for Afrikaans
As educational centre Stellenbosch overtook other Boland towns like Paarl and Wellington in the last quarter of the 19th century. Out of the Stellenbosch Gymnasium the Arts Department evolved, which became the Stellenbosch College in 1881.Ssix years later it was renamed the Victoria College, in honour of Queen Victoria. Prominent families would send their sons to prepare themselves for professions. J.C. Smuts, J.B.M Hertzog and D.F. Malan belonged to this generation. All three of them would later be Prime Minister of the country. Interesting was the pun of Prof T. Walker at this time. Instead of the motto Africa for the Africans he proposed that Afrikaners for Africa should be trained at Stellenbosch. The language medium was still English when the Patriotic movement for Afrikaans was making great strides in nearby Paarl. Yet, the student J.C. Smuts made a significant contribution in the journal of the Debating Society referring to ‘the grand empire of the south to be’ (Cited in Muller, 1990:36).
???

Towards the official recognition of Afrikaans
The arch imperialist Alfred Milner was an experienced journalist, who knew the value of the press, trying to use this for his war purposes. While martial law was still in place he saw to it that a powerful imperialist press group would be maintained. He did not want only the war, but also the peace. Already in 1902 he allowed the well-known author and poet Eugène Marais to publish Land en Volk in Pretoria, hoping that the paper would reconcile the Boers with his Trasnvaal policy. In the second major movement towards the official recognition of Afrikaans, the poet and dramatist C. Louis Leipoldt, the son of Johann Leipoldt, a Rhenish missionary in Wupperthal in the Clanwilliam district, played a big role, along with Jan F. E. Cilliers, who put the language on the literature map with his poem Die Vlakte.
A special role was played in the language movement regard by the press. In early 1912 the Afrikaanse Taalvereniging (ATV), which flourished in Stellenbosch, proudly announced that an Afrikaans weekly was to be launched in Cape Town and distributed throughout the country. Prominent writers in the Mother City like ex-President F.W. Reitz and Advocate J.H.H. de Waal would be contributors. Equal rights for their language was propagated. However, De Voorloper, which finally came off the presses, only lasted from 1912 to 1914. Yet, this paper was the harbinger of nationalist paper I, declaring in its leader of 13 November that the paper is against the spirit of reconciliation (Muller, 1990: 30). Still in the year of the ‘death’ of De Voorloper, the Afrikaans monthly, Ons Moedertaal was launched in Stellenbosch as the organ of the ATV. Ons Moedertaal was not to be political, but would plead the cause of Afrikaans.????

The Bible in Afrikaans
In 1923 two men were appointed on a full-time basis to translate the Bible into Afrikaans, Ds J. D. du Toit (better known as Totius and the son of Ds S. J. du Toit) and Dr J.D. Kestell. A major push to revive the fortunes of the language as a written medium was given by B.B. Keet in a lecture in Stellenbosch on 21 August 1924. This may have gone some way in influencing matters because Afrikaans was officially recognised in 1926.
In August 1933 the first Afrikaans Bible was finally published. Within 18 months 250,000 had been sold - a world record at the time for a Bible translation. This united the Afrikaners in a special way when the DIE KERKBODE started with a series around the 'Voorwaartse Beweging' in the light of the spiritual need (Olivier, 1999:122). Ds. A. Moorrees compared the Afrikaner nation to be equated with the halfdead traveller of Luke 15. Only few people attended the Groote Kerk as a symptom. On 8 October 1933 the first meeting of the Voorwaartse Beweging took place in the Groote Kerk. Chairs had to be carried in as the cry to God went up, ‘revive your people! (Olivier, 1999:124). A movement of the Word was seen as essential to bring the volk to revival.

Cape Women leading the Way
The Cape indirectly played a role in the fight for voting rights for women globally. The wife of Saul Solomon, the great 19th century parliamentarian, got involved in this movement after their emigration to Great Britain. From 1895 Julia Frances Solly, who came from England in 1890, became active int eh move to secure the vote for women. From the beginning of the 20th century she concentrated on this issue after settling at Knorhoek, Sir lowry's Pass, in 1901. As a close friend of Olive Schreiner she was one of the chief personalities in the National Council of Women in South Africa.
The worldwide feminist movement received a major push through a book of Olive Schreiner with the title Woman and Labour (1911). Olive Schreiner was so much of a pioneer of positive feminism that Vera Brittain referred to her book as the ‘Bible of the Woman’s Movement.’ Brittain saw this book as ‘insistent and inspiring as a trumpet-call summoning the faithful to a vital crusade’ (Cited by Hobman, 1954:2).
At the Cape itself, the Non-European Women’s Suffrage League only got underway in 1938 in District Six. Yet, Ms Halima Ahmed was the leading light there at a time when women were hardly found in politics anywhere in the world. She became better known as Halima Gool after she married Goolam Gool. In August 1938 she delivered the inaugural address of the Women’s Suffrage League in the Cosmopolitan Hall in Pontac Street, District Six. She became the first secretary of the national Anti-CAD (Coloured Affairs Department) movement in 1943.
Even more famous became her sister-in-law, Zainunissa (Cissie) Gool, the daughter of Dr Abdurahman, who became a respected (and sometimes hated) outspoken and controversial City Councillor for 24 years on behalf of the National Liberation League. She was someone with stature, one of the country’s first female Master of Arts, but also someone who was critical of the APO policies of her father Dr Abdurahman. Cape Women were also pioneering in the field of publication when a people’s history booklet on Claremont was produced by the United Women’s Organization as part of its campaign against the Group Areas removals.

A renaissance in the history of the struggle
The decade after 1935 has been described ‘a renaissance in the history of struggle by the oppressed in South Africa after the “dark years” of the early 1930s…’ (Musson, 1989:77). It started with opposition to the three ‘Native Bills’ which spontaneously united Blacks in. In the midst of the great economic depression of the early 1930s, Smuts and Hertzog sunk their differences temporarily, forming an alliance in 1934.
Not only would the Hertzog-Smuts legislation render Blacks to be aliens in their own country, but they were also forced to go and work in the mines or on the farms of the Whites. The Bills, which were intended to remove Blacks from the common voters’ roll in the Cape and entrenching segregation, jolted the ANC to life. Seme and Jabavu, its leaders, initiated the All African Convention (AAC), to challenge the Native bills. Unity among the oppressed was indeed called for as never before.
James La Guma and Johnny Gomas were Cape Marxists and trade unionists who were committed to justice and non-racialism from an early stage in their lives. James La Guma called his Fifteen Group for a special meeting in 1935 when the threat of Blacks being deprived of their franchise became clearer. He concluded: ‘We need an organization of all the oppressed.’ A new organization was formed: the National Liberation League (NLL). In Cissy Gool they had a ready-made president. The NLL became one of the main forces in the All African Convention (AAC) which met from 15-18 December, 1935 with more than 400 delegates. including the Cape-based NNL as a major faction and various Black sporting organisations. That congress was characterised by great enthusiasm and determination. The League started a periodical, The Liberator, in 1937 in which the NLL was hailed as ‘Part of a worldwide movement against imperialism’.
As one of the radicals at the convention, Johnny Gomas proposed that mass protest meetings should be organised throughout the country. His proposal was unanimously accepted. In the face of the unprecedented unanimity, the rulers had to act. Instead of implementing the convention’s proposal, Seme and Jabavu walked into the Prime Minister Hertzog’s trap, when the two met Hertzog with a delegation in 1936. Hertzog claimed that the two leaders accepted concessions, although some of the delegation vehemently denied it. Perceived by many to be African acceptance of Hertzog’s Native Representative Council (NRC), many Blacks regarded the ANC leadership as stooges. This Council had indeed later seen many resolutions passed by them, of which the government took no notice. The Council had become what many scathingly called a ‘toy telephone.’ The ANC proper went ‘into hibernation until after the war’ (Musson, 1989:77), when the party was rescuscitated by young radicals like Anton Lembede and Nelson Mandela.

New Trade Union and political Role Players
Sam Kahn was a leader of the Communist Party and a lawyer who earned his LL.B degree at UCT in 1932. He organized several ‘Coloured’ trade unions and in 1935 was one of the organizers of the National Liberation League (NLL). He was popular with Blacks and defended many clients of colour in the course of his legal career. A member of the Cape Town City Council from 1943 to 1952, he was elected to Parliament by the Blacks of the Cape Western District in 1949. He was however expelled three years later on the grounds that he was a Communist. Reginald September, born in 1923 as the son of working class parents, joined the NLL in 1938. From factory work he moved into full-time trade unionism, organizing textile and distributive workers in the Mother City and Port Elizabeth in the 1940s. When ‘Coloureds’ were threatened with disfranchisement, he helped to organize the Franchise Action Council, serving as its secretary at the time of the protest strike of May 7, 1951. After spending two years abroad, Reginald September returned in 1953. He became one of the principal founders of the South African Peoples Organization (SACPO). From 1954 until 1961 he was the general secretary of SACPO. After being imprisoned in 1960 and 1961, he fled the country in 1963, after which he became the chief representative of the ANC for Western Europe.
Deep-seated divisions within the AAC
In his enthusiasm for a united front of the oppressed, Gomas underestimated the deep-seated divisions within the AAC. He, as the General Secretary of the AAC, was accused in April 1936 by Seme, the ANC leader, of trying to turn the AAC into a ‘permanent national organization’, an effort to undermine the ANC. Gomas responded in typical fighting fashion: ‘…What is all important now is to harness the giant wave of enthusiasm for Unity and Action, created in its unanimous opposition to the Native Bills’. What made Johnny Gomas so exceptional was his conscious decision to step back so that new leaders could come through. This happened e.g. in December 1937, to allow Moses Kotane to be delegated to the AAC conference, where Kotane became a rising star. He had already succeeded to get Kotane elected as General Secretary fo the Communist Party. In similar vein Gomas withdrew - after contesting one of the most bitterly fought municipal elections in Ward 7 (a part of District Six) - to prevent a split vote.
The AAC was hereafter considerably weakened when the ANC disaffiliated. It was tragic that even after the elections of 1948 that led to the for the apartheid government - which was so catastrophic for the oppressed - the two groups could still not unite again. This only happened in 1983 with the formation of the United Democratic Front.
Gomas continued to make things happen. He and James la Guma had been at the cradle of yet another move of opposition to the White rulers in 1935. In the preamble to the draft programme of the National Liberation League (NLL), which called ‘for Equality, Land and Freedom’, one finds the gist of the pamphlet ‘The Emancipation of slaves’, written by Johnny Gomas. The founding members of the Cape-based NLL included Gomas and the new rising stars of District Six, Alex La Guma and Cissie Gool. The latter two were children of two seasoned politicians. While waiting for the next conference of the AAC due in December 1937, Gomas concentrated on the activities of the NLL. He moved to 27 Stirling Street in District Six, from where he gave a lot of support to Cissie Gool. In the municipal elections of September 1938, Cissie Gool unseated Mr Mc Callum, a sitting member of the Council. In due course she became a respected (and sometimes hated), outspoken and controversial City Councillor for 24 years as a member of the National Liberation League.

New Era Fellowship
The whole APO, including Dr Abdurahman as well as the Native Representative Council was reckoned by the New Era Fellowship (NEF) to belong to the group of collaborators. George Golding and his Coloured People’s National Union (CPNU), were in the eyes of many the arch collaborator.
William Peter van Schoor, a teacher who was born in Salt River in 1913 and who graduated through private studies, was the principal speaker at the inauguration of the New Era Fellowship. Johnny Gomas, James La Guma and a few other Marxists had much in common with the NEF rebels, but they detested their intellectual debates. Yet, in the NLL they found common ground in their abhorrence of Dr Abdurahman’s APO, who ‘steeped so low’ as to co-operate in the government ‘Commission of Enquiries Regarding the Cape Coloured Population’ - without even a single note of dissent. The recommendations of this commission laid the foundation of apartheid legislation like Group Areas for different races.
The All African Convention prepared the ground for the Non European Unity Front (NEUF) and the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the major opposition movements of the 1940s. On Easter Monday 1938, the Non European Unity Front (NEUF) was started. It was officially launched in January 1939, with Cissy Gool as President and James La Guma as the organising secretary. This can be regarded as the precursor of the UDF of the 1980s. Already on Easter Monday, 27 March 1939, twenty thousand people gathered on the Grand Parade for a rally of the NEUF, the biggest demonstration the Mother City had seen up to that moment. In a moving ceremony Cissy Gool lit a torch which was passed on to the masses, who likewise had torches. The NLL anthem, which was written by James La Guma and Johnny Gomas, was sung as the crowd marched to parliament, led by the District Six Moravian Brass band.
Dark folks arise, the long, long night is over… Dark folks are risen and the DAY is here.
When James La Guma discerned that Whites were usurping leadership in the NLL, he asked them to step down. This led to some infighting, resulting in the NLL becoming a spent force by the early 1940s, although Cissy Gool-Abdurahman was still a City Councillor on that ticket. The illustrious Cape female politician served in that capacity until her death in 1963.

Collaboration politics
District Six seems also to have been the place of birth of ‘Coloured’ collaboration politics. George Goulding, who became the principal of Ashley Street Higher Primary School, was the best early example. (But before him N. R. Veldsman, who had been appointed inspector of ‘Coloured’ labour at the docks, seems to have been quite happy to be the state lackey ensuring that ‘Coloured’ men – and not Blacks – were employed there.) Goulding was wary of Dr Abdurahman’s radical policies.
In the 1930s George Goulding was the man behind The Sun, one of the first ‘Coloured’ newspapers, and which was printed in District Six. From 1943 the newspaper got stiff opposition from Joyce Meissenheimer’s Torch, a paper linked to the Non-European Unity Movement. George Golding became the leader of the Coloured People’s National Union (CPNU), at that time the only political body which had any orientation towards co-operation with the Nationalist government, whose apartheid policy later made the country the skunk of the world. His brother, Charles Goulding, became well-known for the Protea Program, an ideologically tainted Afrikaans weekly radio programme. The ‘realpolitik’ of George Golding was hailed by some Whites, who simultaneously mocked the ‘lofty ideals’ of those ‘Coloured’ leaders who refused co-operation with the apartheid regime, those who called themselves ‘non-collaborationists’.
It was from the CPNU ranks that the Federal Coloured People’s Party defected under the leadership of Tom Schwartz in 1964 ‘on the principles of positive equal development’. This was little less than tacit acceptance of apartheid, actually the logical continuation of the pragmatic politics of George Golding.

Beginnings of cautious criticism in Afrikaner ranks
It is ironic that a critical spirit started to develop at Stellenbosch while a brilliant academic, Dr H.F. Verwoerd was pioneering the relatively new department of Sociology. Twenty years later Verwoerd was tobe the prime apartheid architect and ideologist. Beyers Naudé and his brother Joos were two of the students who demonstrated their independence from Afrikaner uncritical thinking by joining the editorial staff of a clandestine and daring newspaper called Pro Libertate. In the second year of its operation a slogan was added to the paper’s masthead that typified the spirit of the eager but critical young journalists: ‘A University should be a Place of Light, of Liberty and of Learning.’ The newspaper’s editors had to guard their identities very closely, because once exposed, they would have been subjected to severe pressure and criticism. One senses how Beyers Naudé was not only prepared in this way for the Afrikaner ostracism at this time, but also how Pro Veritate, the mouthpiece of the Christian Institute in the 1960s and 1970s, was prefigured.
Before Beyers Naudé entered the theological Seminary of Stellenbosch, he was severely tempted to enter the business world. Professor ?? Schumann discerned in him leadership qualities - just the man needed to take the Afrikaners by the bootstraps out of the economic dependence on the British. But something held Beyers Naudé back. In spite of his rebellion against his parents, it was probably their prayerful habits that made him sensing a calling from God for the ministry.
Beyers Naudé started his studies after the purge of critical academics that followed the sacking of the brilliant Professor J. du Plessis in 1930. ‘In the theological desert of the Seminary there was one oasis in the person of Professor B.B. (Bennie) Keet.’ Beyers Naudé was deeply influenced by Keet who was firmly opposed to the growing racist theology in the DRC. Writing in the Kerkbode, Keet would frequently clash with theologians who claimed that apartheid could be justified on biblical grounds. He was at some stage heading the Kweekskool, the Seminary in Stellenbosch. In 1956 Keet was at it again with his book Wither South Africa?, (p.85) warning that ‘The test of our civilisation is our treatment of the underprivilged. Everything which bears the stamp of oppression [and oppression of personality is the worst] debases the oppressor just as it degrades the oppressed.’ Writing in the Kerkbode, Keet would frequently clash with theologians who claimed that apartheid could be justified on biblical grounds.

On a personal level, the heritage of the pioneer missionary Georg Schmidt impacted his life when Naudé met his wife. She was the daughter of Emil Weder, a beloved German missionary who managed the Moravian Mission Store in Genadendal. (The name Emil Weder still lives on in the name of the local High School). The seed for the multi-racial Christian Institute was sown into the heart of the former Afrikaner Broederbond leader. A few years later, Dr Beyers Naudé, just after he had been elected as moderator of the new Southern Transvaal Dutch Reformed Church regional synod, was completely ostracized for criticizing apartheid.)
Another Afrikaner from the Cape who broke ranks with Verwoerdian ranks was Anton Rupert. The product of the Karoo town of Graaff Reinet made a name for himself when he established the industrial giant Rembrandt in the town of Paarl. Rupert fully identified himself with Afrikaner efforts to achieve economic independence. Already one evening in the late 1940s, after listening to a debate between Mr Justice H.A. Fagan and Prof. A.C. Cilliers he concluded: ‘Fagan is right. There is no salvation for South Africa in racial separation. We have to live and work together’ (Esterhuyse, 1986:26). That was to be the foundation of his vision of co-existence based on partnership and trust, a vision that was not popular in apartheid circles. He also believed that partnership provided the key to racial reconciliation.

A White backlash
During World War II people of colour had started taking jobs which previously only Whites had occupied. The sum total of the dwindling support was that the UP of Jan Smuts lost the elections of 1948 marginally. Thus history repeated itself where the PACT government of 1924 was a result of the White backlash. The boycott call of the NEUM will surely also have helped to tip the scales in Malan’s favour. Albert Luthuli suggested with regard to the NEUM: ‘it is doubtful whether South Africa has so far produced a body more torn by friction and disharmony that the Unity Movement’ (Luthuli, 1962: 97)
It is tragic that a clergyman, Dr D. F. Malan, took over the mantle from Smuts. He became the legislator of the first formal apartheid laws with its striking similarities to Nazi legislation. They were instituted by the National Party, which came to power in 1948. Malan’s efforts to get the ‘Coloureds’ removed from the common roll – manipulation of the worst kind – goes down in history as one of the most tragic betrayals of pledges made to a people group. Under Malan’s successor J.G. Strijdom, the government enlarged the Senate for this purpose. At this time the Minister for ‘Native Administration’ and a later Prime Minister, Dr H.F. Verwoerd, made a striking commitment: ‘When I have control of native education, I will reform it so that the Natives will be taught from childhood to realize that equality with Europeans is not for them’.
After Jan Smuts had propagated segregation strongly in the 1930s, the foundation of apartheid legislation was firmly laid. He and his party nowhere opposed the removal of Blacks from the common Voters’ roll in 1936. Thus the United Party (UP) opposition to the removal of franchise rights of the ‘Coloureds’ in 1956 was hollow – tokenism at best.

Renewal or Demolition of District Six?118
Slum conditions in District Six had not been addressed yet in the 1930s. Renewal of the District was closely connected with proposals for the Foreshore development. Demolition of the existing houses was seriously debated February 1940 when the scheme was advertised in the Provicial Gazette and in local newspapers. Associations and the public were given six weeks to make recommendations and objections. The Non European Unity Front (NEUF) with its base in District Six was soon leading the protest movement under the leadership of Mrs. Cissie Gool, a city councillor. Protest against the scheme hinged on what the workers’ organisations regarded as the threat of segregation. The ‘remodelling of District Six’ involved the demolition of three thousand buildings and the evacuation of 29, 595 people. The Cape Times reported the objections of businesses in District Six as well as the deputation of the NEUF, led by Mrs. Gool. The delegation foresaw that the entire present population of the area would be forced out, forcing the poor to a distant suburb where they would be face with bus or train fares which they could not afford. Opposition to the scheme was fanned by revelations about conditions on the Cape Flats. Soon the Cape Argus featured banner headlines on behalf of the NEUF: MIGRATION TO THE CAPE FLATS OPPOSED. The scheme was indeed nothing else than ‘disguised segregation.’ Thirty years later their fears became reality with the difference that apartheid was not attempting to disguise anything.
In 1940 the protesters were successful in getting city councillors on their side. Councillor Louis Gradner suggested in a packed Liberman Hall in District Six on 25 July 1940 that they had been tricked into believing that the scheme was a provisional one: ‘What the Council is proposing to do under the guise of slum clearance is to disperse 27,000 ratepayers who were born and brought up in the district…’ The discussion led to the full council approving the Amended Town Planning Scheme on 27 May 1941 with 22 voting in favour and only three against.
There was plenty of evidence that segregation was on the increase. State-sanctioned residential segregation was due to become policy because the ruling United Party had it in their plans and the Nationalist Party was actively propagating apartheid.

Spread of the gospel by people of Colour
Starting their outreach in the Dockyard, the group, which started operating from the ‘Tin Shanty’, called themselves the Docks Mission. From its earliest years prayer and fasting belonged to the habits of the Docks Mission. Many a Friday night was used for an all night prayer meeting. No wonder that God gave the new denomination phenomenal growth. Not only were new churches started on Browns Farm (Ottery) and Fractreton Estate, a new housing scheme, but also further afield like Wellington and Grabouw. In due course they conducted gospel meetings in the Community Centre of the Bloemhof Flats in Constitution Street, District Six and in the YMCA building in Chiapinni Street, Bo-Kaap. From their early beginnings they also started with outreach at the prison in Tokai and at the nearby Porter Reformatory. Many a life was changed through this ministry and at the Brooklyn Chest Hospital where services are still being held. After the services at the ‘Tin Shanty’ on Sunday, some members went to Somerset Hospital to pray with nurses there. A branch of the Hospital Christian Fellowship, which operated at this hospital for many years, benefited greatly from this assistance.
The Africa Evangelical Band had evangelism as their main activity. As one of the first Bible Schools for people of colour, it operated in Bell Road, Kenilworth with great effect, sending their graduates as pilgrims throughout the country. Many pastors in the ‘Coloured’ churches of ‘mainline’ denominations where gospel preaching was neglected, were led to a personal relationship with Jesus through this evangelism and spiritual challenge. Because of Group Areas legislation the Bible School moved to Crawford in 19??.

Cape Prophetic voices
The almost classic guilt - going right through to the present - derives from the refusal of the church to listen to, let alone to follow the warnings and advice of prophetic voices, especially with regard to outreach to Jews and Muslims. Although people like Dr John M. Arnold had already spelled out the need in the last quarter of the 19th century - for the church to give its best people for evangelism among Muslims, this call was not heeded. In general, the church authorities persisted in looking for people who could achieve quick results. (A notable exception was the Dutch Reformed Ds Davie Pypers, who persevered for many years to reach out to the Indians in the second half of the 20th century.)
With regard to racial segregation, the warning voices of theological professors Barend B. Keet and Ben Marais should be added. In the Dutch Reformed synod of 1940 Marais warned his church not to accept apartheid because it was scripturally unjustifiable. However, he was sidelined.
Racist separatist thinking was disastrous in its effect with regard to evangelizing the Muslims. Dr Andrew Murray, who had been a divine instrument for the spreading of the Gospel worldwide through his books at the turn of the 20th century, had unintentionally sowed the seeds of racial segregation when Dutch Reformed Theologians abused his a-political stand. Murray was branded in a negative way as a pietist.
With the focus of so many church leaders on the government’s apartheid policy of yesteryear - either in defence or opposition - correction was definitely needed. Even the evangelical churches had no eye for the Muslims in their midst. The unspoken rule that one should not speak to Muslims about religion, won the day. It was in this regard that help from abroad was surely an answer to prayer. In England prayers had been offered for many years. The prayers for the ‘Cape Malays’ - as the Cape Muslims were erroneously called - possibly came into focus either after the publication of an article about South African Muslims in 1925 in the Muslim World by Dr Samuel Zwemer, the greatest missionary to the Middle East, or after his challenge to the Keswick convention in England about ten years earlier.
Satan however hit back, when an artificial and unbiblical differentiation between Christian action and evangelistic outreach caused an ever-widening rift in the movement.

