Christian missions in Venda and the Spelonken, 1863 to 1895

Christian missions in Venda and the Spelonken, 1863 to 1895: an overview

Between 1863 and the early 1890s three missionary societies founded stations in the Soutpansberg: the Dutch Reformed Church in the west, the Berlin Missionary Society among the Venda in the east, and the Swiss Free Church of Vaud among the Tsonga of the Spelonken. This article sets out who came, where, at whose invitation, what they achieved, and how Makhado and the Boers used them.

The story

At a glance

Before 1863: a Venda Christian, Mutshaeni, is said to have preached in a cave at Tsharotha, Tshiheni, long before the Germans (Nemudzivhadi, p. 128).
1863: Dutch Reformed missionary Alexander McKidd founds Goedgedacht, at the request of Michael Buys.
1865: Stephanus Hofmeyr arrives and flees in the war.
Early 1872: Berlin missionaries Beyer and Baumbach ask Makhado’s leave and are sent to Tshivhase.
8 November 1872: C. Beuster and H. C. Stech begin at Tshimboni, in Tshivhase’s country.
1873 to 1875: the Swiss expedition; Berthoud and Creux reach Watt’s farm in the Spelonken on 9 July 1875 (Valdezia).
May 1874: Raluthaga Madzivhandila asks for a missionary; Schwellnus founds the Tshakhuma station; first converts baptised in 1877.
1877, 1879: the Berlin station at Mavhola; the Swiss station at Elim.
1884 to 1890: Wessmann at Tshakhuma and then in the Venda hills; Makahane, the first ruler baptised, on 4 August 1890.

The Dutch Reformed Church: land from settlers, not chiefs

Nemudzivhadi calls the Dutch Reformed Church the first to do mission work in Venda, beginning with Alexander McKidd’s Goedgedacht in the country of Madzhie in 1863, two years before the Berlin Society began at Blouberg; Hofmeyr, who succeeded him, worked among the Buys people and also among the Venda, to the scepticism of the Boers, who thought Africans “creatures without a soul” (p. 128). Michael Buys told Hofmeyr that he had longed for a missionary and asked a President for one, and that the farmer Cornelis Lottering had helped (see Michael Buys). Magwira’s dissertation draws the contrast that matters for later history: the Lutheran missionaries approached the major Venda chiefs for permission and worked closely with them, whereas the Dutch Reformed missionaries approached settlers such as Lottering and the Republic’s leaders for land, which made them more reliant on the Voortrekkers; he cites 1981 figures of about 15,000 Lutheran members in Venda, 5,770 Dutch Reformed and 4,830 Reformed (pp. 35 to 36). The consequences of the farm-based model are traced on Kranspoort and Kranspoort removals, 1955 to 1964.

Magwira, from Crafford’s church history, lists the black evangelists who did the preaching in remote places while the white missionaries organised: Moses Ramushu, Paulus Ramushu, Cornel Mamathula, Frederick Molepo and others (pp. 36 to 38). Hofmeyr’s own Buys congregation produced evangelists too, among them Gabriel Buys, killed in 1883 on the Banyai mission (see Gabriel Buys, evangelist to the Banyai).

The Berlin Society: Tshivhase first

Beyer and Baumbach came to Makhado’s residence early in 1872 and asked leave to preach. Makhado, as he had with Hofmeyr, avoided them by sending them to Tshivhase, but told them not to take his land; they got Ligegise Tshivhase’s permission. In October 1872 Beuster and Stech arrived and, after conferring with Ligegise, began at Tshimboni on 8 November; Beuster rode through the territory, joined the dancers on horseback, used the horse’s back as a pulpit and heard the history of Venda from Ravhura of Makonde, which impressed him so much that he wrote a song about Thohoyandou (pp. 129 to 130; see Ligegise and Thohoyandou). Beuster’s works are, in Nemudzivhadi’s view, the foundation of Venda literature: a reader in 1883, a catechism and gospels in 1884 and John’s gospel and selected psalms in 1895 (p. 131).

Makhado, having sent the Germans to Tshivhase, nonetheless let one of his mahosi, Raluthaga Madzivhandila, take a missionary, since he could not do it on his own; Raluthaga asked Beuster in May 1874, and Rev. E. Schwellnus founded Tshakhuma, learned the language, extended his work to Tsianda and Lwamondo, and baptised the first converts in 1877 (p. 131 to 132; see Tsianda). A third Berlin station followed at Mavhola in 1877, where malaria killed some missionaries (p. 138). Rev. R. Wessmann, who came in 1884, was asked for a missionary by Khosi Makahane, sent converts in 1890, and Makahane, then aged 78, was baptised on 4 August 1890, “the first gota, khosi or Thovhele” baptised (p. 138). Schwellnus left for Germany in 1894 (p. 135). Mulaudzi’s 2020 thesis lists the same stations and years (ch. 4, p. 91): Maungani 1872, Tshakhuma 1874, Mavhola 1877, with the Swiss stations at Lwalani in 1875 and Vari in 1883.

