Alexander McKidd in the sources
Alexander McKidd was a Scottish missionary recruited for the Dutch Reformed Church by Dr William Robertson, who founded the Goedgedacht station in the Soutpansberg in 1863 and died of fever in 1865. Hofmeyr, who succeeded him, wrote that nothing had been put on paper about “the first missionary” and that he felt obliged to write the book.
What the sources say
Recruited. Magwira writes that a revival conference at Worcester in 1860 led Dr William Robertson to recruit eleven ministers in Europe, two of whom, Alexander McKidd and Henri Gonin, became pioneer missionaries in the north in the early 1860s; McKidd, a Scot, was invited to the Soutpansberg to work among the Buys people, while Gonin, a Swiss, went to the Bakgatla at Rustenburg. They had to wait for invitations from local leaders, as the Republic’s law required (p. 33).
The station. Nemudzivhadi dates his Goedgedacht station to 1863 (p. 128); Magwira says he spent only two years there and died of malaria in 1865 (p. 34). Hofmeyr writes that McKidd and his late wife, Hessie Bosman, both died of the fever (ch. 1), and that, by August 1865, “the faithful servant, Brother McKidd” had been spared seeing the war (pp. 41 to 42). In his preface he regrets that nothing was put in writing by “the first missionary, the Rev. A. McKidd”. A bookseller’s description of a copy of the book dates Hofmeyr’s arrival three months before McKidd’s death; we did not see it directly.
Land. According to the church’s file cited by Magwira, McKidd got one farm from a farmer, Cornelius Lottering, and bought another with his own money (p. 34). Kranspoort’s streets still bore his name in about 1950 (p. 64). See Goedgedacht and Kranspoort.
Cautions
McKidd left no writing that we have found; everything here comes from Hofmeyr, Magwira and Nemudzivhadi. His arrival and death dates are given only to the year. Magwira’s dissertation is a missiological critique written from the standpoint of the community that was removed, and it leans on the Dutch Reformed Church’s own archive (the “DIV” files in Stellenbosch) as well as on interviews; we have not seen the archive, nor the church’s own account.
Izithakazelo and totem
We have found no confirmed totem or praise poem for this page. If your family belongs to the Kranspoort community or to one of the mission stations in this story and you wish to share its history, we would like to record it, with your permission and credited to you.
Sources and further reading
- Stefanus Hofmeyr, Twintig jaren in Zoutpansberg: een verhaal van twintig jarigen arbeid onder de heidenen in de Transvaal (Cape Town: J. H. Rose, 1890), in Dutch; read in the Internet Archive scan (page numbers below are the book’s, as marked in the scan’s text)
- Mashonelo Anderson Magwira, “Land for mission and mission for land: a missiological reflection of the Kranspoort Mission Station in Soutpansberg within the Vhembe district of the Limpopo Province”, MTh dissertation, University of Pretoria (2016), chapters 2, 4, 5 and 6
- Mphaya Henry Nemudzivhadi, “The attempts by Makhado to revive the Venda kingdom, 1864-1895”, PhD thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (1998); open access at the North-West University repository (a scanned copy; we read it by OCR, and page numbers cited are the thesis’s printed numbers)
See also Stephanus Hofmeyr, Kranspoort, Kranspoort removals, 1955 to 1964, Goedgedacht, Alexander McKidd and Madzhie.
Do you know this history from your own family or community? Tell us what elders say, and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.