Indifference of the church
To the shame of the Church the disenfranchisement of Blacks finally came about in 1936, after General Hertzog, the contemporary Prime Minister, had consulted the churches ten years earlier. However, no clear biblical guidance was forthcoming from the church leaders. Ds Nicol, in his inaugural address at the formation of the Christian Council in Bloemfontein in 1936, bemoaned that ‘eie belang ...die botoon voer’ in the churches, that self- interest was predominant (Koningsbode, August 1936, p.226). The missionaries were silent, not coming up for the rights of the oppressed at this time.
Also in respect of education the churches presented a poor image in the 1930s. Ds Nicol asked with regard to the education of Blacks whether the churches were going to try to outwit each other and thus damage the issue at hand (Koningsbode, August 1936, p.227). He suggested ‘naturelle-opvoeding’ (native education) as a matter of the highest priority; that the Church should not be afraid to tackle such matters urgently. But Nicol’s was still a voice in the wilderness.
Abdurahman might have been a bit harsh on the missionaries on the matter of land settlements, describing them as ‘tax-gatherers of the meanest type, because they worked under the cloak of religion’119 (Van der Ross, 1990:110). He might have been too sarcastic with his lashing of the Dutch ‘predikant’, asserting that it was the DRC aim to make the ‘Coloured’ man travel in a different compartment on his journey to heaven. He was alluding of course to the apartheid practice of different train compartments for the different races. Yet, his use of nigra sed formosa - black but beautiful - was way ahead of his time (Even in the 1970s many ‘Coloured’ people - after all the years of racist indoctrination - still had difficulty to appreciate the slogan ‘Black is beautiful’).
The depression of the 1930s affected every part of society. By the end of the 1940s, Cape Islam appeared to be on its last legs yet again. The proposed Coloured Affairs Council split the Bo-Kaap community down the middle, the Muslims included. Cissy Gool - the daughter of Dr Abdurahman, the dynamic politician who died in 1940 - stood firmly for no compromise with anything that reeked like racial segregation. Even before its official inauguration in government in 1948, the apartheid ideology had started to divide and rule.
The respective governments manipulated with the qualified franchise - education and other barriers were used to suppress people of colour. The formation of the Coloured Affairs Council (Department) in 1943 was the brainchild of Harry Lawrence, a cabinet Minister of Jan Smuts, drafting Salie Dollie and the unknown Mogamat de Vries as pawns in a sham representation of the Muslims. Cissy Abdurahman-Gool launched the Anti-CAD (-C.A.C) campaign in District Six as opposition to this ploy (Davids, 1984:209). Soon Dollie resigned from both the United Party and the C.A.C, condemning the council in the process (Davids, 1984:210). History condemns him however as an opportunist when he joined Tom Swartz in a similar constellation in the 1960s.

Anti-Apartheid introduced
Smuts’ volte face was not completely convincing. There was reason enough to suspect that he was trying to appease the Africans. In the background there were the Japanese successes, closing in on Madagascar. An invasion of South Africa was by no means improbable at that juncture.
Nevertheless, the government’s wartime reforms fuelled hope among people of colour. Even a reform of the pass laws was considered. In the same measure it made Smuts more unpopular among Afrikaners and other conservative Whites. The knowledgeable ‘Coloureds’ however did not trust Smuts’ political summersault. Things came to a head after the 18 January 1943 announcement by Harry Lawrence of the governments intention to start a Coloured Affairs Department (CAD). On the Eleventh of February 1943 – unheralded and inconspicuous, unlike the same dates in 1966120 and 1990121 - Anti-CAD was inaugurated by a public lecture of the New Era Fellowship (NEF) with the title ‘CAD – The New Fraud’.
The Anti-CAD movement rallied people of colour together in an unprecedented way. In the bulletin No. 3 (8 April 1943) of the new movement, 7 public meetings were organized between 8 and 20 April, taking place not only in the Cape Peninsula, but also in places like Paarl and Malmesbury. By 20 May they already had 81 organizations affiliated. Out of the Anti-CAD the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) developed, likewise with District Six as its nucleus. Using the boycott weapon with great effect, this movement in which people of different racial groups worked together for the first time as never before – thus a foreshadow of the UDF of the 1980s – gave conservative Whites a fright when the NEUM asked their supporters to vote for the Communist Party in the 1943 elections, rather than for the United Party (UP). The Communist Party itself caused some confusion by merely suggesting that voters should fight against the Nationalist Party candidates (Alexander Simons, 2004:156).
With W. P. van Schoor and A.J. Abrahamse teaching at the Söhnge training in Worcester, this Boland town soon joined District Six and Wynberg as a major venue of opposition to apartheid. The NEF ‘young Turks’ were already in leadership in the 1940s, e.g. in the TLSA, after ousting the Van der Ross/Hendrickse old guard at the 1943 conference in Kimberley. The clash with the government was inevitable.

Renewed Political activity in District Six
Much of the opposition to segregation in political activity amongst people of colour in South Africa started in District Six. A popular newspaper of resistance, The Torch, had its offices in Central Hanover Street. In nearby Barrack Street, The Guardian and New Age the last variations of the paper were located, until the newspapers were banned one after the other. International Printers in Van der Leur Street gave valuable assistance. The AAC had its national headquarters in Harrington Street.
A major vehicle of protest was the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), which was founded in 1943. It had the Teachers’ League of South Africa (TLSA) as one of the most influential affiliates. Teachers had taken the lead countrywide in the resistance to the oppressive government, due to the lead given at Genadendal and the mission and church schools which fanned out from District Six. The churches made ample use of the government aid of 50% to equip their schools.
By 1936, i.e. a year after the Genadendal Training school was forced to close down, 90% of all Coloured teachers held certified qualifications, working in relatively well equipped buildings. Compare that with the situation among the Blacks where still in the 1960s unqualified teachers had to contend with double shifts of overcrowded classes, often without the most basic teaching facilities and no churches supporting them.
The description of the role of the TLSA by Vernie February, a Capetonian who went to study in Leiden (Holland), is probably not exaggerated: ‘there is no parallel in the world where a mere Teachers Union played such a vital role in the politicization of a particular oppressed group’ (February, 1983:21). The TLSA was however not a normal Teachers Union, because also clergymen who were not teachers were associate members.122 In fact, the strength of the organization was that it worked so closely with the churches. The Declaration to the Nations of the World in 1946 started a process by which the struggle in South Africa was to become increasingly internationalized.
Surely not without merit Richard Dudley (in Jeppie/Soudien, 1990: 200) demonstrated how the bubbling former ‘slum area’ functioned as the cradle of ‘a national solution for all of South Africa and the structures and ideas upon which a truly national liberation movement came to be based.’ In similar vein, Yousuf Rassool (2000:193) referred to the Freedom Charter of the ANC as ‘nothing but an imitation in many respects of our Ten Point Plan’, i.e. that of the Unity Movement. If one considers the similarity between the Freedom Charter and the People’s Charter of June 1948, they display indeed great similarity.123 The 322 delegates at the latter occasion which became by far not so well-known as the big event of Kliptown 1955, demanded the right ‘to stand for, vote for and be elected to all the representatives bodies which rule our people.’ In a remarkable book When Smuts goes, Keppel-Jones prophesied how the political rights of the Coloureds would be taken away by the Nationalists.
The new National Party government soon after their election into power reacted with initiatives to end African representation and the removal of the Coloureds from the Cape common voters’ roll.
Yet, the NEUM was still critical of the Charterist movement, because the latter group accepted multi-racialism. Tabata, a rising star in the NEUM, saw this as political opportunism, which described as ‘the canker that has claimed the greatest toll of all our organizations…’ The AAC, of which the NEUM was a key affiliate, declared in 1944 the policy of the rejection of trusteeship and asserted the claim to full equality. The conception was a giant leap for all people who had been conditioned to feel themselves less equal.
Non-racialism and non-collaboration were the key NEUM words, accompanied by fierce and uncompromising rejection of every trace of race or ethnicity. In this sense it was quite futuristic but not pragmatic enough to catch the imagination of the masses. The Cape resistance nevertheless bore the brunt of government repression when many of their leaders were discriminated against, dismissed or posted to country schools. Quite a few of them were banned. A weakness of the NEUM was that they never shedded the image of an upper class Coloured clique. Apart from a short period of defiance at the occasion of the celebrations to commemorate the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1952, they never seemed to have achieved any success in mobilizing the masses.

Defiance as reaction to apartheid
One of the first acts of organized resistance, which Dr Malan and his National Party government had to encounter after their 1948 victory, was the Train Apartheid Resistance Committee (TARC). On the Cape Flats and Suburban line to Fish Hoek and Simon’s Town, the trains still had no racial sign boards like on the Main line and elsewhere in the country. The TARC saw their resistance as a bulwark against the fast eroding rights of all people who were not White. However, only 450 people volunteered instead of the thousands expected to do so in spite of well-attended mass meetings. The committee decided to delay the action, forced to admit that the majority of the organised workers are still standing aloof, outside the TARC (Neville Alexander in Saunders and Phillips, 1984:187). Yet, the attempt to defy new apartheid laws by the aborted TARC, the mood of resistance may be seen as an important starting domino, the foundation of the thousands of volunteers in the Defiance Campaign of 1952. The Group Areas legislation, Bantu Education passes and other laws linked groups which had previously differed. The attempt of the new Nationalist government to get ‘Coloureds’ removed from the common voters’ roll probably ushered in the defiance campaign of 1952 more than anything else. The Supreme Court nullified the initial voters’ roll legislation of 1951, heightening awareness to the shrewd moves of the Nationalist Party to bulldoze through the abhorrent legislation.
In June 1951 the ANC executive called a conference with the SAIC (South African Indian Congress), the ‘Coloured’-based APO and FRAC (Franchise Action Council) to discuss the general prospects for joint anti-apartheid activity. The next year the ANC and its partners in the Indian and ‘Coloured’ communities initiated a campaign against unjust laws. ‘Defiers’ were to court arrest like sitting in rail carriages reserved for Whites or standing in queues for Whites-only, but acting with complete non-violence. Over 8,000 volunteers defied apartheid laws during approximately six months.

White identification with Black grievances
Many Whites within the greatly diminished Springbok Legion – veterans of World War II - identified with Black grievances. Whites who were anti-Nationalist, but who could not accept the ANC’s call for immediate universal suffrage formed the Liberal Party in May 1953. The theme of the Cape Town-centred party was equal rights for all civilized men and equal opportunities to attain civilization. Alan Paton, its leader, bravely called for one man one vote, opening up the membership to all races and thus swimming very much against the stream of White society.
The defiance campaign prepared the way for the Congress of Democrats. More radical Whites like the Afrikaner union organizer Bettie Du Toit and the Socialist Patrick Duncan got on board. Duncan, son of his famous father and namesake, Sir Patrick Duncan - who had been a Cabinet Minister under Jan Smuts till 1924 – became a real firebrand. He was educated at Bishops in Rondebosch and became a high official in the ‘Basutoland’ (later Lesotho) Government Service. He gave up his post to join the defiance campaign. He served a prison term for entering a black township without a permit. Later he helped to found the labour Party, editing its mouthpiece Contact, which brought him in renewed conflict with the police.
In Cape Town, White volunteers wore ANC arm bands as their contribution to the defiance campaign. During a rally at the Drill Hall Jewish-background Albie Sachs pledged his support, vowing that he would do all in his power to make the country a home for all South Africans. In October 1953 the Congress of Democrats was founded, with a definite slant to the left. Not only did they intend ‘…to win South Africans to support a programme of extending rights for all our people,’ but international issues would manifest itself a number of times, with a clear influence of the Communist Party. The Springbok Legion resolved that its members should be invited to join one of the Congress Alliance members. The Congress of Democrats brought together in one organization different groups on the left of the political spectrum. They provided much of the funding for the Congress of the People in Kliptown, Johannesburg in June 1955.

The divisive role of the NEUM/Anti-CAD leadership
A sad note to the defiance campaign is the divisive role of the NEUM/Anti-CAD leadership, which denounced the campaign as reformist, opportunist and treacherous. This was the standard non-collaboration language of the group which had succeed a decade earlier to mobilize effective opposition to the Smuts government’s segregation policies and helping ‘Coloureds’ to start stepping out of their undignified stance of a mere ‘appendix of the white man’. Mary Simons summarised the arm-chair politics of the NEUM which consisted mainly out of teachers: ‘They could give vent to their political resentment and frustration … and abstain from positive action and confrontation with the authorities’ (cited by Neville Alexander in James and Symons, 1989:189). Neville Alexander wrote about the results: ‘The policy of non-collaboration was often transformed from being one of the most creative ideas of the South African struggle into a pharisaical cliché, which was to be used to assassinate the political characters of any who did not agree with the leaders of the NEUM’ (Neville Alexander in James and Symons, 1989:188).
Teachers were not allowed to engage in activist politics. Quite a few teachers were however involved in NEUM- related activities.W.P. Van Schoor was summarily dismissed as teacher after his presidential address in 1956 in which he condemned the Eiselen-De Vos Malan educational system. Bennie Kies, another NEF man and an outspoken TLSA leader, was teaching at Trafalgar High School in District Six, which was a breeding ground of anti-apartheid thinking. Kies soon suffered under the whip of the government repression. Because of his overt political activity, Kies was forced to leave the teaching profession. He subsequently became one of the best lawyers the Cape ever had. Many TLSA teachers were retrenched or banned without any reason given. In fact, so many TLSA leaders were banned that teachers later feared to join the association, preferring to rather become members of the less outspoken rival teachers union TEPA.

Church opposition to the Removal of ‘Coloureds’ from the Common voters’ roll
Probably in no other area did the influence of DRC (former) clergymen play such a clear role as in the removal of ‘Coloureds’ from the Common Voters’ roll in 1956. When a similar move happened in 1936 to remove Blacks from the voters’ roll, there had been hardly any church protest - apart from Ds Nicol’s address as officer of the Christian Council of South Africa. The run-up to the equivalent move in 1955 not only led to a temporary and uneasy union of all ‘Coloured’ groups, but it also caused quite a stir among Whites.
In fact, a clear result of the actions of the Cape clergymen Botha and Morkel, was that they heightened the political consciousness of Afrikaners, after the new National Party government had used vicious manipulation to achieve their goals. This was doubly tragic because the Prime Minister. Dr D.F. Malan, who was a former dominee, had once been a supporter of the ‘Coloured’ franchise. His political summersault on this issue may be explained by the need for Afrikaner unity and the slim majority which his party had achieved in the 1948 elections. He realized how strong the Afrikaners of the Northern provinces felt about ‘Coloured’ voting rights. Furthermore, his majority in parliament could easily be overturned in a future election in Cape seats with a substantial ‘Coloured’ population. That had to be forestalled at all costs, especially after the 1949 provincial elections where the United Party took the constituencies of Paarl and Bredasdorp – both of which they had won the year before in the national elections. The Nationalist ascribed their defeat in Paarl to the registration of hundreds of new voters since the general election. Therefore the initiative to remove the ‘Coloureds’ to a separate voters’ roll, was vicious and pre-meditated to secure future electoral success.
That the Nationalists were trying to settle an old score against the English-speakers on this issue was an added factor. This was dangerous seed indeed.

Opposition to the Separate Representation Voters’ Bill.
The one instance when George Golding, the leader of the Coloured People’s National Union (CPNU) – widely regarded by ‘Coloured as a quisling and collaborator- influenced national politics was when he made common cause with the Franchise Action Committee (FRAC), the ANC and other groups when a ‘most impressive demonstration’ (Walker, 1964:823) was organized in the Mother City on 11 March 1951 in reaction to the introduction of the Separate Representation Voters’ Bill. This was followed by a fairly successful one-day strike.
This caused Adolph Malan to invite White ex-servicemen of his Veterans’ Action Group from around the country to the Mother City. Presently changing their name to the Torch Commando, they conducted a huge mass-meeting on the Grand Parade. In the aftermath of this demonstration, teams of young policemen, who had been trained to break up mobs, charged unruly ‘Coloured’ folk without warning. ‘For the second time during this disastrous (Parliament) Session, the Mother City was the scene of scarcely excusable violence’ (Walker, 1964:823).
All this led indirectly to the founding of the mother organization of the Black Sash. Six White English-speaking women, gathering for a tea party in a Johannesburg suburb on 19 May 1955, decided to ‘do something’ about the proposed legislation authorizing the government to enlarge the Senate. The moral indignation was the result of another effort to get the ‘Coloureds’ removed from the Common Voters’ Roll. The Women’s Defence of the Constitution League was started, an organization which became known as the Black Sash. Over a period of twenty years this group – easily discernable through the symbols of mourning over the rape of the constitution124 - developed a sustained campaign of public education, examining the legality and morality of the laws. Significant was that the move of The Women’s Defence of the Constitution League not only spawned a male counterpart, The Covenanters, but they organized a national prayer day for Wednesday, 10 August 1955. The weakness of all these organizations became apparent. They had limited themselves to ‘citizens’, i.e. they excluded Blacks. And even though the initiative was aimed on behalf of the ‘Coloureds’, they failed to catch the imagination of these people. It was surely no co-incidence that a broad representation of protest gathered the same year on 24 and 25 June in Kliptown, Johannesburg where the Congress of the People formulated its Freedom Charter.

Revival of the Trade Unionism
When the stalwart the Jewess Ray Alexander, the General Secretary of the Food and Canning Workers Union, (FCWU) was banned in October 1953, it looked as if trade unionism was given its death blow. Largely through her efforts, along with another White female, Helen Joseph,125 the battling trade unionism sectors which fought for the poor, was kept afloat. An injection came from an unexpected corner.
The scene was the Wolseley Fruit Canning Company, which refused to be a party to wage agreements negotiated by the FCWU. It all started in the winter of 1953 when a delegation of the FCWU Frank Marquard (Chairman), Ray Alexander and Oscar Mpetha, a young Black official, visited the mission station Saron from where many workers for the factory were transported. At the third meeting of a branch of the FCWU the dynamic Rachel Williams was elected chairman in spite of her reservations: ‘The chairman is always the first to g to prison when there is trouble’ (Cited in James and Symons, 1989:111). Williams and her brave colleague and name-sake Rachel Zeeman were to play a big role in the battle at the factory in 1954. Unionising Wolseley was proving to be very difficult. Finally, two officials of the FCWU, Oscar Mpetha and Annie Adams were mandated by the executive to obtain work there to gather first-hand information. The great strike of Wolseley of 1954126 not only put the FCWU on the map in country towns, but it revived trade unionism at the Cape generally. It also wrote the name of Oscar Mpetha indelibly in the annals of the struggle for democracy at the Cape. In 1983 he was to be the first national President of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the people’s movement that finally brought the apartheid government to its knees more than any other.

A Cape-born reconciler at work
If ever there was someone who took the ministry of reconciliation seriously, it was the Cape-born David du Plessis. He moved to Ladybrand in the Orange Free State with his family before he was nine years old. Du Plessis first had to go through the mill himself, leaving his home when his father would not allow him to go to university. He was reconciled to his father two years later. The Lord first had to deal with the prayerful Du Plessis before he could be used optimally. ‘I began to be sensitive to the Lord’s checking’.
Even though it was not generally recognized as such, one of Du Plessis’s greatest achievements was in race relations. At a time when Professors Ben Marais and Barend Keet were battling against apartheid in their denomination in the 1940s, Du Plessis as General Secretary of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) was responsible for reducing missionary staff to a minimum, taking the work out of the hands of the North Americans and Europeans and putting it under the jurisdiction of Africans. ‘The local work, we felt, had to be under the control of the nationals’ (Du Plessis, 1977:112).127 As if that were not radical enough, the AFM had a central conference in which ministers, missionaries and executives of all races met at top level. It appears that this denomination came the nearest to practical non-racialism at a time when apartheid was already practiced far and wide.
But this was by far not the end of Du Plessis’s ministry of reconciliation. He had to go through the crucible once again. After an accident in the USA, when the car in which he was a passenger, drove into a shunting locomotive, he landed in hospital. Du Plessis later described this time as ‘the most extended period of silent prayer in my life’. He was challenged to forgive Protestants in general. The first test came at the Second World Conference of Pentecostals in Paris, which he attended on crutches. God used him to reconcile Pentecostals who were fighting each other. In his typical humble manner, Du Plessis did not gloat over the victory achieved there. Instead, he said ‘I know that if I would have any success at all with what the Lord had directed, if I was to be able to forgive the old main line churches, I had to forgive these Pentecostal brethren.’ God was to use him to bring the first Pentecostal denominations into the maligned World Council of Churches.

Into the Vatican and further
David Du Plessis’ ecumenical work was however not appreciated in his own denomination. Fellowship with independent Pentecostals was to him just as important. He was invited to become the secretary of the world conference in Toronto in 1958. There he was completely cold-shouldered, and all but pushed out of the Pentecostal movement. Du Plessis felt clearly led ‘to resign from every position that I held in any society and to follow Him wherever he may lead.’ Sovereignly God over-ruled. In 1959 he was lecturing in the theological institutions of a wide spectrum of denominations. The following year he was requested to give a lecture at a meeting in Scotland, in preparation for the WCC plenary occasion that was to be held in New Delhi in 1961. This resulted in him being invited to the WCC conference itself. There he met Professor Bernard Leeming from Oxford, who was the personal representative of Pope John XX111. One thing led to another until Du Plessis wrote from New Delhi that he would make a stopover in Rome.
There he spent many hours in prayer, ‘considering the difficulties that lay ahead for Protestants and Catholics in matters of trust and forgiveness.’ The Lord first had to deal with him through His Word. In fact, it came to him through the context of the Lord’s well known prayer. ‘...If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matthew 6:15). He sensed: ‘I am certain the Lord spoke to me about the many burdens of unforgiveness and suspicion’ between Catholics and Protestants for so many centuries. “The souls of Christians will live when all learn to forgive.”
In Rome Du Plessis met Dr Strandsky, the secretary of Cardinal Bea, who headed a new Roman Catholic secretariat for promoting church unity. Strandsky had a special charge to learn as much as he could about the Holy Spirit and the Pentecostals. Because David du Plessis was now a ‘mere zero’ in the Pentecostal movement, he was ideally placed to share at the Vatican. When Cardinal Bea asked him: ‘Well then David, what do the Pentecostals have to say to Rome?’, he was in a predicament. In honesty he could only hesitantly stutter: ‘I have to say that the Pentecostals have no intention of talking to Rome.’ When Cardinal Bea asked him for his personal opinion, God used David du Plessis to minister to millions of Roman Catholics all around the globe. ‘Make the Bible available to every Catholic in the world ... If Catholics will read the Bible, the Holy Spirit will make that book come alive, and that will change their lives. And changed Catholics will be the renewal of the church.’ Cardinal Bea immediately ordered those words to be written down.
The words of ‘Mr Pentecost’ – as David Du Plessis was nicknamed - turned out to be very prophetic. At the Vatican Council it was decided to make the Bible available to every Roman Catholic person in the world. David du Plessis was present at a session of the Vatican Council. His contribution in 1964 introduced the charismatic renewal to the Roman Catholic Church. Du Plessis was also used by the Lord to bring about a thaw in the relationship between Protestants and Roman Catholics worldwide, notably at a meeting in Zürich in June 1972.

Low-key Spiritual Dynamics
Another interesting pioneering ministry was the outreach to migrant labourers from East Africa. Rev. Gustav Tietzen, who had worked as a missionary in Tanganyika (the name of the country before it joined Zanzibar to became Tanzania) from 1929, preached to the workers in their Kinyakyusa language (Schaberg, 1984:142).
The Group Areas legislation led to an interesting dynamic when Dr Isaiah Palmerston Samuels granted his church building in Wynberg to the Moravians. Already having lost two buildings because of the tragic legislation and no successor available, he was reminded of his upbringing in Antigua, one of the West Indian islands, a Moravian stronghold.
German missionaries were involved in other interesting ventures at the Cape. Marie Else Melzer, a single missionary started in 1951 to visit and minister to 600 domestics from the countryside mission stations like Genadendal and Elim, who were working for Whites in the City (Schaberg, 1984:142). A little more than a decade later she was also pioneering a joint venture of the Moravians and the Berlin Mission with a Bible School for females in the Strand. Liesel van der Heyden, a missionary from Germany and Agnes Kroneberg, a daughter of David Kroneberg, one of the Genadendal Kweekschool protégées, taught at the Strand. One of their first students was Vivian Aisley, who became a pioneer (as Vivian West) in her own right with the Educare teaching programmes for pre-school kids in the 1970s at the Alpha Educare in Hanover Park.

The start of Africa Enterprise
Michael Cassidy, another Southern African spiritual giant, grew up in Maseru in Basutoland, as Lesotho was previously called, attending boarding school at Michaelhouse in Natal. He proceeded to study at the famous British Cambridge University in the mid-1950s. The Lord used Robert Footner, a law student to challenge Cassidy to become a follower of Jesus on 23 October 1955 (Coomes, 2002:59). While attending an evangleistic meeting with Dr Billy Graham in the same city, he was greatly impacted.
Soon the conviction developed that only a spiritual renewal could remove Boer-Brit alienation and Black-White racism in South Africa. In his prayer list Revival in South Africa was added and in his diary there featured quite a few entries in the beginning of 1956, stating that this was the only answer to his home country’s problems (Cassidy, 1989:66).
On vacation in New York in mid 1957, he attended an evangelistic campaign by Dr Graham. He reports in one of his autobiographical works about this event: “Suddenly I heard within my spirit: ‘Why not in Africa?’ ‘Yes, why not Lord?’ I replied.” God started to prepare him for a special mission.
During a study stint in the USA in 1960 Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade, invited Michael Cassidy to start work in South Africa on behalf of the agency. During the Week of Prayer at the Campus Crusade Training Institute, Cassidy participated in a period of “Waiting on God”. There he was challenged to pray for the 31 major cities of Africa. This he did by praying one day of the month for the whole summer for African cities. Joined by a prayer partner, they were soon asking God for the chance one day to minister in each of these cities. The very next year they undertook a trip to the 31 major cities of Africa.
On a trip to Palm Springs with Murray Albertyn, a South African friend, he was told of a ship that sails between Africa and the USA with the name Africa Enterprise (Coomes 2002:82). The 23-year old Cassidy ensuingly started an evangelistic agency with that name with the goal ‘to reach the influential people of this continent’. He wrote in a magazine ‘We desire to have a social emphasis in our ministry as well … because evangelical Christians have presented a lob-sided message that has greatly ignored the social implications of the Lord’s teachings.’ Across the continent of Africa the agency Africa Enterprise (AE) was still going to have a significant impact in the years to come, starting with an interdenominational campaign in Pietermaritzburg in August 1962.