The Swiss: the Tsonga of the Spelonken

After a conference at Morija on 12 May 1873, a Swiss expedition left Basutoland on 23 May, was refused by Sekhukhune, and met Hofmeyr, who, in Nemudzivhadi’s telling, advised them to settle among the Tsonga of the Spelonken, who had no missionary. At Luonde João Albasini welcomed them; they negotiated for the farm of a Scotsman, Watt, and left evangelists Eliakim and Aser. The Free Church of Vaud sent Berthoud and Creux again in 1875, and they reached Watt’s farm on 9 July 1875, the first station of the Free Church of Vaud; Khosi Mashau, on whose land it stood, welcomed them, and Davhana gave them milk cows (pp. 135 to 137; see João Albasini). Elim followed in 1879, and the thesis dates Valdezia to 1873 on another page (p. 138), which differs from the 1875 landing; we give both. The Berlin and Swiss societies agreed that Berlin would work among the Venda and Swiss among the Tsonga, which Nemudzivhadi calls the seed of “religious apartheid” between Venda and Tsonga that later made it possible to partition Venda from Gazankulu; he adds that both neglected the Venda south of the Luvuvhu (p. 137). Like Beuster, the Swiss used the Lepsius system, translating the Bible into Tsonga.

What the missions did, and what they cost

Nemudzivhadi credits the stations with schools, irrigation, orchards of orange, avocado, peach, banana and coffee, sugar cane, rice, wheat and forestry (the blue gum and pine plantings that survive near Tshakhuma and Valdezia), and with the written languages (pp. 133 to 139). He is equally clear about the cost to converts: baptism required giving up Venda names; people who kept to vhusha and domba initiation, which many sent their children to secretly, risked expulsion from the station; and expelled Christians could be excluded by relatives as outcasts (pp. 132 to 133). Paul, the youngest son of Schwellnus, who grew up speaking Venda as his first language, is said by Nemudzivhadi to have published readers, a hymn book and a grammar and to have translated the Bible into Venda in 1936 (p. 134).

The numbers stayed small. Quoting the 1916 Natives Land Commission, Nemudzivhadi gives 180,411 Africans in the Soutpansberg area, 41,000 of them Tsonga, of whom about 100,000 lived outside the locations; only 7,625 Venda and Tsonga lived on mission farms and stations. He concludes that fewer than half of one per cent of the indigenous population lived on mission farms; his own figures, though, work out at roughly four to eight per cent, which is also small, and we give his numbers, not his percentage (pp. 140 to 141).

Rulers, traders and informers

The rulers let the missionaries preach to their people but declined themselves: Hofmeyr failed to convert Madzhie or Makhado, Beuster and Schwellnus failed with Tshivhase and Madzivhandila, each saying they were too old and their sons should convert (p. 138). They did not allow stations near their royal residences but protected the missionaries as a source of pride, because they could repair wagons, report the movements of Whites and link them to the Boer government (p. 139). Makhado’s trade goods ran short after Schoemansdal fell, and Michael Buys and his friend Terence Fitzgerald advised him to take a missionary to supply clothing, so Hofmeyr stayed (pp. 129, 140). The same closeness had a cost: Nemudzivhadi says some missionaries, naming Beuster and Wessmann, sent secret reports against Makhado, copies of which survive in the Transvaal archives (p. 140; see Antonio Albasini for the commissioner they reported to).

How the sources differ

Nemudzivhadi has Hofmeyr moving to Kranspoort and receiving the Swiss there; Hofmeyr’s own book speaks of Goedgedacht and Bethesda and does not name Kranspoort; Magwira gives three accounts of how the church got the Kranspoort land. The dates of the Swiss arrival (1873 or 1875) vary within the thesis. The missionaries’ own writings (Hofmeyr, Wessmann, Bridel, Cuendet) are the main sources for the stations and, as Nemudzivhadi observes, say little about how the Venda saw the newcomers.

Overview article

For a longer account of the Berlin Society’s missionaries, first converts and the Mphaphuli case, see The Berlin Mission in Venda, 1872 to 1908.

Cautions

This article is a synthesis of pages we wrote from the sources named below. Its numbers are the thesis’s printed pages. Mathivha’s 1985 dissertation on Berlin mission education at Tshakhuma, the church histories of Crafford and Maree, and the Swiss accounts (Bridel, Cuendet) are cited by Nemudzivhadi or Magwira and we have not read them. We have not described the twentieth-century history of these missions beyond Kranspoort. The war is told here mainly from one Venda historian’s reading of the Boer archive and Venda oral history, set beside one missionary’s eyewitness letters; the Boer officials’ own side, in the archive files and in the biographies of Schoeman and Albasini, we have not read.

Sources and further reading

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