Gabriel Buys, evangelist to the Banyai in the sources
Gabriel Buys was a Buys evangelist of the Dutch Reformed Church, sent with Petrus Buys and two others in June 1883 to the Banyai country north of the Limpopo, where he was killed in a skirmish in or before August 1883. He is a younger man than the Gabriel who was Michael Buys’s brother.
What the sources say
Sent north. Stefanus Hofmeyr writes that on 3 June (1883) he presented the evangelists to the congregation and that on the 4th the four evangelists, Gabriel Buijs and Petrus Buijs, Jakob and Micha, left for the Banyai with the simplest supplies and a pack-ox (p. 258 of his book). An earlier chapter calls Gabriel Buijs and Petrus “Kolkhoda” (the scan’s spelling) two evangelists sent by “our church” and says they arrived safely and were already well ahead of the missionary Coillard, who was returning from the Banyai (ch. 15).
His death. A letter of November 1883 says that the mission ended sadly: Petrus Buijs brought Hofmeyr a letter from a veldkornet of Waterberg who had entered the Banyai country shortly after them to hunt and trade. At the village of a great chief, Zometo, the veldkornet was badly treated and wanted revenge, and asked the evangelists for help. Hofmeyr writes that Gabriel, “although unwilling”, allowed himself to be persuaded to go on an expedition to seize cattle, and that he “remained in the fight” when a skirmish followed; Hofmeyr says Gabriel went only because he feared the Whites would say that the Buys had been in the Banyai country and that was why they were treated badly (p. 260). Petrus arrived on the eve of 26 August 1883, the day of the church’s baptism and communion service; Gabriel’s wife nearly fainted at the news, “the whole station was in mourning”, and Hofmeyr preached on David strengthening himself in the Lord (pp. 260 to 261). Hofmeyr went on 28 August to report the matter to the Commissioner of Natives and reached him on the 30th (ch. 17).
Afterwards. Hofmeyr says the church “did not give up the mission, but now we feel like dogs that howl and wait at a closed door”. Parents, he later writes, were afraid to let their children go to the Banyai after “the murder of the late Gabriel Buijs”, and a later letter says that the pack-ox which had run away on the road in 1883 was reported years afterwards to have been captured in a war in the mountains (later chapters).
Overview article
See The Buys people of the Soutpansberg: an overview for the family as a whole.
Cautions
This is entirely Hofmeyr’s account of an expedition he did not witness, built from one letter from a Waterberg field cornet and a report by Petrus Buys; the field cornet’s identity and Gabriel’s age and family are not given. The cause as Hofmeyr gives it, and the moral he draws, are his. We do not know the evangelist’s age or parents, or how he relates to the Gabriel of Michael’s generation. Our sources on the family are a missionary’s transcription of an old man’s memory (1866 to 1890), a Venda historian’s thesis and a 1933 master’s thesis; the first and last use words for Africans that we do not repeat, and none of them is by the family.
Izithakazelo and totem
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Sources and further reading
See also Gabriel Buys, Doris Buys, Michael Buys, Buys community, Coenraad de Buys and Stephanus Hofmeyr.
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