The example of President Abraham Lincoln
The voyage on the steamer from England to Cape Town was to impact Cassidy deeply when he was challenged by a quote from John Foster Fraser: “When God desires to shake, shock or shape any age to save sinners, he always chooses people.” (Cited in Coomes 2002:72). The Holy Spirit ministered to Michael Cassidy to be that man for Africa, more especially for South Africa. Immediately after his arrival in Cape Town, God used Archbishop Joost de Blank to refer to the neglect of evangelicals of “incarnational responsibilities”: ‘Then Joost said if only a man would arise who could confront the country with the necessity of synthesising the spiritual as well as political and social responsibilities of the gospel, the church would make real progress here. He added, “Perhaps you are the man to do this” (Coomes, 2002:73).
After leaving South Africa in January 1969 for Germany by ship, the author was personally moved to prayer for the Communist world after reading the Afrikaans translation of Richard Wurmbrand’s autobiographical Tortured for Christ during the voyage. Along with believers in different parts of the world, I started to pray with some regularity for persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe and China.
The Bible verse starting with ‘if my people humble themselves and pray …’ (2 Chronicals 7:14) became one of the favourite Bible verses of Michael Cassidy. He used Lincoln’s example to challenge John Vorster and Ian Smith, the prime ministers respectively of South Africa and Rhodesia (of much of the 1960s and 1970s), to do the same by giving them a copy each of Lincoln’s biography with the title Abraham Lincoln, Theologian of American Anguish. Cassidy himself would be God’s instrument in the turbulent 1985 to call not only the National Initiative for Reconciliation (NIR) from 10 to12 September, but also as a pivot in a national day of prayer by this group on October 9, i.e. less than a month later.

Back in Cape Town in 1970 I was still nowhere near to be a fervent intercessor, but I definitely sensed a need to pray for our South Africa. Early one October morning in 1972, while I was on my knees praying for the country at the Moravian Seminary in District Six, I felt constrained to write a letter to the Prime Minister. In this letter, I addressed Mr Vorster with ‘Liewe’ (dear). That was definitely something extraordinary. My natural feelings towards him were not that charitable. In this letter I challenged the State President to let himself be used by God like Abraham Lincoln in the USA, to lead the nation to the ways of God.128
At and in the church building adjacent to the seminary, the former Moravian Hill manse, significant moves in the 1990s towards the first Global Day of Prayer was to occur, especially the evening service of 9 May 2004, the start of the 7 days initiative. At every prayer event on the Newlands Rugby Stadium from 21 March 2001, red wrist bands were given to the public which displayed 2 Chronicals 7:14.

Student Outreach
Even though Michael Cassidy did not start Campus Crusade in South Africa, hardly any other agency impacted campuses in the country more than AE. Already in 1965, their first year of full-time ministry, the University of Natal invited them. This was followed by visits to other universities in South Africa and Lesotho in the ensuing years. The University of Cape Town had its turn in 1969 and Stellenbosch in 1980. In the effort to call the modern campus back to its true centre in the person of Jesus, who is the truth personified. AE never shunned difficulties. In the main address on University Evangelism at the Lausanne Congress on World Mission in 1974, Michael Cassidy stated that: ‘the Christian has a unique right to be on the campus, not simply as an agent of evangelism, but as an agent of reminder that the university as we know it is really a uniquely Christian creation. It was born out of the mediaeval synthesis with its unified Christian world view… Jesus as heart of the universe, was the key to everything… The university is the offspring of the logos doctrine, “for in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and Knowledge”…’ (Coomes, 2002: 201f).
Africa Enterprise did not shun difficulties. But they would get prayer support worldwide, such as when they tried on two occasions to have campaigns at Fort Hare in the 1970s. The extremes of South African society wrapped up there; a government-controlled administration and the home of Black Power. Both efforts – in 1975 and 1976 respectively - had to be aborted, the former one shortly before the mission when their rector feared that the campus ‘might so explode that we would have to close it down.’
In September 1976 the South African AE team held a mission to the teachers’ training college in the Capetonian suburb Mowbray. This was their best outreach yet to a teachers’ college. They were thankful to the Christian students who prepared thoroughly for the mission ‘in a fervency of prayer’ (Coomes, 2002: 207). Michael Cassidy and Festo Kivangere visited and preached as equals in the Afrikaner stronghold of Stellenbosch. This was a bold step, building on the foundation laid by Professor Nico Smith at the Theological Faculty. With evangelical involvement in the Black ghetto of Soweto since 1976, Africa Enterprise was to be God’s choice instrument for change in Africa over the next decades.

Female Missionaries and ministers of colour
It was to take years before people of colour would be used abroad as missionaries. The use of females of colour in ministry was however an area where the Cape was once again the countrywide pioneers. The Baptist Church appears to have been the first in South Africa to use female missionaries of colour when Julia Forgus went to work among the under-privileged Muslim and Hindu Indians in Durban. After graduating in 1959, she first assisted ‘Coloured’ churches in 1960. The Baptist Missionary Association then sent her to Durban where she worked until March 1981.
Lizzie Cloete came to the conviction in 1964 that the Lord was calling her for the spreading of the Gospel to the Muslims. As a church worker in the Sendingkerk congregation of Wynberg, she thus became one of the first full-time missionaries from the ‘Coloured’ community to the Muslims. But it was not regarded that way by the denomination at large. She was just seen as a normal church worker. Her consecration on 17 May 1964 was nevertheless a landmark for the ‘Coloured’ sector of the Dutch Reformed Church.
Julia Forgus went overseas after her stint among the Indians in Durban, intending to minister in the USA, but because she could not get a work permit, she had to revert to studies, graduating with a Masters degree in Religious Education in 1985. She became one of the first Baptist females, surely the first of colour in South Africa, to be ordained. From 1986 to 1990 she worked as one of the pastors in what the US Americans called a ‘multi-housing’ ministry. After returning to South Africa in 1997, she continued to minister even after her formal retirement, assisting refugees.
The Congregational Church with ?? and the Moravian Church were the pioneers in having women in the top structure. Rev Rica Goliath was the first to be elected to the Church Board and Rev Angeline Swart went even higher up the church hierachy, elected as the head of the denomination in 2002, after having been the first femal director of their Theological Seminary in Heideveld. In Stellenbosch Professor Elna Mouton, was probably appointed as the first female Dean of a theological faculty in South Africa in 2004.

Unhealthy traditionalism and dependency
The Moravians, who have often enough been described as the pioneers of modern missions, did not have a happy run among the Muslims at the Cape. In fact, the spadework of this church in the city was not done by the German missionaries, but by church members who came from the mission stations like Genadendal and Elim. Their interest was however limited to gathering the members of their church in the city. These people had no vision for reaching out to other people with the Gospel, let alone to the Muslims. The work on the mission stations themselves deteriorated to a situation where the Moravian members more or less merely longed for the continuation of cherished traditions like the commemoration of the revival in Herrnhut in 1727. At Moravian Hill (District Six) a practice in the apartheid spirit stained the commemoration. German church members would come to the chapel twice a year, sitting on the stage of the church. (In 1972 theological students staged a walk out at the 13 August festivities after chairs had been specially brought out for the Whites.)
Because of an unhealthy dependency on Germany and a lack of teaching on tithing and sacrificial giving, the denomination is now struggling to survive. A similar story can be told about other denominations that started with mission stations on the countryside.
Nevertheless, the church schools initially saved the day for the denominational mission work. Thus the Zinzendorf Moravian Primary School in Arundel Street (District Six) and the St Paul’s institution in Bo-Kaap were guarantors for quality education. Many Muslims preferred these schools even to the Muslim mission institutions like Rachmanyah in District Six - which was named after Dr Abdurahman. Whereas the denominational schools gave a sound biblical knowledge to many a Muslim, the neglect of a challenge towards a personal relationship with God was unfortunately also part and parcel of the message imparted. Nevertheless, valuable Gospel seed was sown at the church education institutions.
The introduction of lecturers from overseas for the seminaries and Bible Schools whose salaries were paid from their home countries, brought spiritual deterioration into many a denomination. The faith principle of complete dependency on God for the needs of pastors got out of fashion. At the same time prosperity and liberal theology undermined the spiritual quality of many an evangelical church. At the same time there was government pressure on bible schools to yield to worldly academic accreditation. Others wilted under the temptation to live up to the standards of the Jones's with posh buildings and state of the art interior.
We should nevertheless be compassionate towards so many of the European missionaries who had been the product of a watered-down teaching of the Gospel themselves. Terms like ‘conversion’ were regarded with scorn until the 1960s. The Baptist Church of Wales Street, with buildings in Sheppard Street (District Six) and Jarvis Street (Bo-Kaap), were regarded by many in the mainline churches as sectarian for this very reason.

Religious Dialogue and Ecclesiastical Disunity
All reports seem to confirm that Reverend (Eerwaarde) A.J. Liebenberg129 was well received by the Muslims and he also co-operated well with the Anglican Muslim outreach work under British–born Reverend Arthur William Blaxall’s leadership in the 1920s. Liebenberg however apparently had little support from his own church in his endeavour to co-operate with other denominations. In the outreach to the Muslims both the missionaries and churches were clearly only intent on empire building. A certain Mr Hope, a converted Muslim, left the Dutch Reformed Church to join the City Mission (Haasbroek, 1955:114), most probably because of this attitude Four times Liebenberg was allowed to address the Cape Malay Association, and he visited 17 ‘hogere priesters’. 130 Through the reading room on the corner of Bree and Shortmarket Street in the old Bo-Kaap, Liebenberg made significant impact on the Muslim community. His Dutch Reformed colleagues were however not happy that Liebenberg accepted all sorts of invitations - ‘Even if it were held in a mosque.’ The impression gained by his church colleagues was that the Muslims were abusing these occasions and that the ‘Coloured’ press was under the control of the Muslims. There may have been some truth in the allegation, but jealousy definitely also played a role as it also happened with Reverend Vogelgezang in the 19th century.
In his own denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church, Liebenberg seems to have been merely abused to prop up the strained relations to St Stephen’s. In the sub-commission of their missionary work, Liebenberg basically got understanding from some people in his denomination, e.g. for the reality that it was impossible to do both pastoral work at St Stephen’s and to reach out to the Muslims. But even within the sub-commission there was opposition to his work in the latter part of his term. Thus e.g. the chairman apparently had problems with the costs for ‘this discouraging work’. Sarcastically this speaker enquired after any fruit of the work. Liebenberg’s reply said it all: There had been a big change in the attitude of the Muslims towards him. He was possibly more intent on getting the Muslims to become followers of Jesus than to bring them to his church. The latter was the result the denomination’s leaders apparently had been hoping for.

Spurning of local ministers of colour
A sad development in the last decades of the 19th century was that the gifting of people of colour was not appreciated sufficiently, combined with ambition and rebellion among a few ministers of colour who evidently did not understand the nature of the gospel properly.
If one takes Gerdener’s statement as a cue that Black dislike of Whites was a common characteristic of those ministers who broke away to start their own denominations, the deduction is natural to suggest that they had bad examples of Whites who lorded over them, not allowing their understudies to develop their full potential.
A case in point at the Cape is Reverend Joseph John Forbes. Starting off as a teacher, he was ordained as a Methodist minister at their Buitenkant Street fellowship on the outskirts of District Six in 1918. He withdrew from the church ‘owing to differences on the colour question’, accepting a call to the Congregational Church soon hereafter. There he did not last long before he started his own church and denomination, the Volkskerk van Afrika, in Gray Street (District Six) on 14 May, 1922. His leadership qualities were clearly overlooked and spurned because thereafter he became one of the greatest church planters at the Cape, starting an orphanage, five schools and congregations as far afield as Kimberley.
In the case of the Cape Town City Mission, Alec Kadalie went to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, whose leader since the 1930s – the Cape–born Dr Frances Herman Gow from a ‘coloured’ mother and an Afro-American father – was all too eager to use people of colour. That denomination - with its origins among the Negroes of the USA - was a great propagator of the indigenisation of the church at the Cape. Under Dr Gow’s leadership – he became their bishop in 1956 - the church expanded rapidly, at least numerically, with churches in different parts of the Peninsula. The Kadalie clan was nevertheless however to play even a more significant role in the second half of the 20th century in the Cape Town City Mission.
The Salvation Army was especially known for their work among the down-trodden and their open air services. All these outreaches however never seemed to have caught fire amongst the people of colour. One of the common weaknesses of almost all Christian groups was that they all seemed to be paternalistic, hardly recognizing the potential of locals, let alone to involve people of colour in leadership positions. In the case of the Baptist Church in Wale Street, the first minister who officiated as senior pastor and who did not come from England, was Pastor André Erasmus in 1971, i.e. almost after a century of its existence. He was a Dutch Reformed Minister, who had been defrocked when he was convicted to be baptised by immersion.

Interaction between Christians and Muslims
The Anglicans had in Reverend Stephen Garabedian someone with an oriental background and knowledge of Arabic. Rev A.R. Hampson joined this Mission to Muslims in 1936. However, the negative approach of Hampson and Garabedian in the 1930s in the outreach to Muslims using insensitive pamphlets, was counter-productive. This nevertheless hardly seems to have held up the deterioration of Islam at the Cape. Nor were the significant effects of a competitive spirit between the churches of Bo-Kaap and District Six at that time.
The stature of Dr Abdurahman, the dynamic medical doctor and politician who died in 1940, however temporarily slowed down the retreat of Islam, although he was by no means a staunch Muslim, often citing the Bible and rarely the Qur’an. Though Muslims were a minute minority in the Cape Peninsula at the start of the 20th century, they held their own, especially through the esteem that Dr Abdurahman gave them. Although the religion was very much on the defence at this time, no less than 22 mosques were built or finished during his time of political office. That was only to be eclipsed by the period after the implementation of the Group Areas Act in the 1960s.
Especially significant was Abdurahman’s moves in education, where he initiated no less than 13 Muslim schools. He campaigned for free and compulsory education, raising school-leaving qualification to Standard 7 (Grade 9). He also fought for free books. Abdurahman noted how little the government did in this regard for people of colour. Starting the Teachers League of South Africa (TLSA), he seems to have received inspiration from the churches and missions, which he rightly described as ‘the pioneers of education in this country.’ In the same presidential speech at the African People’s Organization (APO) conference, he was however justly critical of the ‘spirit of rivalry between churches responsible for the large number of small inadequately equipped schools.’ In many of these schools teachers operating in more than one grade, was the order of the day. It is probably due to the schools which he initiated in Claremont and Salt River that Islam was established in these Christian suburbs. In later years Claremont especially was destined to play a substantial role politically as well as in the survival and spread of the religion. However, nepotism and sectarianism were rife. Abdurahman’s family members were appointed in Muslim Schools. In the Christian counterparts, teachers were required to join the denomination if they wanted an appointment at the particular denominational school.

A cue taken from Johannesburg
On a Sunday in March, 1944 James ‘Sofasonke’ (meaning we suffer together) Mpanza led more than ten thousand people to open ground outside the Johannesburg suburb of Newclare. By Monday morning, when the White inspectors came to work, they found rows of shacks made of canvas and wood. Mpanza called the camp Shanty Town. This movement eventually forced the hand of the municipal authorities, until finally the South Western Townships (Soweto) came into being. Background support was notably given by Anglican clergy, with Father Huddleston very prominent in his denomination’s mission at Orlando. In another sense, Bishop Sydney Lavis put his stamp on the Mother City through community involvement.
At the Cape the Black population doubled in the 1930s and again during World War II. With housing shortages as severe as in Johannesburg, Blacks went off into the bush like the followers of Mpanza. They were living among ‘Coloureds’, who were also coming off farms into the city. By the time the National Party came to power in 1948, 25,000 of the 36, 000 Blacks at the Cape were living in one of thirty ‘squatter’ camps. In 1955 it was announced that Africans would be eventually removed from the Western Cape, which was designated a ‘Coloured’ preference area. Dr Werner Eiselen, the Secretary for Native Affairs at the time when Dr H.F. Verwoerd was the responsible minister. He was not only repudiated vehemently by ‘Coloured’ spokesmen in the mid-fifties, but the rigid influx control measures whereby the Cape seemed to ‘simply eliminate non-wage earning Africans’ (Wells, 1993:106), indirectly caused the launching of the Federation of South African Women (FSAW). Particularly harsh enforcement began in 1954, when authorities granted almost no permits to Black women to enter the urban areas unless they were bona fide work seekers. -

Cape women in the quest for peace and justice
Ray Alexander, a White member of the Communist Party, laid the foundation for the FSAW through her work with Black women in the Food and Canning Workers Union throughout the Cape. Her own membership of an organisation, formed after World War II to promote the unity of women world-wide in the quest for enduring world peace, inspired her to propose a great organisation of S.A. women, working together on a non-racial basis toward peace and justice.
Believing that the bonds of common womanhood could transcend race and class differences, she began promoting the idea among her colleagues in the trade unions from 1952. By late 1953 plans were made for a national inaugural conference to be held in Johannesburg. This conference, which took place on 17 April 1954 with delegates from all over the country, envisaged ‘to fight for womens rights and for full economic citizenship of all’ (Wells, 1993:106). Here Louisa Metwana from the Nyanga Vigilence Asssociation, a Cape Black township, moved the participants with her vivid story of harsh influx control enforcement at the Cape. The conference voted unanimously to launch the FSAW. The presidency went to Dora Tamana and Ray Alexander became the secretary. Both of them were from Cape Town. Federation women became very active in 1955, responding to a call from the Congress alliance to help organise a massive meeting to be called the Congress of the People. The Transvaal FSAW, with Helen Joseph very conspicuous, agreed to provide home accommodation for the one thousand delegates to the Congress, and this too, served to involve women of all races in a Federation activity. (Helen Joseph had learnt a lot while working as a community worker in Elsies River, a Cape ‘Coloured’ township)
Josie Palmer and Lilian Ngoyi were other leaders who were to play a major role in women’s emancipation. The Transvaal FSAW called a pre-Congress conference on 8 March 1955 to draw up their own list of ‘What Women Demand’. At the Congress of the People on June 26, both Josie Palmer and Helen Joseph spok, delivering the women’s demands. They proved to be pretty similar to those which appeared in the final version of the Freedom Charter produced at the event.131 The Transvaal FSAW organised a follow-up conference, the Transvaal Congress of Mothers designed to popularise the demands of the Freedom Charter. Cross-fertilisation of women across racial barriers appears to have occurred at this time as the news filtered through that White women of the newly-formed Black Sash had just staged a march and overnight camp-out at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of the government. This inspired the FSAW to hold a similar march. The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress disseminated large numbers of pamphlets to advertise the demonstration and protest of women against the apartheid legislation and passes for men. On 27 October 1955, 2000 women protesters filled the amphitheatre in front of the Union Buildings. A delegation of four women, one from each racial group, delivered piles of written protests to the government offices. The event proved to be a practise run a national protest on 9 August 1956, when 20,000 women from all over the country converged on the capital, with many more prevented by the police from coming. At the Cape the FSAW lost its effectiveness when Ray Alexander was served with a strict banning order.
In many ways the great Pretoria march of women on 9 August 1956 was a turning point in the struggle against passes. For male political leaders, both Black and White, it meant that women had to be taken seriously as a force.

Lack of Vision for the Unity of the Body
As we have already shown, the churches hardly had any vision for the unity of the body of Christian believers. It is sad that the clergy - and the missionaries - were more often than not just as guilty. All round they appeared to be quite content with the racial divisions, which were characteristic of the previous dispensation in this country. Even the ecumenism, which grew in the 1960s, was not based on a solid unity of the body of Christ, but boiled down to mere window-dressing. Every denomination - very often also the individual churches - was basically busy building its own kingdom. Little has changed since then, but racially and denominationally combined prayer events did pick up at the beginning of the new millennium. However, the church in general was still fairly indifferent to the racial divisions. The demonic origin of apartheid was not yet recognized generally.

Dutch Reformed Church Opposition against Apartheid
For many it will be surprising to hear that arguably the most effective church opposition against apartheid ironically came initially from the Dutch Reformed Church. The Anglican Bishop Trevor Huddleston and others were making some inroads through their stand against the race policies that became official after 1948, but the most effective counter came surprisingly from within the ranks of the denomination, which was led by racist ideologists. I do not refer to the warnings by people like Ds. Ben Marais and Professor Keet, but specifically to the stand of a ‘Coloured’ Dutch Reformed clergyman. He was Eerwaarde (Reverend) I.D. Morkel, who in turn influenced a dynamic mover, a young clergyman, Ds. David Botha of the Wynberg Sendingkerk.
These ministers opposed the apartheid policy long before the famous Dr Beyers Naudé. The ring (circuit) of Wynberg agreed unanimously with the motion tabled by the dynamic Rev. I.D. Morkel, to oppose apartheid on scriptural grounds. The participants at this meeting included quite a few Afrikaner dominees because there were still very few ministers of colour ordained in that denomination around 1950. The circuit protested against the proposed legislation of the new regime, appealing to the government urgently not to implement apartheid laws (Botha, 1960:127).132
That the Malan Cabinet ignored their protests was not as deplorable as the fact that the very same dominees who voted in October 1948 did not pitch up when all ministers of the Sendingkerk were invited to a meeting to discuss the legislation. Although 28 congregations were represented, only two white dominees attended this meeting. Another meeting on 14 October 1949 resolved to encourage believers to retreat into a day of prayer on 16 December 1949 ‘to be relieved from the apartheid affliction’ (Botha, 1960:127).
The Wynberg Dutch Reformed Mission Church, with Rev. David Botha as its minister, spearheaded an effort toward reconciliation. In a letter to the (White) moderator dated 29 October 1949, the church council deplored the deterioration of relations between the mission church and its mother. In the letter the church council furthermore protested sharply against the apartheid policy with the implied inferiority of ‘Coloureds’.
The spiritual value was limited from the outset because an activist political undercurrent was clearly present in the date set for the corporate implementation, 16 December 1949 - to be followed by a public meeting in the City Hall the following day. The Afrikaans daily Die Burger in its report of the City Hall meeting scathingly referred to the event as a ‘sogenaamde Kerklike Konvensie’, a so-called church convention.
Afrikaner solidarity - probably via the Afrikaner Broederbond connections - tragically undermined the principled stand of White Dutch Reformed dominees in the ‘Coloured’ Sendingkerk. They had still agreed in October 1948 that ‘no ground for colour apartheid can be found in Holy Scripture’ (Botha, 1960:127). To Afrikaners it was especially painful that Rev. Botha, the young Dutch Reformed Sendingkerk dominee, graced the meeting with his presence.
It was nevertheless pathetic how his speech in the City Hall was reported in Die Burger. In a letter to the editor of the Afrikaans daily Rev Botha complained about serious distortions, also pointing out important deletions from his talk. Amongst other things Botha had noted in his speech that the church has no right to criticize the state unless she can show a positive way. More important was his strong plea for intercession and his reference to the main weapons of the church, namely the Word of God and prayer. Botha also mentioned that ‘the whole audience in front of me was urged to pray for revival instead of having a critical spirit.’ None of these notions was reported in Die Burger.133

‘Coloureds’ segregated from Blacks
The government went ahead with the removal programme in the shanty towns of which Windermere, built behind the industrial suburb of Maitland, was the oldest and largest camp. ‘Coloureds’ were first segregated from Blacks and then sent to new exclusively stownships like Q’town on the Cape Flats. The 2,500 Black families were then screened according to Section 10 of the new Urban Areas Act. 750 families qualified for temporary residence at the Cape. Twelve hundred families were ordered to separate – husbands to the hostels for single men, the wives and children back to the ‘native reserves’.
The authorities could not sort out the remaining 500 families. ‘Squatters’ from all thirty camps were herded to the ‘Nyanga Emergency Camp’ in 1956 where they could re-erect their shacks. Most of the ‘squatter’ camps around Cape Town were dismantled by 1960, the year Werner Eiselen died. He was Dr Verwoerd’s right hand man in the cleansing of the Cape of Blacks. More than ten thousand women had been sent ‘home’, i.e. to the Cis- or Transkei. Yet, despite the government’s energetic work, the Black population of Cape Town grew further to 180, 000. Twenty one years further, the Nyanga-Crossroads ‘squatters’ – with support from church leaders - were not only showing up the sham of the apartheid policy, but they inflicted the government the crucial blow, which ushered in the demise of the pass laws.
A new campaign to revive the removal scheme was launched in 1962. Die Burger prominently reported that some Afrikaner businessmen and farmers were willing to reduce the number of Black Employees. For farmers this was of course convenient to get rid of workers in the course of mechanization and still have a ‘good conscience’. The repeated argument in Afrikaans newspapers was: What is being planned in the Western Cape, is the government’ policy for the rest of the country. To this end also settled Black workers were transformed into migrants and a further amendment to the Native Urban Areas Act denied rural Black men the right to seek work in Cape Town.

Robben Island – incarceration gives birth to faith:
The government was quite successful to create fear of incarceration on Robben Island among all communities of South Africa in the 1960s. What they did not entertain was that God used the brutality of the system just as he heard the groans of the Israelites in Egypt in preparation of their final liberation. For Njongonkulu Ndugane, who was sentenced to three years on the island because of his political activities on behalf of the Pan African Congress of Azania, his time there became a turning point in his life. The son of an Anglican priest, he found himself wrestling with God asking the question: ‘How could a good God allow so much suffering in my country and now on the island? It was in the course of that wrestling with God that I found inner peace, as if God laid his hand on me. It was in a prison cell that I felt the call of God to serve him in the ordained ministry’ (Ndugane, 2003:5). In June 1996 he was elected to become the successor of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In this office he was instrumental in the renovation of the Church of the Good Shepherd on Robben Island and the reconsecration of the sanctuary ‘as a symbol...of future hope’ They also made a statement to the effect. claiming the island to be ‘a place of pilgrimage and reconciliation. The island of incarceration has become an island of faith… It is part of that spirit of hope, that reconciling effect that people who were incarcerated on the island can bring to the world’ (Ndugane, 2003:3).

