Kranspoort in the sources
Kranspoort is a farm and Dutch Reformed Church mission station at the foot of the Soutpansberg, which the church’s own pioneers acquired in the 1860s. A community of about 800 people lived on it around 1950; between 1955 and 1964 more than 600 of them were removed after a conflict with the resident missionary, and in 1998 a court upheld a restitution claim by their descendants. The church’s earlier history there is entangled with Alexander McKidd, Stephanus Hofmeyr and the first mission station, Goedgedacht.
What the sources say
Place. Magwira describes Kranspoort as bordered by Bergplaas to the north-west, Koedoesvlei to the north, Goedgedacht to the south-east (“where the first mission station was situated”) and Du Preezrand to the south, in country that before the Voortrekkers was occupied by Venda, Tsonga and Sotho groups; the Sotho were well represented to the south and west (p. 64, citing Maree 1962). Kgatla and Magwira’s 2015 article calls it the first Dutch Reformed mission station outside the Cape Colony.
How the church got the land. Magwira gives two accounts. In chapter 2 Alexander McKidd, who arrived in 1863, acquired two farms, Goedgedacht and Kranspoort, receiving one from the farmer Cornelius Lottering and buying the other with his own money, and “Hofmeyr settled mainly among Sotho-speaking people and served there for 40 years” (p. 34); in chapter 6 Hofmeyr purchased the farm from Lottering for mission work, and left it by will (p. 95); and in chapter 2 again Hofmeyr gave up Kranspoort in the 1870s and worked from Bethesda (p. 36), while chapter 4 lists him as the missionary at Kranspoort from 1865 to 1905 (p. 64). These do not agree, and Hofmeyr’s own book, as read in the Internet Archive scan, speaks of Goedgedacht and Bethesda and not of Kranspoort. We give all the statements and do not choose.
Missionaries. Magwira, citing a 1990 report by the mission secretary, lists McKidd (1863 to 1865), Stephanus Hofmeyr (1865 to 1905), Johannes Daneel (1898 to 1935), W. M. A. van Coller (1937 to 1945), Lukas van der Merwe (1946 to 1969), Franscio Malan (1970 to 1972), E. C. Esterhuys (1977 to 1985) and G. L. Schnetler (1985 to 2015) (p. 64). The overlap of Hofmeyr’s and Daneel’s dates is as in the source. Residents interviewed by Magwira remembered Daneel as the best loved and Van der Merwe as the most hated (pp. 64 to 65).
The station. Around 1950 about 800 people lived there in three areas: “Stasie”, around the church and school, whose streets bore the names of McKidd, Church, Helm and Daneel and where most church members lived; and “Oorkant” and “Patmos”, whose residents were regarded as non-Christians; the school was named for Stefanus Hofmeyr, and gardens were watered from the Khudeta River (p. 64). See Kranspoort removals, 1955 to 1964.
After the removals. Magwira says that, after the last removals in 1964 and the departure of Van der Merwe, Hofmeyr’s grandchildren questioned whether the farm was still used as their grandfather directed, and in the early 1970s, when no missionary was resident, the heirs under Prof. J. D. J. Hofmeyr demanded its return. The church offered them 1,000 morgen and kept 70, which they refused as a bribe; the church’s lawyers advised in 1983 that clause 7 of the will was vague, and on 17 April 1985 the high court issued a declaratory order in the church’s favour, deleting the conditions. The church then registered and subdivided the farm, agreed on 14 March 1997 to sell part to Mr L. W. Goosen, rented the rest to Mr J. Venter, and closed the Stephanus Hofmeyr Farm School in mid-1997 (pp. 94 to 101). In August 1997 the school’s principal went to court to restore it, while the Kranspoort community (descendants of those removed in 1957 and 1964) lodged a land claim; the school case was heard on 16 January 1998 and decided for the church (pp. 101 to 102).
The land claim. In 1998 the court heard the claim of former Kranspoort residents (case 26/98) under the Restitution of Land Rights Act, 1994. On 2 December 1997 the Regional Land Claims Commissioner had told the church that the claim was prima facie valid. The church argued that the residents held only unregistered rights of use and occupation granted out of compassion and were not entitled to ownership; the buyer and the tenant supported it. Magwira reports that the claim was supported by the regional commissioner and the Department of Land Affairs and that the judge ruled for the Kranspoort community, finding that apartheid land laws had denied black people title in a white area and that the evictions followed that discrimination (pp. 102 to 104). The dissertation does not give the date of judgment or the form of the order, and although it places the hearing in 1998 it cites a newspaper of 4 August 1999 on the outcome, so the judgment may be later; we do not know what has been restored.
The farmer Lottering
Magwira names the farmer from whom McKidd, or Hofmeyr, obtained Kranspoort as Cornelius Lottering; see Cornelis Lottering.
Overview article
The mission setting is summarised in Christian missions in Venda and the Spelonken, 1863 to 1895.
Cautions
We rely chiefly on one master’s dissertation and one article by the same authors, which tell the church’s mistakes from the community’s side; the church’s account in the Malan 1973 and 1977 papers, which Magwira cites, we have not read. Details of the dispute between Hofmeyr’s heirs and the church come from the church’s own files as Magwira reports them. The dissertation’s years for the removals vary (1955, 1956, 1957, 1964); see the removals page. Place names (Bergplaas, Koedoesvlei, Du Preezrand) are as given there. 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
- 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
- S. T. Kgatla (with M. A. Magwira), “Mission driven by fear and despair: the case of Kranspoort, the first Dutch Reformed Church mission station outside the Cape Colony”, Stellenbosch Theological Journal 1(2), 2015, pp. 471 to 490
- 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)
- 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.
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