Opposition ‘divide and rule’ policies
Opposition to the ‘divide and rule’ policies of the government surfaced especially in the reaction of High School pupils in the years after 1976, which sent the clear message that ‘Coloureds’ are not falling any more for the ‘divide and rule’ tactics. In fact, it was the divisive tri-cameral parliament with limited representation for 'Coloureds' and (South African) Indians which spawned the launch of the National Forum and the UDF. (Black Africans would be left in the cold). Humanly speaking, this was the major factor which initiated the beginning of the end of the apartheid edifice with Western Cape leaders like Dr Neville Alexander, Dr Allan Boesak and the lawyer Dullah Omar. The first-mentioned politician, who came from a ten-year imprisonment on Robben Island in 1974, appears to have been the main spur for the uniting of opposition forces when he proclaimed: ‘Let us make 1982 into the year of the united front and raise our struggle for liberation from apartheid and capitalism on to a higher level. ‘Let us unite for a non-racial, democratic and undivided Azania-South Africa’ (Alexander, 1985:17). The wording seems to be a deliberate attempt to unite the PAC and ANC factions in the liberation struggle. Azania was the preferred terminology for the country to be liberated by AZAPO and the PAC but resented by the Charterist movement. Alexander however seemed to have fallen into the trap of the ‘divide and rule’ tactics of the ruling power and its allies. In the same ‘year of the united front’ he ended his address at the annual congress in December 1982 with the words ‘One Azania, One Nation’ (Alexander, 1985:40). At the inaugural occasion of the National Forum in Hammanskraal on 11 June 1983 the same thing happened (Alexander, 1985:41, indicating that the movement was PAC-related. Two months later the UDF was founded in Mitchells Plain, using the colours of the ANC.
Christmas Tinto was one of the most colourful struggle personalities. After his release from incarceration on Robben Island in 1973 he and Oscar Mpetha were instrumental in joining the ‘Old Guar’d Cape township politicians with the young Black consciousness revolutionaries like Cheryl Carolus, Johnny Issel, Trevor Manuel and Zoli Malinde who came through in the wake of the post-1976 riots. This was the pristine beginning of the UDF, which got the final nudge through a speech from Dr Allan Boesak in Johannesburg. Quite aptly the movement was started in the Western Cape, in the Rocklands Town Centre of Mitchells Plain in August 1983. Deservedly, the old Cape trade unionist Oscar Mpetha was elected the first president, with Tinto as his deputy. After the failing health of the old stalwart, Tinto succeeded Mpetha. This choice was strategic, impacting the black townships because the public face of the UDF was very much determined by Coloureds like Dr Allan Boesak, Dullah Omar and Trevor Manuel.



6. Great Cape Fighters of the first half of the 20th Century

Two prominent Cape Afrikaners had the same names. Both of them distinguished themselves. I refer to Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr. Born in 1845, ‘Onze Jan’ as he was endearingly nick-named, was a champion of Afrikaans, acquiring fame as the editor of the paper De Zuid Afrikaan, which was later renamed Ons Land. His major achievement was the recognition of the equality of the Dutch and English languages. His worst move occurred when his Afrikaner Bond joined the foremost British Imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, to keep people of colour out of the Cape Parliament in 1894. The seed of prejudice against Blacks bore the fruit of racialism, which was to bedevil the country for over yet another century.

The younger Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr
The other Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, his nephew, had perhaps an even more illustrious career. He matriculated at the age of 13 although he only started school at the age of 8. He proceeded as a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford in England. He hereafter set all sorts of age records, becoming Professor of Classics at the Johannesburg School of Mines at the age of 23 and two years later in 1919, he was the principal, a position Hofmeyr continued to hold after its conversion to the University of the Witwatersrand. From 1924 to 1929 he was Administrator of the Province Transvaal. The all-rounder Hofmeyr was successively Minister of the Interior, Minister of Health and Minister of Education from 1933 to 1936. Set to become the successor of Jan Smuts, he was Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier, but Hofmeyr died even before Smuts in 1948, aged only 54.
The younger Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr was the one person that could have straddled the racial and church divisions of the mid-20th century. The former possibility was ruled out by a sequence of ecclesiastical errors and the latter one by his early death. The prodigy that was born in the Mother City in 1894, fell seriously ill when he was only two years old. The lack of compassion by the minister in charge of the Groote Kerk, drove the mother of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr to accept the offer of help from Rev. Ernest Baker of the nearby Baptist Church. The genius, who only went to school when he was eight, matriculated already at the age of 12. Politics or an academic career was not his first vocational choice. As a child and teenager he had been deeply impacted by Rev. Ernest Baker and Oswin Bull of the Student Christian Association (SCA). At the beginning of 1912 the teenager was elected president of the SCA at the forerunner of the University of Cape Town, a mere 17 years old. At the end of that year he attended the seaside services at Somerset Strand and in July of the following year he surrendered his life completely to the Lord at the SCA conference in Worcester. After his return from Oxford in the UK where he had also won one prize after the other, he had no bigger desire than to serve the Lord full-time with the Students’ Christian Association. Hofmeyr’s church affiliation proved to be a stumbling block. ‘He was not employed by the interdenominational association for which he had done so much, for the reason that he was an Afrikaner who did not belong to one of the Dutch Reformed Churches’ (Paton, 1964: 67).
Hofmeyr used his position in secular society, for example that of Chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, to remind the country what was at stake. When there was still too much euphoria over the freedom achieved during the victory of World War II, he honed in on the four freedoms 134 of President Roosevelt in his State of the nation address during the war on 6 Januar 1941, to remind of the danger of ignoring freedom of prejudice. In the graduation address of 16 March 1946 he referred to it as ‘not the least of the freedoms for which we must fight’ (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:195). In the same address he warned against racial prejudice: ‘We are paying a heavy price for our subverience to it today… we are the poorer as a nation because of our unwillingness to make full use of all our human resources.’ The spiritual man he was, he also warned, quoting William Penn, the American Quaker and freedom fighter: ‘… if we are not governed by God, we shall inevitably be ruled by tyrants.’ Coming shortly after World War II, the message was sure of hitting the mark. While adding the fifth freedom – that of prejudice – he warned prophetically, and so aptly against ‘the tendency to describe as a communist … anyone who asks for fair play for all races, or who suggests that non-Europeans really should be treated as the equals of Europeans before the law.’

A great world statesman
Another Jan, one of South Africa’s greatest sons, did not get the recognition in this country which he deserved. Grave blunders unfortunately caused a blot on the copybook of Jan Christiaan Smuts. One of his biographers, Piet Beukes, concedes that ‘undoubtably Smuts’ greatest blunder’ was when in 1916 he had the rebel leader Jopie Fourie shot. Comparable was however also his role in the rift in Afrikaner ranks after known as the broedertwis. Armed protest in the North by the Generals Beyer and De Wet – highlighted by the taking of his troops to the German camp by Colonel Maritz on 12 October 1914. this led to a deep rift in Afrikaner society.
Other serious mistakes were when he used extreme force to quell the mining strike on the Rand in 1922, the ruthless treatment of Mahatma Ghandhi and his bringing in armed forces to put down strikes in 1913 and 1914 when he was the Minister of Mines. For what was regarded as high-handed action, he incurred much odium, which seems to have clung to him much too long. Also he did not muster the political courage to listen properly to Black leaders.
Looking back on his life in broader perspective, against the backdrop of really great achievements which brought acclaim to the country and worldwide recognition – yet by far not on a par with Nelson Mandela at the end of the 20th century – it remains a tragedy that his errors still stain the great world statesman.
Smuts hailed from the Cape Swartland and studied Greek in Stellenbosch and Cambridge.135 Piet Beukes not only pointed to his religious roots and studies in Greek at Stellenbosch in his youth, but he also especially noted the change in 1906 when Smuts was 36 years old - a result of his personal contacts with the Quakers in England. And then of course, there was the completely underrated example of the British Liberal politician and Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell–Bannerman, which influenced 20th century history deeply. At London’s number 10 Downing Street Jan Smuts challenged Campbell–Bannerman in December 1905, after the Boers had been truly beaten in the South African war: ‘Do you want friends or enemies? You can have the Boers as friends...’ Campbell–Bannerman rose to the challenge – prepared by two English women for an act of mercy: Emily Hobhouse and the Quaker Margaret Clark Gillett to whom Smuts wrote some 2000 letters over a long period of time.
Campbell–Bannerman showed the way that a true believer in Christ should follow in politics and statecraft. Britain granted self-government to the defeated Boer Republics in a supreme gesture of mercy and magnanimity. Perhaps that was the example, which influenced the Marshall Plan to help the defeated Western Germany onto its feet after the Second World War.
The friendship of the Boers – or should we say Smuts - paved the way for South Africa entering both world wars on the side of Britain. This occurred at great electoral cost to Smuts, who linked up with Louis Botha and his politics of reconciliation. The tension between Hertzog followers and Botha men in the Boland were aggravated by the outbreak of World War I on 4 August 1914. Hertzog with his policy of South Africa first clashed with Botha, who agreed to invade German-controlled South West Africa on behalf of Britain. On 14 September the lawyer Willy Meyer wrote in Ons Land that Afrikaners should not be forced to fight against their mede-Afrikaners. Armed protest in the North by the Generals Beyer and De Wet – highlighted by the taking of his troops to the German camp by Colonel Maritz on 12 October 1914 - led to the Broedertwis, which led to a deep rift in Afrikaner society. Smuts's loyalty to Britain caused strain with his nationalistic-minded Afrikaners, notably with his Swartland compatriot Daniel Malan, who broke away to form the Purified nationalist Party in 1934.

A statesman who initiated things for which others got the recognition
Smuts may go down in history as the statesman who par excellence initiated or prepared things for which others got the recognition. It was surely special foresight to bring back to the country Dr Hendrik van der Bijl, a South African scientist with international acclaim. Van der Bijl had been involved in the development of the thermionic valve. By inviting Van der Bijl to become the Technical Advisor to the government and giving him sufficient funds – harvesting much criticism from lesser citizens – the industrial Revolution of South Africa was introduced. His successor Hertzog got the praise when Van der Bijl organized the Electrical Supply Commission (Escom).
In 1917 Smuts’ feats as general in East Africa impressed the British Government so much that he was invited to the War Cabinet. He conceived the League of Nations, which was the predecessor of the United Nations. Furthermore, he received the greatest honours in Europe and the USA after his drafting of the Covenant of the international body. In the 1930s at the time of the great depression, he practiced the ‘contagion of magnimity’ which he had seen in action with Campbell–Bannerman, the British Prime Minister. Smuts offered Hertzog the Prime Ministership in a coalition government, although he had won the election. He discerned that the nation needed a government of great unity above all else. At the beginning of the Second War War however, Hertzog decided to pull out of their coalition when Smuts decided to fight alongside Britain against Hitler and his Nazi’s.

Raised in Afrikaner circles, it is not surprising that Smuts ‘in his inner heart… could not reconcile himself to the idea of African equality with Whites’. It was his conviction that the Black voters first had to be educated before full democracy and equality could be given to them, otherwise chaos would result. But he was not a racist. Furthermore, he already referred to forces which would change the attitude of Afrikaner to Blacks in a 1906 letter to Merriman, the later Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. After his altercations with Mahatma Ghandi in South Africa, he came to respect him highly. It has been reported that Smuts replied in 1916 to someone who raised the possibility that Europeans might be placed under Indians: ‘Why not, I would be proud to serve under an Indian officer, if he were able.’ Smuts's greatness can be attributed to his ability to adapt to changes, without relinquishing his religious principles which he derived from Scripture. Though he was a pragmatic segregationist even up the run-up to the elections of 1948, he prepared for change towards non-racialism. But for that change he was by far not committed enough. He stressed duty as one of the conditions to ensure success for a non-racial South Africa, to avoid the emphasis on rights. His politics were still marked by a major leaning towards segregation. He had no ear for the suffering Blacks. Lutuli reminded us that ‘the General did not once exert his undoubted influence to extend a helping hand to the masses who groaned under their disabilities, and it was he who gave Hertzog the power to disenfranchise the few African voters’ (Luthuli, 1962:106).
The realisation that all the races had to be given progressively more voting opportunity, went into hibernation after 1948. Alan Paton and the Liberal Party, who could not accept the ANC’s insistence on universal franchise, carried the baton further, albeit not with much of an impact. Frederik W. de Klerk was to get the credit in 1990 for the bold steps, which had been prepared by Jan Smuts, but which he and his party unfortunately did not push forcefully enough in the run-up to the 1948 elections.

Sadly, the illustrious statesman Smuts bequeathed a party in tatters, with a programme not much different to the apartheid brand of the new rulers, Malan and his National Party. At Smuts’ death in September 1950 the United Party had no leader to replace the statesman who was born and bred in the Western Cape and who had become a world leader in the meantime. The country lost out as apartheid got more and more entrenched.

Jan Smuts, the Christian
In another field, Smuts’ intimate knowledge of New Testament Greek and Science caused him to coin the word holism, when he wrote a book Holism and Evolution.
Smuts’ feats in the two world wars were spectacular. Behind the scenes he acknowledged in his correspondence to Margaret Clark Gillett how he was carried through in the most trying circumstances by his faith in his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In his book The Religious Smuts Piet Beukes devotes a whole chapter on ‘the influence and personality of Jesus Christ on Smuts’s life.’
Smuts’ firm basis in Scripture comes through when he said in this regard: ‘the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament; and the highest code of men, the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ – all are silent on rights, all stress duties’. As another condition for a new South Africa, Smuts stressed the preservation of law and order. The powers that be would do well to learn from him, even as he endeavoured to have his ear close to the Word of God. He referred to justice, which exalts a people ‘as a basis for a solution…of our Native relations, the most difficult of all and the final test of our Western Christian civilization.’
The theological ideas of Smuts remained unknown for decades. Only people like Margaret Clark knew of his deep insights. Profound, even though by no means worked out properly, were his ideas on Mary Magdalene. It would have graced Black Theologians – and shocked Catholics! Smuts suggested that not the Virgin Mary was the Mother of Christianity, but the former demon possessed prostitute Mary Magdalene. He furthermore proposed that she was the one who anointed Jesus with fragrant expensive oil and dried his feet with her hair. According to Jan Smuts, the vision of the risen Christ made Mary Magdalene the Mother of the Christian Faith. Similarly, his notion that ‘Christianity began in the slaves’ quarters of the decadent Roman Empire, and so some seed of good may be germinating in the hearts of men’ would have been unpallatable to church authorities in December 1922 when Smuts wrote these lines. This was especially remarkable because he was only known at this time as a stern, uncompromising military leader, who was prepared to use force to quell rebellion of any sort.
Because of his firm base in Scripture, Smuts’ discerned clearly what the bottom line was in the fight against the ideology represented by Adolf Hitler. In a wartime speech he spelt it out that the swastika, the deformed cross which symbolized Hitler’s National Socialism, was ‘a symbol of moral enslavement.’ The ‘happy warriors of the New Order… could only arise under the sign of the Cross, in the spirit of service and self-sacrifice, leading man to his destiny, which he must find not in mastery but in service, not in dictatorship but in freedom’ (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:194).
An astute student of philosophy and physics, Smuts explained the concept, why ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ in 1926, many decades before it was generally accepted by physics scholars. He did get recognition for this scientific contribution when he was asked to became a Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Later he was also to become the Rector of the famous St Andrew’s University in Scotland.

Two Cape Revolutionaries of colour who changed the political Landscape
At the Cape itself things were going to change drastically, due to two ‘Coloured’ men. James La Guma travelled the country with his father who was a travelling cobbler, but Simons Town was their home base before he later settled down at 2 Roger Street in District Six. When he heard of the strike of Clements Kadalie’s ICU in the Cape Town Dock, he was working in Lüderitz, Namibia, where he also learnt to speak German fluently. Immediately he wrote to Kadalie, who agreed that he could set up a branch of the ICU in Lüderitz. At the age of 27 he was back in Cape Town, but already in October of that year, 1921, he was requested to be the organizer in Port Elisabeth. In no time he made such a success of the job there, that he was recalled to the Headquarters in Loop Street in Cape Town, where things were in a pretty mess. In 1923 he was elected Assistant General Secretary and the year thereafter General Secretary. He introduced index cards, membership numbers and an alphabetical filing system.
In 1923 he met Johnny Gomas in Cape Town. The two immediately found each other as James La Guma mentored the plaasjapie from the Abbotsdale mission station, who however had already been active in trade union activities and also as a member of the ANC. La Guma taught Gomas: ‘Black people will first have to cast off the shackles of racial oppression…’
Until 1924 the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) remained basically a White party, a situation which arose from its basic belief in the backward character of Black workers. This all changed through the input of James La Guma and especially Johnny Gomas, who joined the party in January 1925. In December of that year Gomas was elected Cape Provincial Secretary. From December 1925, to be a member of the CPSA meant to ‘identify openly with the movement for the emancipation of Blacks’ (Musson, 1989:49). Simultaneously, Cape Town became the home territory of ‘independent South African Marxism’. The national CPSA was linked to Soviet Russia’s Comintern. The Cape Town left set out to make sure that the CPSA would not bow to Soviet dictates.
Being thoroughly trilingual, the young man from the Cape rose quickly in the ranks of the Communist Party of which he had become a member. He was duly elected to represent South Africa at the international occasion in Moscow. When James La Guma came back from Moscow after the tenth anniversary celebrations of the revolution in 1927, he saw the solution for the country as an independent South African Republic as a first stage towards a workers and peasants’ republic, with full rights for all workers.

Rise of the Capetonian Worker Class
The trade union work initiated at the Cape by Nyasaland-born Clements Kadalie and his colleagues in 1919 - with their Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) was short-lived, but it succeeded in giving White South Africa a fright. Gomas also joined the ICU of Clements Kadalie, of which he became a full-time organizer in 1923. The militant language of the ICU soon surpassed the ANC (Musson, 1989:30), making it a mass movement after 1923.
At this time Gomas was back in the Cape, operating from his home in Sussex Street in Wynberg. He worked closely with James La Guma, in District Six. The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU) nevertheless left a legacy: ‘the flame of revolt which it had fanned’, especially in rural Western Cape areas. But also in the new townships of the Mother City the flame was ignited under the direction of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and for a while by a revived ANC.
Until 1925 the ICU was a Cape-based trade union. Through the dynamic leadership of Clements Kadalie, membership of the ICU spread throughout the length and breadth of the country and beyond. However, when the ICU leadership became increasingly under the influence of liberals, the communists were seen as a threat. Gomas, together with the other Communist Party members, was something of a headache to Kadalie because Gomas wanted to transform the ICU into a mass movement. When Gomas and La Guma refused to resign from the CPSA, they were expelled from the ICU. That back-fired on the ICU, which hereafter declined sharply. Tabata (1974:10) had no doubt that the bureaucratic methods of the leadership crippled the organization.
The CPSA gained from it all the more. Gomas, who had really put the ICU on the map in the Western Cape, also rose in rank in the ANC. During Gumede’s absence in Russia in early 1927, Gomas was the national acting president. The communist influence in the ANC was considerably extended at this time. Johnny Gomas was very much of an optimist, thinking that White and Black workers could unite in opposition to the ilk of Jan Smuts, who epitomized to them the mine magnates who exploited the workers. Gomas’ hope was smashed in the aftermath of the 1924 elections. One of the first laws of the 1924 Pact Government was the Native Administration Act. This law equipped the Native Affairs Department with enormous powers, e.g. to control the free movement of Africans.

Compassionate work amongst peripheral groups
Reverend Arthur William Blaxall, an Anglican clergyman, came to South Africa in 1923 to work with the deaf. At the Cape he was open for the need to reach out compassionately to other peripheral groups of the society like the Muslims. In the 1930s he headed the Athlone School for ‘Coloured’ Blind children, which is now located in Glenhaven, Bellville South. In 1939 he opened the first workshop for blind Africans in South Africa – Ezenzeleni in Roodepoort. For many years he was secretary of the the South African Christian Council, which was established in 1936 and he was also chairman of the South African branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
The need for reconciliation was necessary all round. A competitive spirit and backbiting even among missionaries seems to have been quite common at that time. In his inaugural speech as chairman of the Christian Council in 1936, Rev. Nicol referred to a letter of a missionary, which he concedes was not typical: ‘Ek veg ook wat ek kan teen die Y-seksie...Ek is ‘n man van vrede, maar nou het ek oorlog verklaar’ (Koningsbode, August 1936, p.258).136 The same missionary states that he never knew that one sister church could be so distrustful of another.
Over the years Reverend Blaxall developed ‘an ever deepening sense of solidarity’ in his own words with the Black, ‘Coloured’ and Indian struggle against apartheid (Karis and Carter, Volume 4, 1977:8). Trusted as a friend, he received money in the 1960s from exiled ANC and Pan African Congress (PAC) leaders and passed it on to former political prisoners and their families who were in need. This led to his arrest in 1963 and conviction under the Suppression of Communist Act.

Another unheralded Cape son – Donald Barkly Molteno
Donald Barkly Molteno is another one of the unheralded Cape stars who faught for justice in our prejudicial strife-torn society. Born in 1908 in Wynberg and attending Bishops in Rondebosch, the Cape Anglican school for the top bracket of the Cape elite, he had everything going for him in terms of privilege. After graduating with honours in law at the prestigious Cambridge University in the UK in 1930 and a short period at the Inner Temple of the English Bar, he returned to the Cape where he practised in the Cape Provincial Department of the Supreme Court from 1932 to 1964. He moved to lecturing at UCT where he was Dean of the Faculty of Law at his death in 1972.
Molteno represented Black ‘voters’ in the House of Assembly from 1938-48. However, in 1947 he decided not to seek re-election because the system was very unsatisfactory and increasingly unpopular. Yet, during his time in Parliament he was a brave fighter for the voteless and thereafter he continued to occupy leading positions in the Civil Rights League and the Liberal Party. Soon after his entry into parliament Molteno fought for the pass laws to be repealed, and when there was merely an effort to insert the colour bar for employment – the forerunner of Job Reservation – he opposed it vehemently. He did not limit himself by any means to discrimination against Blacks. Thus Molteno fought anybody suggesting an economic colour bar to protect Whites. They ‘can only mean certain privileged groups which will benefit at the expense of the vast mass of the population’ (Lewsen, 1988:81). When Eric Louw tried to justify the prohibition of new Jews who were fleeing the Holocaust, he opposed in Parliament the suggestion that the portals of South Africa would be ‘barred and bolted against Jewish immigration’ (Lewsen, 1988:91)
Donald Molteno saw his role as fighting tyranny, poverty and discrimination. Through his ‘compassion and pertinacity he won redress for the misconduct of officials, headed deputations’ (Lewsen, 1988:29) and a host of other issues. Yet, whenever possible, he addressed the larger issues which affected Blacks especially, such as the poll-tax and the pass laws.

7. Diverse Spiritual Dynamics

The Malay Quarter falls apart - literally
Bo-Kaap was threatened from yet another angle after Dr Abdurahman’s departure from the political scene. At this time the slamse buurt, the ‘Malay Quarter’, proper was also falling apart physically. White speculators pocketed exorbitant rents, not concerned with the condition of the houses on their properties. The invasion of non-Muslims as subtenants resulted in the over-crowding of the ‘Malay Quarter’. It deteriorated gradually into slum conditions. Even the pride of the Cape Muslims, their artisans, was affected so that the author Lewis (1949:649) wrote about the disappearance and even ‘death of the Malay crafts’. However, he overstated his case somewhat by speaking of the ‘disintegration of community living’ (p.598). The old houses of the original ‘slamse buurt’ (Malay Quarter) with the borders, Dorp, Strand, Rose and Chiappini Streets, were deteriorating fast towards the end of the 1940s but the Islamic community was still clinging to each other, with Bo-Kaap and District Six as an axis around which much of the subculture revolved.

Bo-Kaap saved by far-sighted People
Far-sighted people like Dr Izak David Du Plessis, a lecturer from UCT and a famous Afrikaans poet - along with other Whites like Dr E.G. Jansen - had a deep sense of cultural history. Dr Du Plessis especially was loved by many Muslims of the Bo-Kaap and appreciated by them for his efforts to get the Malay Quarter restored to its former glory. It is appropriate to repeat that when the Malay Quarter was definitely threatened with extinction, Du Plessis rallied many friends - almost all White and Christian - to fight for the restoration of the dilapidated houses. In altruistic style Du Plessis passed the honour to the group headed by Dr E.G. Jansen, who later became the Governor General of the Cape Province. Du Plessis described them as ‘...untiring idealists who realize that the Malay Quarter is the pivot of Cape Malay life’ (Du Plessis and Lückhoff, 1953:12/13). They succeeded to get 15 houses restored in the block between Rose, Wale, Chiapinni and Longmarket Streets. The rest of the Bo-Kaap continued to deteriorate.
At the request of the government department of Community Development, the City Council drew up a scheme for the general rehabiliation of the area. In 1966 Mr P.W. Botha had a number of houses built in his capacity of Minister of Community Development. How genuine he was, was never clear. It really was a question whether it was not merely a gesture to placate the opposition after the furore and outcry after the District Six proclamation of February 1966. Soon Botha was to show his true colours when he became the Minister of Coloured Affairs. Yet later, he was known as the unbending ‘groot krokodiel’ as Prime Minister.
Also on the Christian side, there was a threat at this time. Only a remnant of St Stephen’s Church members had remained when many moved away to other parts of the Peninsula. The maintenance of the building became a big burden to the church. Rev. P.S. Latsky, who served the congregation from 1930, had a heart for the historical value of the building. He fought successfully for its preservation when developers wanted to use the church and the adjacent lot for a parking garage in 1949.

The Legalising of racial Separation
At a time when Islam was reeling, the legalising of racial separation in 1948 saved the day for Muslims. When the Nationalist government took over, it soon became clear that people of colour would be discriminated against. Islam at the Cape was embattled also from this side because its adherents were grouped with the ‘Coloureds’. The first Nationalist Prime Minister, Dr D.F. Malan, had been a Dutch Reformed Minister. It is ironical that Malan - a direct descendant of a Vergelegen137 son and a slave woman with whom Malan’s ancestor had eloped - was to be co-responsible for the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which caused so much misery in the apartheid era. Yet, it was not so surprising because the DRC had requested this legislation. Dr Koot Vorster - long time minister of the Tafelberg congregation, which is almost equidistant to the Parliament Building as the Groote Kerk - played a pivotal role in the lobbying for racist laws. His brother John became Prime Minister in 1966 after the assassination of Dr H.F. Verwoerd.
The dubious honour goes to Dr Izak David Du Plessis for the application of apartheid ideology to the Cape Muslims. He contributed in a big way to the ‘redefinition of ‘Malay’ as an ethnic designation in terms of the larger racialist scheme of apartheid’ (Chidester, Religions in South Africa, 1992:167). He wrote books about the Cape Muslims, their culture and history. Originally the term ‘Malay’ denoted a religious and not a racial group in his writings.
Muslims (like all peoples of colour) were divided with regard to the opposition to the oppressive laws. The government of the day manoevred cleverly to co-opt leading figures of the respective communities like Tom Swarts and Salie Dollie into the Coloured Representative Council (CRC), the ‘Coloured’ Parliament, which was a forerunner of the sham tri-cameral system. The CRC had their meetings in a building in Bellville that was scathingly called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ (The Council was situated adjacent to the ‘Bush College’, as the University College of the Western Cape was derogaratively called in those days). One would have thought that Mr Salie Dollie had learned his lesson when he was abused as a pawn some 20 years earlier. The implication was that the CRC, which met there, possessed the cap-in-hand/door-mat mentality of so-called collaborators who easily said ‘ja, baas!’
One wonders what the main motivation of the White DRC Synod of 1957 was to move the Sendingsinstituut from Wellington. Officially the reason given was to join the other theological training in Stellenbosch and Pretoria. I surmise that another reason could have been the embarrassing situation, which had arisen because the Teologiese Skool of the Sendingkerk had also started the training of their ministers in Wellington in 1954. But also the seminary for Sendingkerk ministers later moved from Wellington to Bellville in the mid-1960s, where the ideologically influenced University College of the Western Cape had started for the ‘Coloureds’.
Unfortunately the enemy used the issue of race to send the Dutch Reformed Church on the path of isolation, causing a deep rift in the denomination. White theologians legitimised a biblical heresy of racial separation and their counterparts of colour - especially the ‘Coloured’ dominees - responded by politicising the church.

ANC Leaders teach the Unity in Christ
Generations of political leaders in South Africa, particularly within the ANC, drew on Christian values for the building of a broader political unity. Coming from the African background of a broad humanity, ubuntu, there was, they believed, an ethical imperative to move beyond narrow identities of family, clan and race. – The thinking of White and ‘Coloured’ churches was bedevilled by the neat separation of politics and religion. Long before White and ‘Coloured’ churches embraced the concept, Blacks already saw the importance of the unity in Christ. One of the pioneers at the Cape was Rev. Zaccheus Richard Mahabane, a Methodist minister, who was posted to Cape Town in 1916. He joined the Cape African Congress in 1917 after hearing political speeches by Charlotte Maxeke and her husband.
In 1919 Rev. Zaccheus Richard Mahabane became president of the Cape African Congress. In 1924 he was elected president-general of the national ANC and again from 1937 to 1940. He maintained in 1925 that ‘the universal acknowledgement of Christ as common Lord and King break down the social, spiritual and intellectual barriers between the races’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:384). He propagated moderate conciliatory views of compromise, for instance he found a separate voters’ roll for Blacks acceptable if Whites found the prospect of a common roll too menacing.
Not bearing the brunt of the hurts caused by apartheid, the White-led denominations were out of touch with the spiritual dynamics of the resistance against the heretical ideology which became government policy from 1948. Helen Joseph, a Jewish anti-apartheid campaigner bemoaned in respect of the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s: ‘The Church turned its back on the ANC, [but] the ANC never turned its back on the Church’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:386).
The deep religiosity and prayerfulness of that campaign was described by Tom Lodge as a ‘mood of religious fervour [that] infused the resistance.’ He went on to note: ‘When the [Defiance] Campaign opened it was accompanied by days of prayer, and volunteers pledged themselves at prayer meetings to a code of love, discipline and cleanliness… and even at the tense climax of the Campaign in Port Elizabeth people were enjoined on the first day of the strike “to conduct a prayer and a fast in which each member of the family will have to be at home;” thereafter they attended nightly church services’ (Cited in Elphick and Davenport, 1997:386).

Paternalism hinders the Cause of the Gospel
Missionaries whose lives had been transformed through personal faith and conversion, often expected that this would also happen in society at large automatically - if the Gospel would only be effectively preached. Satan hit back, when an artificial and unbiblical differentiation between Christian action and evangelistic outreach caused an ever-widening rift in the Church.
South African exponents of the ‘Social Gospel’ embraced education, social work and politics not as replacements of evangelism, but they were sometimes accused in this way by right-wing evangelicals. For Blacks, the discussion was academic in part, because as Professor D.D.T. Jabavu, a Black Christian leader, claimed, ‘the secular-sacred dichotomy was foreign to their African cosmology’ (Elphick, 1997:368).
The disunity between churches for much of the 20th century actually centred around paternalism. The White-dominated English-speaking churches thought that the other races only needed equality of opportunity, which the Whites owed to the others. Afrikaners generally thought themselves to be called to be the guardians of the ‘non-White’ races. White supremacy was thus taken for granted by both groups. In the former case – also among missionaries - full equality and total integration were dragged and postponed to a distant future. On the other hand, nobody put the thinking of Afrikaner Christians more clearly than Hendrik Verwoerd, the architecture of apartheid. It was his conviction that the Black man had to be kept ‘in his place’, i.e. in subjection and servitude.
Both groups were unaware that they were hurting themselves by denying dignity to others and thus seriously hindering the cause of the Gospel. Somewhere the teaching that unity is a prerequisite for effective prayer did not penetrate into the churches. That does not mean though that the message was not vocalised. Donald Fraser, a former Scottish missionary preached in twenty-six South African towns and cities in 1925 during the United Missionary Campaign. He charged Whites to abandon their fears of a so- called ‘black menace’, claiming wisely that there is ‘no menace when people are determined to do justice to one another’ (Cited in Elphick et al, 1997:368).
Professor Hoernlé, by no means an evangelical, accurately described a liberal failing that was too often overlooked: ‘The greatest moral danger in the heart of the liberal spirit’ is that it is so apt to become paternalistic and condescending (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:25). It is strange that Afrikaner and radical intellectuals could see in him ‘the precursor of apartheid’. Edgar Brookes, the real precursor of apartheid who however recanted, could build on that foundation declaring in 1945: ‘We have no hope of preserving white racial dominance. It is not a question of whether it will fall, but of when’ (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:27).

Early 20th Century Black Church Leaders in costly Reconciliation
Over the years the church in South Africa has been a major catalyst for peace and reconciliation. Strong personalities like Reverend John Dube and Professor D.D.T. Jabavu had been playing a moderating and conciliatory role in the early days of the ANC. Successive White governments failed to appreciate the gold of human resources, by not listening to Black church leaders.
Substantial resistance to the oppressive race policies came as a rule from the ranks of these church leaders until the 1950s. One of the most prominent of them was South Africa’s first Nobel Prize laureate, Albert Lutuli. After he had been dismissed as chief in November 1952, he responded with his famous address which had at its beginning the momentous words ‘thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door…’He ended with the powerful sentence: ‘The Road to Freedom is via the CROSS’ (The full address in printed as an appendix in Luthuli, 235-238). Long before Black Theology was in vogue, Lutuli expressed his conviction that apartheid degrades all who are party to it. He was optimistic despite all evidence to the contrary that Whites would sooner or later be compelled to change heart and accept a shared society. Lutuli was elected ANC president-general by a large majority the next month, followed by his ‘cross’: Bans imposed in early 1953 were renewed in the following years, completely silencing them in 1959. Lutuli was not around any more to experience the freedom which Nelson Mandela could walk into, but he paved the way.
On the other hand, many Christians naively overlooked the innate convenience in man to hold on to privilege. Some needed Black Theology in the 1970s and 1980s, for example the Kairos Document of 1985, to shake and liberate some of them out of their cosy zones.

The Proliferation of organized Anti-racism Resistance at the Cape
In the early 1930s Dr Abdurahman started radiating a type of conservatism and respectability, which made him suspect. He had already displayed dirty political tricks such as denigrating his brother for not wearing a fez. His marriage to a second wife Maggie by Muslim rites might have been a significant factor in aligning his children and his first wife Nellie against him. When he participated in the Commission of Enquiry regarding the Cape Coloured Population, he was already tainted, suspect of trying to attain respectability in the eyes of Whites in an unprincipled way. He ushered in his own swansong when the report was published in August 1937 (Union Act no. 54 of 1937), notably without a minority dissenting voice. The findings turned out to be a blueprint for petty apartheid legislation. One could find there all sorts of segregatory measures like job reservation, residential areas and housing schemes in which Coloured would be separated from Blacks. The Coloured Advisory Council (CAC) and Coloured Affairs Department (CAD) were ostensibly introduced with the intention of bribing the ‘upper crust’, from which collaborators could be drawn. Thus, the Schotsche Kloof Flats in Bo-Kaap now stand there not as a proud momunent of Abdurahman’s efforts for the Cape Muslims, but as an indictment, a sad reminder of a great politician with a dismal end to his career – a man who started off fighting for the rights of all oppressed people, but who ended as a collaborator with segregation politics. Sad was also that an Anglican bishop who did so much for the upliftment of the Coloured people, was also drawn into the divisive schemes. Bishop Lavis and White liberals helped to introduce the CAC (Cape Times, 30 January, 1943).
Most prominent in the rebellion against Abdurahman’s leadership was his daughter Zainunissa (Cissie) Gool, along with her husband Dr A.H. Gool and his brother Goolam, plus other members of the Gool and Abdurahman clans. The Abdurahman contribution was coming from the children stemming from the first marriage of the political pioneer. Out of this new thinking the National Liberation League started in District Six in 1935. Two years later, a few UCT students initiated the New Era Fellowship (NEF). Young teachers from these ranks soon started to challenge the old guard in the Teachers League of South Africa (TLSA) which had ironically been started by Dr Abdurahman.

World War II influences the Struggle of the Underdogs
The influence of the run up to World War II had a profound influence on the struggle of the oppressed at the Cape when it became generally known that Haile Selassie, a Black man, was leading a nation. The Italian invasion of Abyssinia made it easy for Johnny Gomas to call dockworkers at a Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) mass meeting in 1935 in Cape Town to stop any shipment of food for the ‘…Italian robbers, who are out for imperialist aggrandizement at the expense of the Abyssinian people.’ The initial successes of the Japanese in the East proved that the white colonizers were not invincible after all. The fight against the Nazi’s brought the term Herrenvolk into the vocabulary of the TLSA and related bodies.
The final result of the World War furthermore gave hope to all colonized people of colour that the liberty - hard fought for in the war - would be extended to all people. The war had been presented as a struggle for a better world, for democracy and for human rights.
Out of all this emerged the Springbok Legion in December 1941. The Legion was open to all soldiers, regardless of race or sex. The Legion with a strong Cape base, was definitely on a collision course with conservative Transvaal Afrikaners. Fred Carneson, who later became the editor of New Age, the Communist Party (and later the ANC) paper, recalled: ‘the Springbok Legion called for sterner measures against the Broederbond and the Nazi Ossewabrandwag.’ The anti-Fascist theme was a focus of the Springbok Legion, also speaking for Africans to White audiences. The Nationalist victory in the 1948 elections spelled the death knell for the Legion. The Ossewabrandwag was however also branded through their close links to the Nazi’s. However, many of those Afrikaners who studied in the Germany of Hitler, like Diederichs and Jeff Cronje, were going to be influential in the ideological battle in South Africa from the ranks of Malan’s Purified National(ist) Party.

Repression revives Revolt
The voice of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr became an increasing voice in the wilderness after World War II. Smuts seemed to have forgotten that he had predicted evil days with regard to segregation. In March 1946 Hofmeyr warned that the struggle for freedom is a continuing one, calling for ‘unwearying devotion and eternal vigilance’ (Cited in Lewsen, 1988:194). He went on to point out that racial prejudice made South Africans ‘victims of the anti-Semitic doctrines… that we have fought to destroy.’
Notwithstanding these warnings, a pattern continued at the Cape since the earliest beginnings, namely that excessive repression revived revolt again and again. The government made the opposition by people of colour rise out of the ashes through the implementation of the Coloured Advisory Council (CAC) and Coloured Affairs Department (CAD) in 1943. Cissy Gool-Abdurahman launched the Anti-CAD (-C.A.C) campaign in District Six as opposition to this ploy. It spread like wild fire, with the scheduled parliamentary elections of that year adding fuel to the revolt.
The very intensity of Nationalist oppression contributed in a big way. Albert Lutuli suggested ‘what we had so far failed to achieve – awake the mass of Africans to political awareness… the Nationalists more than anybody have given force and insistence to African demands.'
After Johnnie Gomas had become ‘defiled’ through his two year banning in 1952, he refrained from attending the formation of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). He nevertheless became involved in the formation of the South African People’s Organization (SACPO) in 1953. SACPO was formed out of the remnants of the Franchise Action Committee (FRAC), which endeavoured to secure voting rights for all citizens of the country. Alex La Guma was elected SACPO full-time Secretary in 1954, scheduled to become one of their delegates at at the Congress of the People in June 1955 in Kliptown, Johannesburg. One of Alex La Guma’s early achievements was to organize a fairly successful bus boycott against segregation.
The most notable intentional absentee in Kliptown was surely the Cape political veterans, Johnny Gomas and James La Guma. Gomas stated his reason for not intending to go: the ‘fear that my association … would cause the government to blacklist it as they have done to other organizations. My name is mud with the government.’ The bulk of the Cape delegation was ultimately absent at the Congress, after the government had intervened, detaining 60 Western Cape delegates - en route to Kliptown - in Beaufort West. Delegates who left the Western Cape for Kliptown included Alex La Guma, Eveline Ngoso of the Woman’s Anti-Pass Committee and Albie Sachs of UCT representing the Active in the Modern Youth Society. The younger La Guma was one of those who never arrived in Johannesburg.
After the lifting of his banning in June 1954, Johnny Gomas’ main weapon was the pen. This did not endear him to the ANC, e.g. when he pointed out that ‘Apart from the fact that the Freedom Charter was one of the finest programmes drawn up, the ANC only adopted it more than 12 months later.’ Nevertheless, the ANC and SACPO were fairly close to each other at this stage, closer than those participants of the Unity movement, who would not accept any racial tags. Alex La Guma was involved with New Age, the ANC mouthpiece. The weekly paper which started in 1937 as The Guardian, had to change its name a few times after being banned by the government of the day. It bounced back respectively under the name Clarion, People’s World, New Age and Spark.
At the Cape provincial congress of the ANC in August 1953 Prof. ZK Matthews, just after his return from a lecturing stint in the US, proposed the summoning of a ‘national convention at which all groups might be represented to consider our national problems on an all-inclusive basis’ to ‘draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future’. The idea was endorsed by the ANC’s annual conference in September.

The Aftermath of Kliptown
In the aftermath of Kliptown and the adoption by the ANC of the Freedom Charter, the government swooped in December 1956, arresting 156 opposition leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Alex La Guma. This was to lead to what became known as the Treason Trial. Through a protracted court case, the government appeared to keep the opposition at bay as long as possible.
An interesting reaction of Afrikaners was that exactly a year after Kliptown, they had their own version of a congress of the people. In Bloemfontein the Volkskongres gathered, basically to discuss the government Tomlinson report, which had been appointed in 1951 to study the ‘Socio-Economic Development of the Bantu Areas.’ An important suggestion of this government commission, the intensive development of industry in these areas - which were later called homelands - was never implemented. Later they did however encourage border industries on the edges of the 'homelands'.
At the renewed repression, concretely after his son Alex and others like Reggie September were detained in 1956, James La Guma was persuaded to come out of political retirement, to try and fill the gap caused by the arrests. He was duly elected as President of SACPO in 1957. Alex la Guma and Reggie September were banned for five years. During this time Alex La Guma continued to write in New Age, which had become the mouthpiece of the ANC. His column Up my Ally continued to appear until June 1962, when he was banned as well.
After the Pan African Congress’ (PAC) had broken away from the ANC in April 1959, the latter organization was forced into a more militant position than the pacifist stance which their leader Chief Albert Luthuli, a committed Christian and Methodist lay preacher, had advocated. His dictum of ‘freedom via the Cross’ was branded as unworkable by young militant elements in the party. With his outspoken support for the Black Republic in the late 1920s, it was not surprising that Johnny Gomas and other Cape Coloureds broke away with the (PAC) in 1959. After a play ‘Try for White’ was staged in October 1959, the old Coloured leader, pleaded for a ‘black identity’, an early version of Black Consciousness. However, Gomas did not subscribe totally to its manifesto which expressed hostility towards all that was associated with the Western ‘Way if Life’. He was committed to the destruction of racism, discerning that it was dehumanising people of colour. However, it does not seem that he discerned that it was also dehumanising the Whites as well.
In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre and the Langa episode shortly thereafter, both Johnny Gomas and James La Guma were arrested. How fitting it was that the two veterans of the struggle against racial oppression shared a prison cell after the country-wide swoop. However, it did no good to the health of the old man La Guma. He recovered but he was not going to be the same again. A year later, in July 1961, he died.

Authors of Colour take up the Cudgels
The Awakening of a People by Isaac Tabata, one of the New Era Fellowship members of District Six, gives an excellent analysis of the South African struggle. Like so many seminal books of resistance, that book of 1950 and every reprint of it was banned and its effect stifled. As one who not only comes from the Black community himself, but who was also involved with the NEUM from its inception in 1943, Tabata was in the special position to write history from within. Brilliantly he analyses the two divergent policies, namely against the government and against the line of opportunism. The book opened the eyes of many to the real political situation. His exposure of the opportunism of the early generations of the ANC surely helped Nelson Mandela – to whom Tabata wrote a personal letter in 1948 – and his colleagues in the CODESA negotiations in the transition period, not to be tricked again by the likes of de Klerk and his team. Like the other two books mentioned, the two main issues of land and liberty are expounded in The Awakening of a People as clearly as any scholar of history would wish.
A major correction in historiography followed the publication of a booklet by a Genadendal descendant of the Khoi. Henry (Jutti) Bredekamp became an academic by ‘default’. Stemming from Klippies Street in the backwater of the famous mission station, he proceeded for teacher training in Oudthoorn after his Matric in 1962. He was regarded as not possessing the right pedigree - like stemming from the influencial Wessels or Joorst families – to go and study theology at the Moravian seminary which was situated in Fairview Port Elisabeth, before it had to re-locate to District Six, Cape Town because of the Group Areas Act. After qualifying as a teacher, he started teaching at a farm school near the Karoo hamlet of Leeu Gamka. He however still joined in the holiday activities of the Christian Students Association. During a visit to Tiervlei (Ravensmead) in 1968, he got more information about the extra-mural degree studies of UWC where he subsequently graduated. As lecturer of that institution, his first literary production in 1981– writing ‘Van Veeverskaffers tot Veewagters, in Afrikaans,’ was strategic. That it was not a thick book surely also helped the cause. Along with the publication of the diary of Georg Schmidt in the previous year – which was not thin - a process of correction of many a prejudice was started. Many of the myths were uncovered. (Although much of the research was not completely new, but because the work of Tabata, Mguni and Majeke had by and large been unknown because these works were still banned.) As a descendant from the Khoi and stemming from Genadendal, the booklet had a special touch.

Mid and late 20th Century Jewish Contributions towards a more just Dispensation
The Jewish UP member of the Provincial Council Abe Bloomberg dared to express ‘uncompromising opposition to the principle of coloured segregation’. When the immediate predecessor of apartheid legislation reared its head, he stated publicly: ‘I shall do everything possible to bring about the rejection of this miserable piece of legislation in its entirety’ (The Sun, 12 August, 1938). Unfortunately, Bloomberg’s role was tainted through his links to the expedient George Golding, the leader of the Coloured People’s National Union (CPNU). Bloomberg nevertheless later became a valued Coloured Persons’ Representative in Parliament in the late 1950s.
Helen Suzman, a Jewess, representing the posh Johannesburg suburb of Houghton from 1953, brought moral values into play. Coming from Lithuanian parentage, the contribution of Helen Suzman was gratefully recognized by all people who suffered under the oppressive apartheid rule. For many years she was the only parliamentarian of the Progressive Party. As the MP for Houghton from 1953-1989, she used the forum of Parliament to speak out on behalf of equal justice for all human beings in our country.
In the course of her parliamentarian work Helen Suzman visited political prisoners. After speaking to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island in 1967, she reported to the Minister in charge that a Nazi warden was giving the prisoners hell, resulting in the villain to be removed from the island. Suzman’s quest for complete truthfulness made her respected by all and sundry. She was well aware that this would, in Suzman’s own words ‘earn me the acute displeasure of the anti-apartheid movement’ (Suzman, 1994:156). The overriding goal was to get the political prisoners released. She however also dared to refute Winnie Mandela’s exaggerated claim in 1983 that her husband Nelson was maltreated on Robben Island.
Another famous South African Jew, Joe Slovo, was one of Helen Suzman’s students at Wits University, where she lectured before she entered politics. He was from a different ideological persuasion, an atheist who became a Cabinet minister in the first post-apartheid government. Our country owes much to him, the much-admired General Secretary of the Communist Party, who was so committed to negotiations. He was particularly responsible for persuading the radical elements in the party to accept what were called the ‘sunset clauses’ – concessions to the government in order to keep negotiation on track. Slovo’s contribution went a long way to avert a White backlash or a counter revolution after 1994. However, he harvested the chagrin of other leftist colleagues for allowing Whites, who killed their comrades, to get away scot free; that apartheid politicians could draw fat pensions in spite of the sin against humanity, which they had perpetrated.
Zac de Beer was another Jew who played a leading role in politics. He became the first sole leader of a new opposition political party138 of the post-apartheid era, the Democratic Party. Under Tony Leon, yet another Jew, this party was playing an important role in opposition to the ANC as a watchdog and critic of possible excesses. However, Leon overreached himself in October 2001, causing the split of a coalition which had enabled the Democratic Alliance to rule the Western Cape. In a sense that was inevitable, because the alliance with the New National Party had been a ‘marriage of convenience’ any way, a ploy to keep Whites in power in at least one province of the country.

More Political Protest
The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 led to the dissolution of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), but it backfired on the government because the ANC hereafter grew into a mass movement. Alex la Guma was hereafter the main contributor of New Age, which became the mouthpiece of the ANC. Often however the paper was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The newspaper, which ran for 25 years as a weekly under different names, after being banned again and again, was a key organizational tool. However, the response to racial segregation was tainting almost every segment of society in the 1950s. Even members of the former Liberal and Communist Parties, which had been fairly principled, started participating in ideologically tainted institutions. Johnny Gomas was especially critical of those African and Coloured leaders whom he regarded as stooges: ‘What kind of non-white person can be willing to perform such a degrading role. It can only be persons who are completely punch-drunk by the blows of white oppression, … who… scrambled like dogs when the NRC and CAD were flung at them’ (Musson, 1989:118). That the former Communist Piet Beylefeld stood as candidate against Abe Bloomberg as the SACPO man - to become the Coloured Persons’ Representative - gave respectability to the flawed situation, after the ‘Coloureds’ had been take from the voters’ roll. SACPO changed their position, agreeing to support White candidates who were carefully selected. Only those ones qualified who had sacrificed and suffered on behalf of the liberatory movement.
George Peake was the president of SACPO. When Alex la Guma and Reggie September went on trial in the lengthy so-called treason saga, Jimmy la Guma agreed to join the fray against apartheid. Divide and rule came into play with Alex La Guma swiping at Cissy Gool, who supported Bloomberg. In New Age he ridiculed the intellectualism of the Unity Movement. He was however also attacked – probably from the regime in May 1958 – when two shots were fired at him, one of which ‘grazed his neck slightly.’ The following year he was arrested for entering Nyanga without a permit.139

Other repressive Laws
Before 1948 and the entry of the National Party as sole governing political party, various attempts had been made already to get a law on the statue books to prevent miscegenation. It is however especially sad that the church took the initiative at this time through the influence of Ds Koot Vorster of the Tafelberg Dutch Reformed Church, who requested the new National Party government in 1948 to introduce a law to prevent marriages between Whites and any person of colour. There had been earlier attempts, which gave them much hope. Jan H. Hofmeyr, the Deputy Prime Minister was known to have detested miscegenation significantly.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 caused a trickle of people to leave the country over the years. (The author left South Africa at the end of 1973 for that reason.) Pastor Alfred West, who worked as a missionary in the Cape townships of Kensington, Bonteheuwel and Bishop Lavis, proved the exception when he waited for 20 years before he could marry his ‘Coloured’ sweetheart Gladys.

Other ‘Exports’ from the Cape
There is quite a list of people of colour who left South Africa because of their skin pigmentation, which prevented them from using their talents to the full. The history of the cricketer Basil D’Oliviera, one of the greatest cricketing all-rounders which South Africa produced, is perhaps the best known in a long list of Capetonians of colour who had to go elsewhere to get recognition. The cricketer who was raised in Bo-Kaap’s Jordaan Street, went on to play for England in an illustrious career. Lesser known were the five Abed brothers from Aspeling Street in District Six, who originally came from India. While playing in the Lancashire league in England, Goelie, one of the brothers, hit three sixes off Garfield Sobers, possibly the best all-rounder ever to play cricket.140 Dik, another brother from the Abed clan, settled in Holland, where he later captained the Dutch national cricket team. One could say that Dik Abed performed development work in this way, enabling the Dutch to compete internationally, and participating in the Cricket World Cup.141
It remained more or less completely unknown to South Africans that Johaar Mosaval, who was born at 1 Little Lesar Street in District Six, was the solo dancer in Gloriana, an opera specially composed by Benjamin Britten in 1952 at the coronation of Queen Elisabeth. Mosaval was discovered at George Golding's Ashley Higher Primary School in 1932 during a pantomime performance of The Beauty of the Beast before he went to the Royal Ballet School.
The repressive clampdown by the government on school teachers in the late 1950s and early 1960s turned out to be counter-productive from the viewpoint of the regime in a sense. Resistance was actually exported to country towns like Upington. However, a major exodus of ‘Coloured’ teachers transpired when some of their most gifted professionals left first for especially Zambia and Canada. Later Australia became a preferred destination. The loss due to emigration was the gain of these countries. About Winston Layne was written by Yousuf Rassool, a teacher colleague of the Chapel Street Primary School in District Six: ‘His career might have been stunted in the South African context, but in Canada his intellectual talents were recognized by the State of Saskatchewan where he helped to revolutionize the teaching of English.’
Many other countries profited from the brain-drain from South Africa. Quite a few of the emigrants came from the ‘Coloured’ sector of the Western Cape, but they were not always politically motivated. Thus Professor Forgus – a protegé of District Six – after lecturing in Pschychology at the University of Pennsyllvania in the USA, became a renowned speaker in his field. He later landed up at the famous Harvard University.
Quite often the race laws forced gifted people of colour to leave or to remain overseas. Dr Roy Weber, a top UCT science student, won a bursary to study overseas. His father was the school principal of the primary school on the Moravian mission station at Elim. Professor Weber became a top world academic in Marine Biology - based in Den Helder, Holland - after his marriage to a Danish national. I had little option in 1973 than to leave for Germany after Rosemarie, my wife – whom I had met in Germany during a study stint there – had twice been refused visas because government spies got to know about our friendship.142
Unfortunately, parallel to the positive forces of resistance to injustice and compassion, the demonic influences of resentment and bitterness were also exported from District Six.

The Sports Boycott
The effective sports boycott contributed so much to the breakdown of the apartheid edifice. It can also be traced to beginnings which originated at the Cape. Yousuf Rassool (2000:189) recalled how he agitated with all the passion he could muster in the mid 1950s. The result was that a proposed West Indian cricket tour did not take place. What drove him and those who voted with him was the idea that ‘by supporting apartheid cricket, they would be relinquishing principle in favour of expediency’. (This was probably also the principle which guided the Muslim Judicial Council for many years to refuse money from undemocratic Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia for the building of mosques.) In later years Hassan Howa, a principled Muslim sports administrator and leader of the South African Council for Sports (SACOS), with its strong base in the Western Cape, became a real thorn in the flesh of apartheid die-hards. When the government appeared to make special exceptions for sports, they consistently proclaimed: ‘no normal (i.e. multiracial) sport in an abnormal society.’

Circumventing and Flouting of Apartheid Laws
District Six was one of the first places in South Africa where the race factor was effectively countered by practices of non-racialism, notably in the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM). The proof that non-racialism in District Six was real, is demonstrated by the fact that the first secretary of the Unity Movement was Saul A. Jayiya, a Black who fled ‘from virtual serfdom on a farm in the Eastern Free State.’ Jayiya taught himself English as well as the skills of a motorcar mechanic. When ‘Coloured’ society in general was still looking down on Blacks in an arrogant and condescending way, Saul Jayiya, practised the trade in Harvey’s garage in the city – albeit behind locked doors. He was thus flouting the Job Reservations Act, which did not permit Blacks to work in this trade. Legislation also caused estrangement between the Blacks and ‘Coloureds’ living in District Six. Thus a Black has been quoting the custom that three ‘Coloureds’ first had to refuse an employment opportunity before it was offered to a Black (Sala Kahle, p.64). Circumventing and flouting of Apartheid laws was by far not wide-spread until the defiance campaign of 1952. And even thereafter it was more done as a schoolboy prank, for example to try and outwit railway police, who had to check whether bridges and subways at railway stations reserved for ‘Whites only’, were not used by other races.

Apartheid spawns Gangsterism.
The law was contributory to the proliferation of gangsterism. Long before World War II gangs were already present in District Six. The 'Coloured' author and Cape Times reporter George Manuel notes that there were gangs already in the 1920s, organised in a pattern prescribed by Chicago. But they were apparently not a scourge, mainly fighting each other and hardly bothering other citizens till World War II.
Although the numbers of ‘skollies’ increased dramatically after the war, the situation changed minimally. They were standing on street corners aimlessly, because of the lack of unemployment opportunities. They were still well under control until the late 1940s, with the Globe Gang running the show, countering criminality. This gang was started in 1946 as a vigilante group by the Ismael family in District Six (Schoeman, 1993:50). With the increasing protection of poor Whites through the Job Reservation Act, many ‘Coloureds’ were frustrated. The new gang leaders were not merely ignorant criminals. In fact, most were ‘men who struggled to obtain an education… and then, in frustration of finding that there were no real professional openings for them in a white man’s world, turned to crime.’ A strong White criminal element had also moved into District Six, including ‘an infamous murder, one Munnik who lay low in District Six during the late forties.’ Schoeman (1993:46) furthermore had ‘no doubt that white owners of cafés and shops in the area worked hand in glove with the gangster element.’
Another negative tradition, which also had its origins in District Six, was the collaboration of the police with gangs in exchange of favours. In the apartheid years they were allowed to peddle in drugs if they would supply information about opposition activists.

A Wind of Change?
One day early in February 1960 Harold Macmilla, the British Prime Minsiter, was due to address the combined chambers of Parliament. He outlined Britain’s aim to establish societies ‘in which individual merit, and individual merit only, is the criterion for a man’s advancement, whether political or economic’(Cited in Shaw, 1999:157). Harold Macmillan furthermore warned that a ‘wind of change is blowing throughout the continent'.
1960 became a year of nation-wide turmoil in the run-up and aftermath of the riots in the Cape Black township Langa.
The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), led by the dynamic Robert Sobukwe, was a Black nationalist break-away from the African National Congress (ANC). Sobukwe, a pioneer advocate of Black consciousness, believed that the Blacks had to throw off the shackles of oppression themselves before they could accept Whites as compatriots and fellow Africans. In the view of the PAC, the ANC commitment had become diluted because of the presence of other races. The pass laws were first introduced with the sole purpose of channelling and directing cheap African labour into white farms and other establishments. The pass book was thus to them ‘a badge of slavery’. Thousands of Blacks would leave their passes at home and present themselves at police stations all over the country for arrest. They would fill prisons to overflowing and make influx control unworkable.
The idea of taking the passes to police stations en masse had already been mooted by the ANC. By doing this a few days ahead of the mother organisation, the PAC in this way actually upstaged the ANC.
The PAC-led campaign faltered everywhere the next few days, except in Cape Town. The metropolis was one of a few areas to respond enthusiastically to the PAC call. In the week prior to the 21st march, ‘war prayers’ were offered ‘on the sandy hills of Nyanga West almost every night, and recited the famous war songs and prayer of the great Xhosa warrior, Ntsikana’ (Kgosana, (1988:20).
Philip Ata Kgosana, a young student who hailed from the north, was the regional secretary of the PAC. Already from midnight on Sunday 20 March a large crowd gathered at Bunga Square in Langa. In a roaring speech Kgosana passed on the final instructions of Sobukwe - there was to be absolute non-violence! ‘Anyone who agitates for violence or starts violence … we will regard as a paid agent of the government…. The white rulers are going to be extremely ruthless. But we must meet their hysterical brutality with calm iron determination…’ (Kgosana, (1988:105). In his motivational address the young Kgosana whipped up the crowd with an appeal and a call to action to ‘throw our whole weight …to defeat forces of oppression …We are either slave or free men – that’s all…We are fighting against a Calvinistic doctrine that a certain nation was especially chosen by God to lead, guide and protect other nations … Fellow Africans, the hour for service, sacrifice and suffering has come. Let us march to a new independent Africa with courage and determination. Forward to independence! To independence now! Tomorrow the United States of Africa! (Kgosana, (1988:103,107).
On the morning of 21 March 1960 – the same day as the notorious killings of Sharpeville - thousands of Blacks congregated at the Philippi police station, forming an orderly line, declaring that they had come to hand in their pass books and wanted to be arrested. The bemused policemen at the station took their names, telling them to go home and await a summons to appear in court. The crowd left peacefully, leaving great piles of pass books at the police station.
The PAC had called a meeting for the same evening to take place at Langa to report on the progress of the anti-pass campaign. Many turned up that evening, unintentionally defying a ban on meetings in Langa that day, under the impression aht they were to receive an official response to their protest (Shaw, 1999:159). At the meeting covered by Cape Times reporter Terry Herbst, the meeting had just been opened with prayers when ‘a strong force of police drove up in a Saracen armoured car and wire-meshed troop-carriers formed up alongside the road’. An officer with a houd-hailer ordeed the crowd to disperse and tgehn proceeded, before the crowd had broken up, to order a baton charge. This was the first of several charges. The enraged crowd retaliated by throwing stones at the police, who opened fire in return with Sten guns and small arms.
Fortunately the police soon retreated to their station soon hereafter, covered by machin-gun fire. Otherwise the casualty toll whould have been worse than Sharpeville. Yet, two men were shot dead and 49 people were injured. Richard Lombard from Walmer Estate, the driver of the Cape Times vehicle, was battered and burnt to death in an outburst of mob hysteria. Seven buildings including two schools were destroyed by fire in a wild night of violence.
Now rendered unenforceable, the pass laws were suspended on Saturday 26 March. This sent a wave of hysterical jubilation among Blacks and the entire Black population of the Peninsula seemed to throw their weight behind the PAC campaign, which included a very effective stay-away and crippling Cape industry significantly.

A most remarkable March
After a brutal attack on striking residents with the police into Langa and Nyanga, going from house to house, ‘driving residents out of their houses and telling them to go to work’ (Shaw, 1999:161), the tide of insurgency led to a mass march on 30 March 1960. Knife-edge tension was building up throughout the Western Cape. 30,000 angry protesters decided to walk from Langa to the City along De Waal Drive. Kgosana joined the protest march belatedly but immediately took command ‘of the most remarkable march in South African history to date’ (Heard, 1990:91). Now and then he stopped the marchers and taught them on non-violence. A dissident almost caused a revolt by denouncing non-violence, calling the crowd to sack Parliament. Kgosana decided on his own to lead the marchers instead to Caledon Square, the headquarters of the police, because the houses of Parliament were surrounded at this time by a massive built-up of troops. A major massacre was thus prevented.
Colonel Terblanche, who had been called urgently to the scene, was staggered when he saw the size of the crowd. ‘He fell to his knees in the police station and prayed before embarking on a daring quest for peace – which, without doubt, clashed with the views of the government’ (Heard, 1990:96). Divine peace must have overpowered him as he dared to go outside, leading a small party of senior officers unarmed. The scene witnessed and described by Tony Heard, a journalist of the Cape Times and a later editor of the Cape Town morning paper, belongs to sacred history. It included very special words, unheard for an Afrikaner, the son of a bankrupt ostrich farmer, speaking to a Black. Heard reports Terblanche’s first remark and the reaction when he was introduced to the young student as follows: “Mr Kgosana , I speak to you as one gentleman to another. Please would you ask the crowd to be quiet.” Kgosana was given the use of a loud hailer and … said in a loud voice in English: “Let us be silent … just like people who are going to a graveyard… Quiet descended abruptly on the scene…”
Kgosana agreed to disperse the crowd after an undertaking by Colonel Terblanche that he could meet Mr F.C. Erasmus, the Minister of Justice, later in the day to discuss their grievances. ‘He complained about Africans being hurled from their hostel rooms in the townships by police trying to force them to go to work that day ...' (Heard, 1990:97).
Kgosana and the trusting thirty thousand were to be tricked. The young student from Pretoria was summarily arrested when he arrived for a meeting. (Tony Heard, later testified to this fact. He was convinced that Terblanche was sincere, but that his Cabinet Minister let him down. ‘The available record leaves Terblanche an honourable man and condemns Erasmus’ (Heard, 1990:99).

The Start of the violent Struggle
Tension rose to breaking point. Tony Heard (1990:101) suggests that there ‘was no further inclination to accept the white government’s assurances.’ The breach of promise on 30 March 1960 has to be regarded as the start of the violent struggle against apartheid. Sharpeville had been bad enough, but now Blacks were convinced that the Afrikaner government could not be trusted.
Police hereafter surrounded the Black townships, combined by a military cordon, to crush all further resistance. A state of emergency was called from March 30 to August 31, 1960 during which twelve thousand people were detained around the country. The pass laws, which had been temporarily suspended on March 26, were reinstated and on 8 April 1960 the ANC and the PAC were banned. By 11 April the strike was broken and the cordon lifted, but the three weeks of protest shook the country. This situation continued on a more subdued note for quite a few months.
The Cape remained part and parcel of the revolutionary ferment for some time – notably through POQO in the Paarl area towards the end of 1962. (The splinter group calling themselves POQO meaning alone – beyond talking, beyond negotiation - was especially strong in Paarl. It started with the goal of purging the country of Whites. The PAC slogan of the 1990s ‘one settler, one bullet’ has its origins in that movement.)
Large-scale capital flight seemed to bring Harold Macmillan’s speech in the parliament into fulfilment, namely that the wind of change has also hit South Africa.

The very Purpose of Unity defeated
Amid the mounting crisis and still more repressive measures, the Unity movement took a further step by establishing the African People’s Democratic Union of South Africa (APDUSA). Isaac Tabata, a founder member of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), became the first President, a position he would hold for many years with great esteem. His pamphlet Boycott as a Weapon of Struggle and articles like Industrial Unrest in South Africa as well as Imperialism and the Liberation Movements in Africa, especially his book The Awakening of a People made him well known throughout Africa and circles of liberation. If ever there was someone who stood steadfastly to a principle over decades, Tabata was one – a die-hard Trotskyite who believed unstintingly that continuous revolution would finally overcome exploitation of man by man. He obviously never knew the Bible properly, viz that man’s heart is wicked above all things, that only a spiritual heart transplant could affect the changes he hoped for. They could not be achieved by man-made efforts like the perpetual revolution. (And even then, the danger of backsliding is always lurking.) The same thing applies for the NEUM principal of non-collaboration which in effect created disunity, thus defeating the very purpose of Unity. The movement with that name has so accurately and consistently seen as the necessary condition to defeat racial and class oppression.
On the occasion of the republic born on 31 May 1961 the next year, a three-day strike was called to co-inside with the celebrations. The government responded in typical hardline fashion. The house of the La Gumas as well as those of other stay-away organizers was attacked, and 10,000 were detained under a special 12-day detention law. In July 1961 Alex la Guma and Reggie September, two Cape leaders of the Unity Movement, were served with a 5-year banning order. La Guma continued writing in New Age through a column called Up my alley. The government finally discovered who was responsible for the column. On 21 June 1962 Up my alley appeared for the last time.

The Run-up to the POQO Uprising in Paarl
The government started implementing grand apartheid in the 1950s to remove blacks from the Western Cape. Its effects were felt quite early in the decade. In 1955 women whose husbands had not lived in Paarl for fifteen years and who therefore did not qualify for permanent residence, began to be ‘endorsed out’ and sent to the Transkei.
In mid-1959 there was a demonstration in Paarl against the issue of women’s passes, which seemed to have the effect of delaying the local application of the law. This required all Black female employees to hold passes. A few months later, in November 1959, rioting broke in the suburb of Huguenot. Thousands of people – Black and ‘Coloured’ – stoned cars, burnt and damaged shops and attacked Whites. The crowds were reacting to a government banning order which had been imposed on Elizabeth Mefeking, a Paarl resident and the president of the African Food and Canning Workers Union. These disturbances were followed by tension in Mbekweni Township a month later. The following year Paarl was one of the few urban centres where there was a good response to the PAC’s anti-pass campaign. Passes were destroyed and a school in Mbekweni was burnt down.
In 1962 the Maphaele case highlighted the heartless government policy w.r.t. Blacks. A young wife was expelled from Paarl. All her married life she had been living illegally in Langabuya, an emergency ‘site and service’ camp, while her husband was compelled to stay in a hostel at Mbekweni. In August 1962 Prime Minister Verwoerd announced the formation of a special action committee to stimulate employers to replace unskilled Black workers by ‘Coloureds.’ In October 1962 a concerted drive was launched in the Black townships to 'deport' women to the Transkei.
A major source of discontent revolved around the behaviour of officials of the Paarl municipal administration, notably a former police sergeant in the Transkei, J.H. le Roux and a Black colleague Wilson Ngcukan. Accusations included the selling of passes and the endorsing out of men to create employment vacancies for which passes could be sold. Various instances of brutal behaviour by municipal employees came to light. The volatile situation was compounded by a hierarchical structure where there were persons in the Black community at the summit, who enjoyed a degree of status and security by virtue of the length of their stay, but who nowhere enjoyed the trust of the community.

Cape Anglican Church Opposition against Apartheid
The Anglican Church leaders opposed apartheid from the outset. Michael Scott and Trevor Huddleston, both of whom arrived in 1943, stood up for justice on behalf of the oppressed. Scott became the first clergyman to be deported because of his involvement on this score in 1950. But he was not the last clergyman to pay for his ‘meddling’ in politics. That was regarded by the establishment to be the preserve of Afrikaner clerics, especially around commemorations like the Day of the Covenant or when they could abuse the state-controlled radio, the SABC. Huddleston felt that it was his Christian duty to defy the apartheid legislation. Thus he had no qualms to support the defiance campaign in 1952, much to the chagrin of his Archbishop, Geoffrey Clayton.
When Geoffrey Clayton came to Cape Town in 1949, after being elected Archbishop of the Church of the Province, he naively hoped for a closer association with DRC men like the Professors Gerdener and Keet, who were known to be in opposition to the isolation of their denomination. Also in 1949 the conference in Rosettenville of the Christian Council of South Africa affirmed the need for unity among the believers from the different churches. Clayton hoped that he could press upon those in authority, together with these DRC men, ‘the importance of approaching the country’s problems in the spirit of the Gospel.’ He probably did not know that Gerdener had helped to formulate the apartheid policy.
The next year Clayton addressed headmasters and headmistresses of the church’s schools. He stated in this private address: ‘I believe Calvinism is a false interpretation of our faith’ (Paton, 1974:195). It was printed and distributed for internal church school use. Three years later a copy landed with Die Volksblad. That was tantamount to inviting the full force of the revenge of the Afrikaners.
Archbishop Geoffrey Clayton opposed Clause 29(c) of the ‘Native Laws Amendment Bill’, which would have restricted freedom of worship, making it difficult for Blacks to attend churches in so-called White areas. On 6 March 1957 he wrote a letter to Dr. H. Verwoerd, the minister responsible for the Bill: '... we feel bound to state that if the Bill were to become law in its present form we should ourselves be unable to obey it or counsel our clergy and people to do so.' (Cited in De Gruchy, 1979:61) He wrote in a letter on Ash Wednesday 1957 a few days later: ‘The church cannot recognize the right of an official of the secular government to determine whether or where a member of the church of any race shall discharge his religious duty of participation in public worship.’ He is quoted to have said to Bishop Ambrose Reeves hereafter ‘I don’t want to go to prison… But I’ll go if I have to’ (Paton, 1977:280).143 The next day he was found dead. The drama effectively put breaks on the enforcement of the prohibition of people of colour from entering the St George’s Cathedral and a few other multi-racial churches.
Interesting was that also the usually conservative Baptist Union protested against the 'Church Clause', stating the 'the proposed bill will compel law-abiding Baptists... to violate the law' (Cited in De Gruchy, 1979:61)
It must be said though that the DRC was also perturbed by the Bill, stressing in an eight-point statement the duty of the state to allow the church the freedom to fulfil its calling: 'The right to determine how, when and to whom the Gospel shall be proclaimed, is exclusively in the competence of the Church.' (De Gruchy, 1979:61). In a rare moment of protest in the denomination at that time a Black DRC minister was invited to preach to a White DRC congregation in Pinelands (De Gruchy, 1979:62).
A large notice was put up outside the St George’s Cathedral later that year in clear defiance of the government intention, proclaiming: ‘This church is open to all people of all races at all services at all times.’ Inside the walls however, apartheid practice continued to be just as rife as everywhere in society. Whites were sitting in the front pews and people of colour at the back. Just as hollow were the vigils of prayer for racial harmony and Eucharists of Unity, because the same denomination paid discriminatory stipends to its clergymen, based on race classification. Yet, in the spiritual realms the prayers were surely not completely useless. At least, as Dean King, a cleric at St George’s Cathedral for many years, wrote, they ‘...were regularly held to keep us thinking, praying, questioning’ (King, 1997:25).

The Boer-Brit stigma undermines the Anglican Church witness
The Boer-Brit stigma, a traditional animosity as a legacy from the Anglo-Boer War, was however undermining the efforts of (Arch) Bishops Trevor Huddleston, Geoffrey Clayton, Joost de Blank and Gonville Ffrench Beytag because these leaders had little support from other White-led denominations. These clergymen were nevertheless household names in the opposition to the apartheid folly of the 1950s and 1960s. Bishop Huddleston had to smuggle the manuscript of Naught for your Comfort to England. The book reverberated throughout the English-speaking world in the mid-1950s. Published in March 1956, it already had to be reprinted the following month.
The relationship between the British and Afrikaner plummeted during the office of Archbishop Joost de Blank. De Gruchy compares his controversial ways with that of his missionary compatriot Dr van der Kemp, estranging Afrikaners significantly. Yet, he was 'an important catalyst in the Christian struggle against racism in South Africa' (De Gruchy, 1979:65).

White Dutch Reformed opposition against Apartheid
Already in 1950 Professor Ben Marais wrote a controversial book Kleurkrisis in die Weste. The resulting controversy caused the popular preacher to be effectively silenced by the tactics of the secretive Afrikaner Broederbond. Church councils had to make sure that he would not be invited to preach. In 1956 the Stellenbosch academic Professor Barend Keet raised the question in his book Whither South Africa whether apartheid or the better sounding term ‘separate development’ could be applied in a just manner as claimed by his church. Five years later – thus a year after Sharpeville - he and eight other Afrikaner theologians answered the question with a resounding NO! in their book Delayed Action! They spelled out clearly that apartheid implied discrimination.
One of the leading Dutch Reformed ministers, the gifted Ds Beyers Naudé, was seriously challenged. In Wellington, the first congregation that he served as a hulpprediker (assistant pastor), he immediately became uneasy when he saw that the training was inferior at the Sendinginstituut, where ministers were trained who would serve at the daughter churches (Ryan, 1990:31). On a personal level the heritage of the pioneer missionary Georg Schmidt impacted his life when he met his wife. She was the daughter of Emil Weder, a Moravian missionary in Genadendal. (The name Emil Weder still lives on in the name of the local High School). After seeing the degenerate ‘Coloureds’ in the Karoo town of Loxton where he was a pastor subsequently, Beyers Naudé was reminded of the cultured educated people of colour he had encountered for the first time in Genadendal during the time of courting. The question came to him ‘why it was not possible to have this in other parts of the country’ (Ryan, 1990:33). The seed for the multi-racial Christian Institute was sown into the heart of the former Afrikaner Broederbond leader whose father had helped to found the secret organization with lofty ideals for the upliftment of Afrikaners.

Low-key but effective Opposition
The Cape Town City Mission, with its modest beginnings at the beginning of the 20th century, soon had no less than four congregations in District Six, respectively in Aspeling, Constitution, Cross and Smart Street. Fenner Kadalie, son of the trade unionist Clements Kadalie, became one of the most well known sons of the mission. Fenner Kadalie was impacted by the City Mission's work in District Six when he was seven year old. Working closely with Bruce Duncan, he was to become a pivot of massive expansion of the Mother City’s most well-known institution of compassion. When the community was forced out of District Six by cruel legislation, Fenner Kadalie and his right hand, a young Bruce Duncan, gathered the scattered remnants of the District Six fellowships, ministering to their needs in their new homes on the Cape Flats. Fenner Kadalie was ‘a catalyst for the birth of many upliftment projects in and around Cape Town’ (Martindale, 2002:29).
Under the inspiring leadership of Rev. Bruce Duncan and Fenner Kadalie the denomination grew rapidly in the 1970s, getting involved in various ministries of compassion. Bruce Duncan, an unsung heroe of the ‘struggle’ because he was not formally involved with politics, dared to speak out against the injustice of apartheid, communicating at the same time ‘with anyone from Constantia to Hanover Park and gained credibility with ganglords that few others have achieved’ (Martindale, 2002:31). Halls of the Cape Town City Mission developed into fully-fledged churches. The story has been told of a young man with an afro hairstyle who walked into one of these churches while Barry Isaacs was preaching. He kept coming back until he eventually committed his life to Christ. Lorenzo Davids, the young man, and Reverend Barry Isaacs later served together as leaders of The Cape Town City Mission.
Susan Benjamin represents one of the many success stories of the Mission, described as one of the ‘Women who Changed the heart of the City in her book with that title (Martindale, 2002:27). She and her husband had been heavy drinkers when Jesus rescued them through the ministry of the Mission. When the family had been forced to leave District Six, Susan asked the City Mission to hold meetings in her home. That became the pristine start of many new congregations across the Western Cape. Her children became stalwarts in the denomination.

An emerging Church Unity high-jacked
In South Africa the Boer-Brit rift, a traditional animosity was still rife in the 1940s among Whites as a legacy from the Anglo-Boer War at the end the 19th century, especially after the Dutch Reformed Church withdrew from the Christian Council of Churches. The unity in the latter body, which was started in 1936 with Dutch Reformed ministers in leading roles, had however been quite frail all along. The sense of unity which had been experienced at the inauguration of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam (1948) was nevertheless still reverberating in many a country. Gerdener could still write in 1959: ‘With thankfulness we observe signs to come together and work together, also in our own Dutch Reformed Church’. Gerdener rightly saw exclusiveness and isolation as a danger to missionary work. ‘Nowhere is isolation and exclusiveness so deadly and time-consuming than in the fight against the mighty heathendom and nowhere is co-operation and a unitary front so necessary and useful as here.’
Albert Luthuli, the President of the ANC, was asked to address a predominantly Afrikaner –all White study group in Pretoria in the early months of that year: ‘In my audience, on this occasion, there was an unexpected mixture of Afrikaner theologians and professors and foreign diplomats, and to my surprise some of the Afrikaners had come from as far afield as Potchefstroom, about two hundred miles away’ (Luthuli, 1962:212). Soon hereafter, Luthuli was escorted from the Cape Town railway station to ‘an open square packed with people’, pre-figuring the event on the Grand Parade with Nelson Mandela many years later after his release.
The enemy of souls succeeded in high-jacking an emerging unity of believers in South Africa at the end of the 1950s. After Luthuli’s return to his home town Groutville, he was visited by the Special Branch and served with a muzzling banning order, silenced and confined to the town for five years. The link to the apartheid legislators threatened the emerging unity in no uncertain way. The Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 could have been God’s corrective to get the church in South Africa at large to change its course. The World Council of Churches (WCC) met their eight member churches in South Africa – ten delegates from every church - at Cottesloe, a suburb of Johannesburg, from 7 December 1960 to discuss the crisis in the country in the wake of the Sharpeville killings and the arrest of Black leaders.
The body of Christ seemed to be speaking with one voice. Present were delegates of the Transvaal and Cape Dutch Reformed synods and the very conservative (not in a positive sense) Hervormde Kerk, which included an article in its constitution forbidding people of colour to become members of the denomination. A significant segment of the White Dutch Reformed Church was at this time very much part of the ecumenical movement in South Africa in 1960. The Cape and Transvaal Dutch Reformed Dutch Reformed ministers initially agreed to oppose apartheid but the bulk of the leadership was thereafter subtly cajoled into line - after the Prime Minister, Dr H.F. Verwoerd, had exerted pressure on the bulk of them. Interesting was that the Transvaal delegation included two Blacks, Rev. S.S. Tema and J. Selamolela, whereas the Cape delegation had not a single one of colour. The only woman delegate was Professor Monica Wilson, a delegate of the Anglican Church.
Dr H.F.Verwoerd was successful with demonic scheming to make every move suspect, which intended to foster church unity. The ‘English-speaking churches’ and others sympathetic to the unity of believers across the race divide, were made suspect. The storm caused by these moves caused the old Boer-Brit resentment to flame up: divide and rule was once again the name of the game.

Cottesloe’s country-wide Reverberations
Already at the summit strange things had happened. That was an expressed condition that no proposal would be given to the press before the respective church delegations had reported to the participating churches. Yet, the Afrikaans daily Die Transvaler featured information from the proceedings already on the second day. The suggestion of direct representation of Coloureds in parliament was of course very much a thorn in the flesh of thorough-bred Afrikaners and an embarrassment to the government. That far-reaching consensus was achieved in statements that all unjust discrimination was rejected, must have hurt the regime. intensely. Dr Verwoerd, the author of the notorious 'Church Clause' of 1957, must have perceived the following words as a tremendous blow: 'The spiritual unity among all men who are in Christ must find visible expression in acts of common worship and witness, and in fellowship and consultation on matters of common concern' (Cited in De Gruchy, 1979:61).
Another incident was the distortion of Geldenhuys’ explanation of apartheid, such as the words ‘…as jy hulle wil bereik, moet jy hulle benader in hul eie taal, hul eie idoom, hul eie milieu… (his own paraphrase in Geldenhuys, 1982:50).144 He explained the mission work of his church as follows: ‘ … nie net te doen met die siel van die swartmens nie, maar ook met sy praktiese daaglikse omstandighede’.145 After the latter words, Alan Paton the well-known Liberal Party founder (author of Cry beloved Country) and an Anglican delegate, exclaimed excitedly: ‘If I understand him correctly, I almost hear my own voice speaking because it has always been my ideal in life to see my neighbour in need and to help him.’ This was enough for some bigoted Afrikaners to label Geldenhuys as the ‘grootste liberaal wat rondloop’ 146(Geldenhuys, 1982:51).
When the decisions of the consultation were published on 15 December 1960, a storm raged, especially among Afrikaners. The mild decisions – which however touched the cornerstone pillars of apartheid like the saying that the prohibition of mixed marriages was not scripturally justifiable - already enraged the rank and file Afrikaner. The context of the painstaking frank deliberation was glossed over. The apology of Archbishop Joost de Blank – which should have made the headlines – were completely ignored. (De Blank acknowledged that he was wrong to have judged the Dutch Reformed Church in such a harsh way even though he still did not agree with their viewpoint.)
Cunningly, Dr Verwoerd abused the radio in his New Year message to suggest that the synods have not spoken finally on the matter, that the delegates of the Cape and Transvaal synods at Cottesloe were acting so to speak in their private capacity. He was tomake sure – via the Broederbond - that the Cottesloe resolutions were going to be rescinded! The Afrikaner Broederbond was a secretive organization of which only male White Afrikaners could be members.
One of the leading Dutch Reformed Church ministers, the gifted Ds Beyers Naudé, was a delegate at Cottesloe. He was seriously challenged. The ferment of the aftermath of Cottesloe produced a special synod of the Synodal Commission of the Transvaal Dutch Reformed Church, scheduled for 2 March 1961. At the special synod of approximately 700 delegates in the Pretoria Town Hall on 5 April 1961, a new moderature was elected. Geldenhuys and his brother-in-law Beyers Naudé were kicked out. Dr Frans O’brien Geldenhuys and Naudé were upset at the role of the Broederbond, the former resigning from the secret organisation a year later. He however disagreed with his brother-in–law to work from outside the church when Naudé wanted to start the Christian Institute. Further Transvaal stirrings occurred in the Dutch Reformed Church. Enlightened moderators were elected in the new separated Northern and Southern Transvaal Synods of the church. In the case of Ds Meiring - one of the Cottesloe delegates) - he was re-elected by a narrow margin.

The Wings’ of Beyers Naudé clipped
The Sunday Times published a secret Broederbond plan on 21 April 1963 to oust the ‘new deal’ leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church, people like Beyers Naudé - and to outlaw theological criticism of apartheid. The Sunday Times revealed that the Afrikaner Broederbond wanted to tighten their stranglehold on church affairs and that they wanted to ‘clip the wings’ of Beyers Naudé. The disclosure did not save the gifted church leader. He was effectively ostracized by Afrikanerdom, until he more or less had to resign from the Aasvoëlkop congregation in Johannesburg. But that also ushered in the isolation of the Dutch Reformed Church. The emerging church unity was effectively put on hold.
Furthermore, one can safely surmise that denominational rivalry at the Cape contributed greatly to the lack of significant success in evangelism, especially in the 20th century.
The Broederbond got the White Dutch Reformed Church church to change its stance. Rev Beyers Naudé, could not palate the underhanded tactics. He now dreamed of establishing a ‘Confessing Church’ in South Africa on the model of what happened in Germany when Nazis threatened to absorb the church in its ideology. With a few other ministers he started the Christian Institute along similar lines. Beyers Naudé was by now quite influential – as the moderator of the new Southern Transvaal Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Church Rift completed
One of the closing paragraphs of the Cottesloe declaration stated: ‘We give thanks to Almighty God for bringing us together for fellowship and prayer and consultation. We resolve to continue in this fellowship, … to join in common witness in our country’ (Hofmeyr, et al 1991:235). The resolve became more concrete after Beyers Naudé attended the 1966 Conference of the WCC on Church and Society. Together with an Anglican bishop, Bill Burnett, who was instrumental in reorganising the Christian Council of Churches, he drafted The Message to the People of South Africa. The document declared in no uncertain terms that apartheid was incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The reorganized national church body – known hereafter as the South African Council of Churches (SACC) was now branded as politically tainted, ground enough for the conservative Baptist Union to withdraw their membership along with the Dutch Reformed Church. The rift between churches supporting apartheid and those opposing it was complete.

The Wall of Communism under Attack
After the Second World War Communism became a greater threat to the progress of the Gospel than Hitler and his regime had been. The demonic roots of Communism were not generally known but the atheist stand of the ideology should have made it easy to discern as opposition to the Church. Yet, Communist infiltration into church bodies was fairly successful, notably into the World Council of Churches. Very few people in the mainline churches discerned what was going on. Isolatedly people warned, e.g. the German Reverend Rolf Scheffbuch, who attended the WCC plenary conference in Nairobi in 1975, but the course was set. It took only a few more years before inter-faith was the official position of the WCC. There had been some preparation in isolated cases like through the Moral Rearmament (MRA) movement that had started as the evangelical Oxford Group under Frank Buchman. He misled the believers when the unique claims of Christ were compromised. Everybody was encouraged to worship God in their own way, but atheism was outlawed. Morality was the ‘in’ word. Mahatma Ghandi’s example was placed next to Jesus’ teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. Muslims and Hindu’s came to Caux (Switzerland), the international headquarters of the MRA movement along with Christians. With Geneva not so very far away, the WCC Headquarters might have received some inspiration from Caux and vice versa.
Persecuted Christians, who succeeded in coming out of Communist countries, aroused the sympathies and interest of believers in the West. Pastor Richard Wurmbrand of Romania was one of them, sharing his experiences in a booklet with the title Tortured for Christ.
I got personally moved to prayer for the Communist world after reading Tortured for Christ when I left South Africa in January 1969 for Germany. In Stuttgart I had the opportunity to hear Richard Wurmbrand speaking. Soon I was supporting the cause of the persecuted Christians in the Communist world, starting to pray for persecuted Christians in Eastern Europe, along with believers in different parts of the world.
Anne van der Bijl, a Dutchman, was a Western evangelical believer who discerned things quite clearly. He was trained at the WEC Missionary training College in Glascow (Scotland) when Norman Grubb, the son-in-law of C.T. Studd, led the mission agency that was still known as Worldwide Evangelation Crusade. When Van der Bijl – more widely known as Brother Andrew - visited to a communist youth event in Warschau in 1955 and Prague at the time of the Soviet invasion in 1968, his eyes were opened to the vicious ideology. A programme of smuggling of Bibles – at considerable risk - was developed in obedience to the Lord. The link to his WEC training in Glascow was kept alive in Holland when he founded Kruistochten (Crusades), a ministry on behalf of the persecuted church. Internationally the organisation became known as Open Doors. Brother Andrew wrote a book in 1977 about the ideological battle for Africa in 1977. He listed no less than eleven countries where a real threat of civil war with a communist takeover a real possibility - all this happened in the space of the last three months of 1977!

Ds. Davie Pypers leads the Outreach to Muslims
The Dutch Reformed Church pioneered the work among the Cape Muslim slaves from 1731. It is fitting that the initiative for the resumption of evangelistic work among the Cape Muslims in the second half of the twentieth century was undertaken by the South African Missionary Society. Ds. Pypers, who became a full-time missionary for this purpose in July 1961, was joined by Pieter Els who had been challenged to reach out to Muslims with the Gospel along with two other student theological colleagues, Willem Louw en Coen Brand, while they were studying at Stellenbosch in 1960. A witness group - spearheaded by White theological students - was started in Stellenbosch in the 1960s, reaching out to the Muslims of Idas Valley, the local ‘Coloured’ residential area.
The group of ‘Coloured’ churches called the ‘ring’ (circuit) of Wynberg - stretching from Retreat to Claremont including a big part of the Cape flats at that time - decided to give a bigger responsibility to the churches to witness to the Muslims and Hindu’s. The ‘Coloured’ sector of the denomination accepted Muslim Evangelism as their special task. In many suburbs they were their neighbours.
The stalwart work of women in breaking down the prejudice of Muslims has too often not been duly recognized. Johanna van Zyl and Ria Olivier kept the loving outreach to Muslims in Bo-Kaap and other places going, along with other women of the Vrouesendingbond (Women’s Missionary Guild). That Johanna van Zyl could write in the August 1974 edition of Die Ligdraer about her 25 years of work amongst children in Bo-Kaap is an exception that only amplifies the rule. The fact is that whereas quite a few Cape Muslim women came to faith in Christ, conversions among their male counterparts remained rare for decades.

Christian Compassion in District Six and Bo-Kaap
The Rev. Sydney Warren Lavis had succeeded Archdeacon Lightfoot as Priest-in-charge of St Paul’s Mission in 1905 and became its first Rector in 1913. In 1928 he became Dean of Cape Town and subsequently Co-adjutor Bishop in 1931. He was a great figure in the history of Cape Town and was extremely popular, particularly amongst the coloured people of the City. He battled all his life to remove poverty and to improve housing. Bishop Lavis Township, one of the City Council schemes was named in his honour.
The Nanniehuis of Bo-Kaap showed the way of compassion. In another move which started in Bo-Kaap and District Six, care was taken of unwedded mothers and prostitutes. Anna Tempo in Bo-Kaap, the initiator of the project, was the daughter of slaves from Mozambique. She became the matron of the Stakeby-Lewis Hostel in Harrington Street, District Six. The Nanniehuis became the model for similar projects in other parts of the country after she had been awarded the King George Coronation Medal in 1937 for her work.
By the early 1960s there were 288 welfare agencies in the city, of which less than half were run by religious organizations. The City Mission was by far the best known. The combination of evangelism and compassionate outreach – which they took from their model, the Salvation Army, became an integral part of their ministry.

More Battles on the front of Compassion
Compassion became also the hallmark of the Black Sash. The Athlone Advice Office - near to the township of Langa, was the brainchild of Noel Robb, a resident of Bishopscourt. This was another Western Cape model serving as an example for compassionate work elsewhere. The Athlone Office was started in 1958 as a bail fund facility, to enable mothers who had been arrested and imprisoned, to return to their homes and children. In a sense it was an extension of another Black Sash Western Cape initiative, the Cape Association to Abolish Passes for African Women (CATAPAW), which was founded in 1957, in co-operation with a few other groups. CATAPAW collected evidence for submission to the Secretary for Native Affairs to show the hardship and injustices of the pass laws. The June/July issue of Black Sash of that year was devoted entirely to the analysis of the pass system with a projection of its effects on family life (Michelman, The Black Sash of South Africa, 1984:103). The scheme to extend the system of passes to include women, was responsible for widespread unrest, which matured into dramatic conflict when the government used brute force to put down passive resistance demonstrations of Blacks protesting against passes. A special supportive project of the Black Sash followed after Alex La Guma had been imprisoned in Worcester, just over 100 Kilometres from the Mother City. The women organized transport for the families on a regular basis, giving an example to the South African Council of Churches of support to political detainees. Deservingly, the Black Sash has been dubbed ‘the conscience of the nation’, being an essentially women’s organisation committed to protection by law of human rights and liberties.

Evening Schools
The ANC in the Western Cape was virtually defunct when James La Guma was elected secretary. In no time he reorganized things, starting an office in Caledon Street and launching the ‘African Labour College’, a night school where the students were taught socialism and the politics of the labour movement.
Towards the end of World War II there was an evening school experiment in a Presbyterian Church Hall in Retreat.147 It proved so successful that it finally expanded into a literacy project and an educational
organization that for two decades involved thousands of Black and ‘Coloured’ men and women as pupils. Thousands of Whites served as volunteer teachers. Inspired by Emily Gaika, an elderly Black woman, Oliver Kuys, an engineering graduate, started the evening school. Those who volunteered to teach often became deeply interested and involved in their work. On the other hand, the desire for education among the Blacks expanded rapidly. The infamous Bantu Education came into affect in 1955, which forced churches to hand control of their schools to the government. (A government commission set up in 1948 concluded that the missions had done nothing but destroy Black culture. Another commission set up under the chairman of Dr Werner Eiselen in 1951 had to look into means of controlling Black education and further curtailing the influence of mission and independent schools). The result of the Eiselen report was the Bantu Education Act of 1953. This was followed by regulations that caused night schools to collapse in other parts of the country.
The Cape Night Schools Association persevered with a strong determination, finding ways and means to carry on when the government stopped subsidies. In 1957 regulations stated that schools outside the townships had to secure a Group Areas permit, and then apply annually for registration with the Department of Bantu Education. Restrictions on teachers and the substitution of short-term contract labourers for the old, more permanent labourer, made many schools redundant.

Student Involvement
When the apartheid legislation prescribed education segregation at tertiary level as well, thus interfering with academic freedom, UCT students were incensed. Zach de Beer was a student leader along with Raymond Ackerman, who was also on the Student Representative Council. Together with other students Raymond Ackerman developed SHAWCO 148 Night Schools, which had grown into a chain of schools. After leaving UCT, Ackerman became the principal of them all – ‘my first experience of running a chain, though of schools, not of stores’ (Ackerman, 2001:42). In the course of this involvement he met Wendy Marcus, who not only became his wife, but who later was a pivot of the expanding Pick ‘n Pay empire of supermarkets in the 1970s.
In 1965 the SHAWCO Night School at Windermere was forced to close and finally the last of the schools of the Cape Night Schools Association, St Mark’s in District Six and the twenty-two year old Retreat Night School closed down by order of the Deputy Minister, Mr Blaar Coetzee. Maryland is a Catholic institution in Hanover Park, where Mr Harry Fortune taught for many years, long after he had gone into retirement. Harry Fortune was raised in District Six before he went back to High School as an adult. After further studies at UCT, he became a high school teacher in Bonteheuwel.

A significant Power Encounter
When Ds. Davie Pypers commenced work in 1956 as a minister of the Dutch Reformed St Stephen’s Church in Bree Street, he discerned the need for increased prayer for the Muslims of the area. Soon he initiated praying for Bo-Kaap and the Muslims living there. Together with two other pastoral colleagues, he interceded every Monday for the area that became even more pronouncedly Islamic in the wake of the envisaged implementation of Group Areas legislation.
Ds. Pypers appears to have been one of the very few ministers at the Cape of his era who had any notion of spiritual warfare. It was by far not common practice yet. And satan was definitely not going to release his gains so easily.
Davie Pypers was called to become the missionary to the Cape Muslims on behalf of the Dutch Reformed Church, linked to the historical Gestig (Sendingkerk) congregation in Long Street. It is the church where once people from different denominations worshipped, the cradle of missionary outreach in South Africa.149 Ds. Pypers had hardly started with his new work when a challenge came from a young imam, Mr Ahmed Deedat, to publicly debate the death of Jesus on the Cross. As a young dominee David Pypers prepared himself through prayer and fasting in a tent on the mountains at Bain’s Kloof for the event which was to take place on 13 August 1961 at the Green Point Track.
Because of publicity in the media, 30 000 people of all races jammed into the Green Point sports venue. The stadium quivered with excitement like at a rugby match. In the keenly contested debate, Imam Deedat started with the assertion that Jesus went to Egypt after the disciples had taken him from the Cross. He thoroughly ridiculed the Christian faith, challenging Pypers to give proof that Jesus died on the Cross. The young dominee rose to the challenge by immediately stating that Jesus is alive and that his Lord could there and then do the very things He had done when He walked the earth.
Dr David du Plessis, who was nick-named ‘Mr Pentecost’, reported on the event in his autobiography: ‘Taking a deep breath, he (Pypers) spoke loud and clear, ‘Is there anybody in this audience that, according to medical judgement, is completely incurable? Remember, it must be incurable...’ Of course, the stadium was abuzz by now. And then several men came along, carrying Mrs Withuhn, a White Christian lady, with braces all over her body. She was completely paralyzed. Then Pypers went ahead, asking whether there were any doctors present who could examine her and vouch for her condition. ‘Several doctors came forward, including her own physician, and they concurred in pronouncing her affliction incurable.’
Pypers simply walked to her and without any ado prayed for her briefly and proclaimed: ‘In the name of Jesus, be healed!’ Immediately she dropped her crutches and began to move.
The Green Point Aftermath
The Green Point Track event resulted in a victory for the Cross, with Mrs Withuhn being miraculously healed in the name of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
Many Muslims were deeply moved, but an unfortunate thing also happened. The booklet The Hadji Abdullah ben Yussuf; or the story of a Malay as told by himself (in an Afrikaans translation) was re-issued. Its distribution at the gates of the Green Point Track was definitely not helpful. Actually it was quite unfortunate and insensitive. The booklet refers negatively to the Qur’an and Muhammad, the founder of Islam.150 The Cape Muslim community was enraged by the re-publication of this nineteenth century pamphlet.
What was perceived as the defeat of Ahmed Deedat, and thus of the Muslims at Green Point, inspired a call for revenge. Deedat stated publicly that the original motivation for public debates was his humiliation at the hand of Christians. He was not willing at all to accept defeat lying down.
The effect of the Green Point Track miracle was almost nullified by news that came from another part of the world on that same day. The report of the building of the Berlin Wall resounded throughout the world! A new type of battle was cemented - the ‘cold war’ between Soviet Communism and Western Capitalism!
However, it was nearly just as bad that Pypers was heavily criticized by his denomination for undertaking the confrontation without getting prior synod approval. Furthermore, the leaders of his denomination were still clinging to an untenable interpretation of divine healing – that it belonged to a past age - to the times of the apostles.

Islam linked to Communism?
As the ensuing cold war became the focus, the enemy of souls abused Communism with its atheist basis, attempting to stifle the spreading of the victorious message of the Cross, as it had been proclaimed at the Green Point Track.
Was there a subtle link to Communism
in opposition to the Cross?
I surmise that the event of 13 August 1961 had great importance in the spiritual realm. One wonders whether the Islamic Crescent was not probably subtly linked to Communism in opposition to the Cross at that occasion. (This was to happen again in reverse in 1990 after the demise of Communism. Islam took over the mantle from the atheist ideology as a threat to world peace when the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait. That event became the catalyst for many Christians to start praying for an end to the bondage and deception at the base of the ideology of Islam as a destructive spiritual force.)
In his denomination, Ds. Pypers was still a lone ranger. In some quarters he was vilified after the Green Point event, although he had actually been challenged by the literature on faith healing, which had been written by Dr Andrew Murray, a revered hero of his church. Pypers was out on a limb in the Dutch Reformed Church. At the Kweekskool in Stellenbosch, the theological seminary of the denomination, it was officially taught that faith healing was a doctrinal tenet which pertained to the days of the apostles.

More Dutch Reformed Outreach to Cape Muslims
A notable by-product of the work of Ds Davie Pypers at the ‘Coloured’ S. A. Gestig congregation in Long Street ensued when one of his former congregants, Lizzie Cloete, came to the conviction in 1964 that the Lord was calling her for the spreading of the Gospel to the Muslims (Els, 1971:432). As a church worker in the congregation of Wynberg, she thus became one of the first full-time missionaries from the ‘Coloured’ community to the Muslims, but it was not regarded that way by the denomination at large. She was just seen as a normal church worker. Her consecration on 17 May 1964 was nevertheless a landmark for the ‘Coloured’ sector of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Sendingkerk as a whole hereafter announced its intention forthwith to be mission-minded corporately, i.e. not only to send individuals. The synod of 1966 resolved their striving formally: ‘Every church member - the whole church – instead of missionaries, must be the church in action.’

Power Encounters151
Until relatively recently, spiritual warfare was regarded as a modern fad. Isolatedly, the expertise of Kurt Koch on the occult and its diabolic links was widely recognized since the 1960s. Paul Billheimer’s 1975 book Destined for the throne approached the matter in a revolutionary way. Although the book had many printings, the content was somehow not translated enough globally before 1989.152 Thus it did not succeed in mobilizing masses of believers to either use praise or prayer - let alone both - to break down demonic strongholds in spiritual warfare.
Yet, Billheimer made some profound statements about the role of the prayerful church, which would have influenced world history if it had been taken seriously. Billheimer (1975:61) said for example that the church wields the balance of power ‘in overcoming disintegration and decay in the cosmic order’. This has become especially relevant at the beginning of the new millennium with an increasing moral decay and an almost universal increase in (organized) crime and violence.
At the Cape, Rev. Davie Pypers was one of very few evangelists who has been involved in spiritual power encounters, albeit that he did it in a very low-key way because the Protestant church had hardly any ear for this sort of thing in the 1960s. However, the Green Point event of 13 August 1961 got relatively wide media coverage. The publicity around the public meeting was not of Pypers’ making. It did open doors to him throughout the country. This secured for him a prayer backing few ministers enjoyed (He testified how he visited Hendrina, a far-way town 20 years later when a man came up to him. This man not only recognized Pypers immediately but he told Pypers that he had been praying for him every day since 1961).
Faith healing was widely regarded as sectarian. In his ministry to the Hindus, Pypers furthermore made use of films, exposing the demonic nature of the walking through fire when the role players are in a trance. In Muslim strongholds of those days like Sherwood Park, Pypers used a film about the crucifixion of Jesus extensively. In this film Barabbas made the significant statement: ‘He died in my place.’ The film was used in conjunction with a series of sermons on the ten ‘I am’ pronouncements of Jesus. This series in Sherwood Park with the title ‘Who is this man’ definitely was a power encounter. Two weeks before the campaign rain and wind were ravaging the area. The Muslims themselves recognized the supernatural ‘co-incidence’ when the rain and the wind stopped the moment the team unpacked their evangelism material. A terminally ill lady, Fatima Olckers, heard parts of Pypers’ sermon on her bed. She wondered whose voice was repeating these words again and again as the breeze brought the words ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ to her. She realised that it was Nabi Isa ibn Mariam. She resolved to call on the name of Jesus, after she had called on Allah and Muhammad in vain. She was instantly healed and thereafter she became a believer in Him, one of the first coming out of Islam in the Western Cape in the early 1960s to be a follower of Jesus.
Pypers displayed exceptional courage to show the same film in Macassar, i.e. near to the prime Muslim shrine of the Western Cape, i.e. that of Shaykh Yusuf. Quite understandably, Pypers reaped the anger of the local imam. Not satisfied with the situation, Pypers went to the municipality where it was pointed out to him that they had indeed trespassed. With the Stellenbosch University students who had joined him, Pypers wanted to apologise to the imam. He asked immediately where they could show the open-air film. The place in the bushes turned out to be even more strategic because the Muslim villagers could now watch the film undetected.
In the Western World the term ‘power encounter’ has often been associated with John Wimber, an American evangelist who revolutionized theological thought in the evangelical world in the 1980s. It is not generally known that Wimber was greatly influenced by Peter Wagner at the Fuller Seminary (USA) where they lectured together in the Church Growth department. Wagner himself was impacted in a revolutionary way through his contact with Pentecostals after 16 years of sterile ministry as a non-charismatic in South America. There he was challenged when he researched the history of the Pentecostal movement. Wagner's 1973 report on the movement in South America with the title Look Out! the Pentecostals are coming had Western theologians sitting up straight. Perhaps he prepared many of them to take to heart what third world theologians had to say, notably at the world conference of evangelicals Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1974.
From another part of the globe Paul Yonghi Cho of Seoul (South Korea) impacted the Church, illustrating to all and sundry that the Bible is nowhere outdated. He emphasised that what he dubbed Fourth Dimension Faith is needed in evangelism. Korea taught the whole world the power of prayer, breaking the ground for Patrick Johnstone’s powerful prayer guide, Operation World. Internationally, the Third World started to challenge the leadership of church growth in the 1980s with Cho’s International Church Growth Centre. In fact, the dynamic pioneer of the church growth movement, Donald MacGavran, initially called it ‘Third World missionary enterprise’. Discovering how it seemed as the first instinct of many Latin Americans to consult a witch in case of problems, Wagner - and many missionaries around the globe - learned the hard way that occult power cannot be broken with logical arguments. With some of their evangelists coming from a background of spiritism, the South Americans may have assisted the rest of the Christian world to deal with Folk Islam, where white (sometimes black) magic and spiritism occur. Peter Wagner asserts that practising spiritists serve the devil like practising Christians serve God. A former Brasilian spiritist leader Heber Soares told after his conversion how he made a pact with the devil to receive the healing powers from five medical specialists from different parts of the world.

Covert Power Encounters at the Cape
A covert power encounter ensued at the Cape in 1962 when Theo Kotze became the pastor of the Sea Point and Malmesbury Methodist congregations. John Wessels, the Sea Point minister in 1999 described Kotze’s ministry with the following words: Theo Kotze ‘combined church growth and integrity on the one hand, and evangelism and social justice on the other’ (Knighton-Fitt, 2003:94). With his wife Helen and their children the Kotze family formed a formidable team, becoming soon the talk of the town. At the Cape Theo Kotze was one of the first Christian Institute members, forming an ecumenical Bible Study group and using CI material. In the second year of their ministry in Sea Point, Theo Kotze ‘masterminded a prayer vigil and the publicity’ (Knighton-Fitt, 2003:103) for the multiracial Alan Walker Mission at the Goodwood Showgrounds in September 1963. Special trains were organised to bring people from as far away as Simon’s Town and two massive crosses were erected on Signal Hill and Tygerberg. An all-night prayer vigil preceded the opening day. Alan Walker, a godly and fearless Australian evangelist, led campaigns in different countries. Unlike most contemporary evangelists he emphasised the social implications of the Gospel. During the preparation for the mission an ex-cabinet minister – angered by Alan Walker’s statements on non-racialism, unleashed a politically contrived controversy. Tony Heard, the editor of the Cape Times, described the handling of the crisis with the following words: ‘The steadfast way in which Theo handled (this) was a harbinger of his future, principled, non-racial work in the Christian Institute.’ (Quoted by Knighton-Fitt, 2003:124). Through his involvement with the evangelistic campaign, Theo Kotze was linked to Alan Walker, of whom the government disapproved.
A demonstration of the fine balance of biblical compassion and social involvement became evident in his ‘Straight Talking’ columns of the Sea Point Vision church magazine that he started in March 1964. On the cover of the first edition is written: ‘Wide Vision, big Thinking, Great Faith, Stout Effort, God’s Husbandry... bring results.’ The youth work of the church impacted the 'Ducktails', the White gangsters of the area, in no uncertain way. ‘Club Route Twelve’ was led by Derek Kotze, the eldest son of the family.
Nelson Mandela and his colleagues had been on Robben Island for almost two years when the Cape Methodist Synod appointed Theo Kotze as Robben Island chaplain. Among his Methodist congregants there were big name political detainees like Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Stanley Mogoba.
More covert power encounters were to follow under the ministry of Straatwerk. Thus Esther Dunn, a former drug addict was supernaturally delivered. Thereafter she attended the Glenvar Bible School that is linked to the Africa Evangelistic Band (Victor, 2001:30). She became the first full-time worker of Straatwerk. Drug addicts were set free through the power of the Gospel, and many a Satanist or person under occult bondage discovered that there is power in the Blood of Jesus when believers stand together in prayer.

A Capetonian Prophet in the making
Theo Kotze was granted a Christian Fellowship Trust grant in 1967 for three months of overseas’ travel and study. This trust was closely related to the Christian Institute (CI). This vision was decisively broadened when he and his wife Helen were privileged to meet the leaders of the Methodist Renewal Movement in the UK. Dr Pauline Webb, one of them, summarised the essence of the renewal mission that Kotze would try and implement back in Cape Town as follows: ‘... renewal can come about only as the church is recalled to the priority of mission - for then the focus of our concern would not be... the church and its forms, but rather the world and its needs’ (Knighton-Fitt, 2003:114).
On discovery of the depth of God’s grace and forgiveness, Theo Kotze committed himself also to the local problems. Very daringly he addressed not only the burning issues of his White congregants, but also the social ramifications of apartheid legislation that made it for example illegal for Black workers to be accommodated in servants’ quarters. His involvement with the CI - of which he became the Regional Director in 1969 - played a major role in his spiritual development in this regard. Jenni Sweet, who worked on a literacy programme at the Sea Point Church, met him through the CI. She quoted Kotze as saying: ‘Political involvement stems from your love for Jesus. If you love Jesus, you love people. The way you express that love is by getting involved in a concrete way in people’s struggles’ (Knighton-Fitt, 2003:109). At the Methodist Synod his clear and convincing articulation of the problems of the dispossessed alienated himself from his White colleagues.
When Kotze became Regional Director of the CI in 1969, the organisation had already become quite unpopular among Whites because of the clear stand on the side of justice and against apartheid. Kotze also became General Secretary of the Western Province Council of Churches.
The theme of the CI was (racial) reconciliation. All initiatives were preceded by discussions based on Bible Study and prayer. Beyers Naudé, the national leader, set the prophetic tone in the pursuit of truth and reconciliation, a message with which Theo Kotze had no problem at all.

The Black Christ travels the World
Born in Cape Town in 1940, Ronald Harrison spent most of his youth in District Six and completed his education at Harold Cressy High School. His artistic abilities manifested at an early age, and in his teens he displayed a keen interest in the political scenario of South Africa. One of his main role models was South Africa's first Peace Nobel laureate, Chief Albert Luthuli. This became the inspiration for an oil painting, The Black Christ, which caused an immediate stir when it was unveiled in Cape Town in 1962. The young artist chose Chief Albert Luthuli as a model for the face of Christ. The two centurions depicted John Vorster and Hendrik Verwoerd, arch-proponents of apartheid. For his bold act and defiance, refusing to divulge the whereabouts of the painting, Ronald Harrison had to pay a high price – incarcerated, tortured and harassed. His health was seriously affected detrimentally, but he was also offered a bursary to study in the USA. The government responded by offering him an 'exit permit', which meant that he would not be allowed to return to his home country after completion of his studies. Many people of colour left South Africa in the 1960s in this way. Ronald Harrison then rather turned down the offer to study overseas. Aalso socially he was deprived when two broken engagements ensued because 'I was hesitant to commit to marriage' (Harrison, 2006:99) as a result of the interogatory torture inflicted to him. After being smuggled out of the country, The Black Christ painting turned to become seed of liberation, used for fund-raising overseas to defend apartheid victims via the Defence and Aid Fund.

A Catalyst for unchristian Activism
Beyers Naudé dreamed of establishing a ‘Confessing Church’ in South Africa along the model of what happened in Germany when Nazis threatened to absorb the church in its ideology. With the help of friends and colleagues Theo Kotze regularly prepared and sent out memos explaining the implications of Parliamentary Bills and giving ideas for practical involvement. The demonic apartheid ideology tilted the Bible-based beginnings of the CI. The CI was quite prophetic when the organisation encouraged Black, Indian and ‘Coloured’ Dutch Reformed Church leaders to look at how apartheid was destroying church unity in South Africa. But the CI was at the same time acting diabolically, politicizing a part of the body of Christ in an unhealthy activist way.
Unwittingly and unintentionally the prophetic Theo Kotze became the harbinger of a compromise of the Gospel. Thus it was surely compassionate and loving that he went to the home of Farid Esack, a young Muslim, to explain to the family that the first police detention of the high school student was not because he was a bad person. Esack later confessed in Harare years later - in the presence of Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki and Bishop Trevor Huddleston - about Kotze’s contribution in his spiritual development: ‘It was a Christian minister who taught me that Islam is not the sole repository of truth.’ (Knighton-Fitt, 2003:186).153 Kotze and the CI of the 1970s were unwittingly sowing the seed of inter-faith teaching that compromised the uniqueness of Jesus as the divine Son of God. The uncompromising stance of CI leaders probably also influenced church leaders to oppose all forms of legalism, but many of them went overboard in the end. In my view it is no co-incidence that quite a few ministers that were closely linked to the CI in later years supported an unbiblical view on homosexuality, sometimes with the excuse that they opposed the unloving and legalistic practices in the churches.
The CI became a catalyst for unchristian activism. This was especially evident in the University Christian Movement (UCM) that was more or less a spiritual child of the CI established formed by English-speaking churches after the SCA changed its constitution to divide into separate ethnic organizations (De Gruchy, 1979:154). Most White students withdrew from active participation when Black Theology and Black Consciousness came strongly to the fore. The mood of Black students - under the leadership of Steve Biko, who broke away with others at a UCM conference to form SASO – was very much one of polarization. 'Black man, you are on your own!' became a commonly used slogan.
Correction only came to the fore in the 1970s in the course of the expounding of Black Theology. Thus Manas Buthulezi, a Lutheran Bishop and prominent theologian, spelled this out with great effect at the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism in 1973, noting that Christianity had to be liberated from every form of racial bondage if it was to speak meaningfully to Blacks: 'The white man will be liberated from the urge to reject the black man...' (Cited in De Gruchy, 1979:162). In similar vein Desmond Tutu explained what the liberation meant: It is 'fundamentally liberation from sin to which we are all (oppressed and oppressors alike) in bondage, it means a readiness to forgive, and a refusal to be consumed by hate...' (Cited in De Gruchy, 1979:163).

Islamic Shrines come into the Limelight
Father Bernard Wrankmore had been a chaplain to seamen when he was especially challenged to pray for the beloved country. Just at that time Wrankmore saw the dossier of Imam Abdullah Haron, who had died while in police custody on 27 September 1969. Mrs Catherine Taylor, an opposition MP, had brought up the issue in Parliament, which the government of the day evidently wanted to squash. The Imam Haron case highlighted for Wrankmore the fact that South Africa was now misled by a similar delusion as the Germans under Hitler. He decided to retreat for prayer and fasting to St George’s Cathedral for the situation in the country. However, Wrankmore was refused permission to do so by the Archbishop and the Dean of the Cathedral.
In the church at large there was ignorance about the effects of ancestral worship on people in general and of praying at shrines. Being a lover of mountaineering, Wrankmore retreated for prayer to the Kramat near to Lion’s Head. He was in deep meditation when a group of Muslims entered. They promptly invited Wrankmore to attend the Muir Street mosque in District Six. When the Muslims there heard that permission had been refused for him to pray in the St George’s Cathedral, one thing led to another. Eventually Wrankmore was allowed to use the Islamic shrine at Lion’s Head for his fast. He was probably not aware of the occult connections.

Wrankmore came into the frontline of opposition to Prime Minister Vorster, when he requested an inquiry into the death of Imam Haron. He added weight to his protest through a drawn-out fast. A friend who had visited him at the shrine near to Lion’s Head, put the newspaper reporters on his track. It was definitely not Wrankmore’s own idea to get media attention. Initially the effort of the cleric seemed in vain, as Prime Minister Vorster remained unbending. Eventually a judicial inquiry followed when advocate Wilfred Cooper came into the picture. Imam Rashied Omar pointed to the role played by the local newspaper The Cape Times to keep protest alive in the minds of the people. What Wrankmore did not bargain for, was a major health hazard. After an extended period of fasting, his body became mysteriously swollen up. He thanked God that another round of prayer and fasting could sort out this matter. It is interesting that he started his fast on 19 August - 40 days before the second anniversary of the death of Haron.
Through apartheid legislation the ‘Malay quarter’ of Bo-Kaap was greatly extended, churches there were closed down and Christians were tempted to become Muslims if they wanted to continue living there. Some of the believers, who worshipped at St Stephen’s and the Anglican St Paul’s Churches, had started leaving the residential area because of this legislation. By 1980, Bo-Kaap had become a Muslim stronghold with very little Christian influence left.

Marriages to Muslims as a Catalyst of Outreach
Ds Chris Greyling had in the meantime been appointed as the first mission organizer of the ‘Sendingkerk’ with a special charge to reach out to the Muslims. Gradually however, the intention to be a missionary church went out by the window. The struggle against apartheid took its toll, operating as cancer at the evangelistic zeal of members.
Evangelist Izak van der Vyver, who operated in Philippi, was very sad when one of their church workers, trained as a social worker, married a Muslim in May 1974. He wrote one of the first pamphlets for Muslim evangelism in Afrikaans: ‘Wat dit beteken as ‘n Christen Moslem (Slams) word.’ (‘What it means when a Christian becomes a Muslim’). Van der Vyver was not the only one in the church who was upset. The Sendingkerk church organ, Die Ligdraer, published a full issue in August 1974 on Islam, with contributions from Izak van der Vyver, Ds Chris Greyling and Professor Pieter Els. The tract of Van der Vyver ‘oombliklik gered’ apparently made quite an impact in the ‘Coloured’ community. Van der Vyver and Greyling’s main strategy at this time was the training of church members, empowering them to reach out to their peers in schools, neighbourhoods and factories. Apart from the occasional outreach to Muslims, the emphasis was on warning their church members against marriage with Muslims, those who were ignorant of the problems that would follow. The other facet of their work was winning back those who had become disillusioned. A ‘getuienisaksie’ (witness action) team from the Lentegeur congregation of the Sendingkerk started advising many young girls who had become pregnant from Muslim men. Their efforts were often crowned with success when the young women discovered that the church did not completely condemn them. Likewise, a few women of their congregation who had been divorced from Muslim men, returned to the church fold.

A renewed Anglican Mission to the Muslims
The first known appointment of a person of colour for full-time outreach to Muslims occurred after Rev. (later Bishop) George Schwarz had approached Archbishop Joost de Blank in 1959 with a pastoral problem. One of Schwarz’s parishioners had become pregnant from a Muslim patient at the Brooklyn Chest hospital. De Blank now told him that Miss Leslie, the church’s only remaining missionary to the Muslims, would be retiring soon. The Archbishop challenged Schwarz to get involved with this work.
Schwarz’s calling to the Muslim work was confirmed at a ministers’ retreat in 1960, after which he was given a special appointment as full-time priest for the ‘Mission to the Muslims’. In order to be better equipped for this work he was sent to Canterbury in England, where he was trained for a year at St Augustines by the renowned Bishop Kenneth Cragg. A stint of nine months in Jerusalem to minister among Arab Christians was intended to make him acquainted with the Middle East setting.
Back in Cape Town, Schwarz was linked to the St Mark’s parish in Athlone with the full-time charge of ministering to Muslims in the whole diocese of the Mother City. His work centred around the counselling of marriages (or other people where a marriage was considered) in which one of the parties was a Muslim. Soon the archbishop approached Schwarz to move to the parish of St Phillip’s in District Six in a caretaker capacity. Schwarz went to St Phillip’s in 1963. Here he also conducted seminars on Islam and Muslim Evangelism for the whole diocese. For seven years Rev. Schwarz laboured in District Six, but increasingly the parochial responsibilities devoured his attention. By his own admission, 90% of his time was devoted to parish work by 1970. In that year Schwarz was called to take charge of the Anglican congregation in Bonteheuwel. To all intents and purposes, this signalled the end of all formal Muslim outreach by the denomination.
The official name of the ‘Mission to the Muslims’ was changed after a visit by Bishop Kenneth Cragg to the Mother City, when he suggested a less aggressive tag. It became the Board of Muslim Relationships. The outreach work itself petered out to become almost non-existent in the late 1980s. The official position of the denomination was now ‘inter-faith’, which boiled down to absence of Gospel presentations to Muslims.

Recruitment of Ministers from Christian Student Work
In one area there was some drive for missionary outreach, namely among students. The bulk of the Christelike Studentevereniging (CSV) ministry was carried by that denomination where ‘Mammie’ Le Fleur pioneered work with Nic Apollis as the next itinerant secretary until the early 1960s, followed by Chris Wessels from the Moravian Church.
One of the young Sendingkerk ministers, Esau Jacobs, who started off in the Transkei, had a definite vision to reach out to the Muslims. He inspired many a young student, including myself. At the student evangelistic outreach he exposed the group to ‘spiritual warfare’ when he joined the group on New Year’s Day, 1965.
Paul Engel was a student colleague from Hewat Training College and co-fighter in the battle within the Moravian Church for biblical conversion as an aim for all teaching in Sunday Schools. He was instrumental in bringing me to a major turning point in my life when he invited me to the evangelistic outreach of the Christian Students Association at the seaside resort in Harmony Park. This was scheduled to start just after Christmas at the end of 1964. I was 18 years old and had just finished my two years of teacher training and had been preaching in youth services all over the Cape Peninsula. Conversely, we had other young people like Allan Boesak at our church as preachers. Allan also told me about the Harmony Park outreach.
At Christmas 1964 I felt spiritually empty and bankrupt. How could I go and share the Gospel with others in such a condition? I cried to the Lord to equip me! God somehow divinely touched me. I sensed the power of the Holy Spirit getting hold of me. I was now ready for the outreach effort.
A special friendship and partnership developed to the tent mates David Savage and Ds Esau Jacobs (who was generally known as Jakes). At that time Jakes was a young pastor, who had just started off as a pastor/missionary to ‘Coloureds’ in the Transkei. David Savage was a librarian, who later became a pastor of the Full Gospel Church and Principal of the Chaldo Bible Institute.
The event at Harmony Park contained seed for spiritual revival. It also contributed to the birth of leaders. Rev. Abel Hendricks, who led the camp. along with Rev. Chris Wessels, became a leader in later years in the Methodist Church and Wessels in the Moravian Church. Allan Boesak, Jattie Bredekamp, Esau Jacobs, Franklin Sonn David Savage and Vivian Aisley (later married with the surname West) became influential members in the Sendingkerk, Full Gospel Church and Lutheran Churches. Bredekamp, Franklin and Fanie Sonn became academic and professional leaders in the fields of History, Education and Psychology.

Apartheid as Cancer
The White Dutch Reformed Church suffered a similar fate as their Sendingkerk counterparts. By accommodating racial condescension and racist White supremacy, it got rotten to the core spiritually. After the demise of apartheid in the 1990s, the denomination lost many young members who had become estranged and confused by their leaders.
A Muslim backlash threatened good relations between Christians and Muslims in the late1980s after Ds Zevenster (a minister from the Afrikaanse Gereformeerde Kerk), called for a boycott of all products which had the hallal demarcation - including the Islamic crescent. This indicated that food-stuff could be consumed by Muslims. Professor Els reacted promptly in the Kerkbode, to bring matters back to normal in the Christian-Muslim relations, abetting a situation of confrontation and tension.

Another Apartheid Offspring
Tragically, discord set in soon after the special Harmony Park camp - caused by an apartheid offspring. The Christian Students’ Association (SCA) was ripped apart. Some of the leaders among the ‘Coloured’ sector of the student movement thought that it was inevitable to accept the new racial divisions. The Sonn clan and Rev. Abel Hendricks belonged to this group. Chris Wessels, a young pastor of the Moravian church, who had returned prior to this event from a study stint in Holland and Germany, became the travelling secretary of the SCA. He believed that one should fight apartheid tooth and nail. In his view, a division of the student movement along racial lines would be tantamount to towing the line of government policy. (After his election as President of the CPTA in 1976, Franklin Sonn was to change the image of the Sonn clan on this score significantly.)
Theologically, the group around Chris Wessels was probably on target, but the activist spirit rubbed off on others. Wessels was a product from Genadendal and very much influenced by the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German resistance theologian and fierce critic of the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer was still quite unknown in South Africa in the early 1960s. Wessels had came to faith in Christ through the ministry of the Africa Evangelistic Band, which paradoxically has been proclaiming the ‘stay out of politics’ line, but unofficially they were supporting the government. The response to the status quo caused divisions throughout ‘Coloured’ society.

Ministry of compassion to city nightclubs
A special ministry of compassion to the city nightclubs from the early 1970s was based in the old Tafelberg Hotel of District Six. It started though amongst the youth of the White Dutch Reformed congregation of Wynberg. This ministry was birthed in prayer. Pietie Victor, who started his theological training in Stellenbosch in 1964, founded the compassionate ministry with his wife Annette, who was a social worker by profession. Only four of the fairly big youth group of young people were prepared to join Pietie and Annette Victor for outreach on the streets and in the nightclubs on Friday night, but many of the young people came for Bible Study and prayer before the other young folk left for the outreach that would take them into the early hours of the morning.
God used the breakdown of the bus that took the group to Stellenbosch after a training weekend, to bring them to the realization that they needed His touch dearly. At the Sunday evening service in the Student Church that evening 350 remained in the church after the service. This was an indication that God had dealt with them in the week before that.
In the denomination there was initially a lot of opposition. However, after an invitation by Ds Solly Ozrovech to come and share about their work in his congregation in Gordons Bay, they received invitations from all over the Western Cape. The favour of the devout young people seemed to anger Satan tremendously. Pietie Victor was asked to appear before his church council. Via the grapevine he heard that he had to account for the ‘late night activities and that he was busy with sectarian “things” like speaking in tongues, laying on of hands and other “geestelike vergrype” (spiritual offences). The group was driven into prayer as never before. God vindicated them. At the actual meeting not a single one of the accusations were mentioned. Instead, the youth group only harvested praise.
One of the criticisms thrown at Pietie Victor, who finished his theological studies at the end of 1971, was that he was a liberal. The reason for this judgement was because they took people from all races into their mobile ‘coffee bar’ – a Microbus that they parked in front of St Stephen’s Church in Bree Street under a street lamp. There they served those whom they had brought from the streets with sandwiches and coffee. That was the spur for the St Stephen’s Church council to offer them two of their cellar rooms for the use of the coffee bar. What an irony of history followed that the ‘Coloured’ congregation that was still linked to the Groote Kerk – that once had refused teaching to Muslims in one of their rooms – now hosted the White young people. Even a greater irony followed when the very room where the coffee bar started had been the source of conflict in 1842. It was the room where manumitted slaves learned to read and write. That had been the main bone of contention – the reason why the building got its name, pelted with stones by angry colonists. For many decades the Straatwerk Koffiekamer at 108 Bree Street remained a blessing to many destitute people, also after they bought the old Tafelberg Hotel in District Six.


Surfing the spiritual Waves
As an eighteen-year old Gavin Rudolph was among a few other South Africans invited to the 1971 Smirnoff Pro Am at Sunset Beach in the USA. Rudolph stunned the surfing world by winning in 8-12' surf - his second session at the fabled break - becoming the first South African to win an event outside the country. Being a committed Christian, the world champion ushered in a big interest among youngsters.
In 1991 a Christian surfing club was started at the Cape Town Baptist Church in an attempt to reach unchurched surfers. Mike Geldenhuys, a young believer who went on to study theology at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary, invited Roy Harley, a devout surfer from Durban, to come and challenge the youngsters at a camp. Nathan, the son of Graham Gernetsky, the pastor, invited his friend Terran Williams. Under the impact of the Word, Terran was the first to commit his life to Christ. Demitri Nikiforos and Nathan Gernetsky were two other teenagers who, like Terran, later went into full-time ministry. Demitri and Roy Harley became the co-leaders of the Christian surfing club when Roy came to study theology at CEBI (that later became Cornerstone Christian College).
The Cape Town surf ministry linked with two similar groups in East London and Port Elizabeth. Soon Sun Surf became the national brand name for ministries all over the country linked to a local church. At this time God raised similar ministries among surfers in Australia and the US. Roy Harley relocated to Jeffrey’s Bay, the Mecca of surfing in South Africa. Roy Harley became the continental co-ordinator in due course.
Demitri Nikiforos became a pioneering pastor of Calvary Chapel in the Mother City afters studying in the USA. Nathan, after studying at Cornerstone Christian College, joined the leadership team of Friends First Church, followed by leading a church in Hermanus and then Hout Bay. Terran Williams, after years of serving with Scripture Union and after his studies at Cornerstone Christian College, joined the leadership team of Friends First (renamed Common Ground Church in 2008), which has since then grown to be a large church with a strong reach into the city.