Stephanus Hofmeyr in the sources
Stephanus (Stefanus) Hofmeyr (1839 to 1902 or 1905) was the first South African-born missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church. He reached the Soutpansberg in February 1865, took over Goedgedacht after Alexander McKidd died, and spent four decades building mission stations and outstations among the Buys people and the Sotho-speaking communities to the south and west, while keeping a difficult friendship with Madzhie and Makhado. His book Twintig jaren in Zoutpansberg (1890) is an eyewitness account of the 1860s and 1870s.
What the sources say
The man. The Dictionary of African Christian Biography, from the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, gives Hofmeyr’s years as 1839 to 1905: born in Cape Town, he farmed in the Cape, qualified as a teacher of religion at Stellenbosch in 1863 and became a missionary in the Soutpansberg in 1864; he was ordained a missionary (not a minister) in Cape Town in 1866; a church revival from 1875 to 1877 brought rapid growth; ill health took him back to the Cape in 1887 to 1889, when he wrote the book; and his work laid the foundation of the Dutch Reformed Church’s Northern Transvaal region and of its Mashona mission across the Limpopo. Magwira’s dissertation instead has him die on 22 April 1902 (p. 94), while also listing his service at Kranspoort as 1865 to 1905 (p. 64); we cannot settle his death date. His own book says he came to Zoutpansberg in February 1865.
Arrival and the 1865 flight. Hofmeyr describes reaching McKidd’s station Goedgedacht in the first week of February 1865, with a cart carried over the last stretch by oxen lent by the field cornet Abraham Duvenhage; McKidd, who had been the first missionary there, died that year, and Hofmeyr soon fell ill with fever himself. In a letter written at Hout River on 10 August 1865, which he reprints, he writes that Africans and Whites were preparing for war; that the chief he calls Katlach (Madzhie) “has always been our friend” and that Michael Buys, the leader of the Buys community, was used as intermediary but achieved nothing; that the Whites were demanding the return of guns from African marksmen who had taken refuge with Katlach; and that Katlach in turn demanded his enemy “Thawaan”, accused of murdering his father, Katlach’s brother “Ramapolana”, and their sister, which appears to be Davhana and Ramabulana (pp. 39 to 40). On 14 July the camp commandant wrote asking them to come into the laager at Schoemansdal; Hofmeyr refused, because the Lord had placed them there. Katlach sent word that they must not go, for then he would have no friends and no one to see that he got a missionary. On the Monday the 24th came a message from Africans in the mountains behind the station that they must join them or leave, or “the dogs would jump on them”, and that evening two Whites rode in to warn that a commando was coming; the missionary party left. The buildings were later found in ruins (pp. 40 to 42; see Madzhie).
Noem-Noem-draai and Bethesda. After the flight the family lived on the farm Noem-Noem-draai of Andries Duvenhage, who gave them his house and half his garden and lands; the place was later bought for the mission, and is, Hofmeyr says, the well-known Bethesda. In April 1866 he left for the Cape to be ordained and married (pp. 28 to 29, 42). Nemudzivhadi’s account differs on where Hofmeyr lived: he writes that Goedgedacht was malarial, so Hofmeyr moved the station to Kranspoort, near Madzhie’s headquarters; that when the Boers ordered him into the Schoemansdal laager, Madzhie objected and promised protection, so that Hofmeyr refused Schoeman’s offer; that he fled to the farm Bethesda near Rida when fighting began and returned to Kranspoort on Madzhie’s assurance (p. 129). Hofmeyr’s own book, in the scan we read, does not mention Kranspoort at all (see Kranspoort and Goedgedacht).
With Madzhie and Makhado. Hofmeyr writes that on a visit with C. Murray and H. Gonin to the chief he calls Mamato or Katlagter, in his mountains near Schoemansdal, they met him and his councillors and asked if his people would take the Gospel; he agreed to everything and gave an answer “neither fish nor flesh” (ch. 6). In a letter from Goedgedacht in chapter 10 (undated in the text we read), he writes that the chief Makgado, “formerly an enemy, now a friend”, whom he believed to have thousands of subjects, told the old Buys elder Michael that, now that the Whites no longer lived nearby, he had lost his supply of blankets, skins and linen, and sent a captain to Hofmeyr to ask for a shirt; Hofmeyr told the captain that the Venda took everything of the Whites except their Bible (pp. 123 to 124; see Makhado). Nemudzivhadi says Makhado disliked the missionary but changed after the Boers left Schoemansdal, because trade goods became scarce and expensive; Michael Buys advised him to get a missionary, and his friend Terence Fitzgerald advised the same, so that Hofmeyr was allowed to remain; Hofmeyr nevertheless never converted Madzhie or Makhado, who like Tshivhase and Madzivhandila told the missionaries they were too old and their sons should convert (pp. 129, 138, 140; see Schoemansdal).
Outstations and evangelists. Magwira, following Crafford and Maree, says that after leaving Kranspoort in the 1870s Hofmeyr worked from Bethesda to establish outposts around present Polokwane (among them Marabastad, Berea, Bethel, Moletji, Goede Hoop, Makapansgat and Waterberg), always with black evangelists whose names the church history largely omits: Moses Ramushu, appointed at Marabastad in 1879 and dead of tuberculosis in 1881, Paulus Ramushu, Sagaria Malope, Cornel Mamathula, Timotheus Molea, Frederick Molepo and others (pp. 36 to 38). Hofmeyr also helped the Swiss missionaries Berthoud and Creux in 1873 by advising them to settle in the Spelonken among the Tsonga (Nemudzivhadi p. 135).
The will. Magwira writes that Hofmeyr bought Kranspoort from the farmer Cornelius Lottering for mission work and left it by will to the Dutch Reformed mission society on conditions: that it be used continuously for mission work, that the rights be non-transferable, and that any breach would make them lapse (p. 95). Hofmeyr’s grandchildren invoked the will in the 1970s and 1980s; see Kranspoort.
The Buys community
Hofmeyr’s first congregation at Goedgedacht was the Buys community, led by the old man Michael Buys, whose recollections he printed in 1866 and 1867 and again in his book of 1890. See Michael Buys, Buys community and Buysdorp.
Overview articles
See Christian missions in Venda and the Spelonken, 1863 to 1895 and The Soutpansberg war, 1863 to 1869.
Cautions
Hofmeyr’s own book is a missionary’s account, in the vocabulary of 1890 (it calls Africans “Kaffers” and “heathens” throughout), and we quote from it only what bears on dates, people and events. We read the Dutch ourselves and the scan has OCR faults. Magwira’s and Nemudzivhadi’s accounts of where Hofmeyr lived differ from his own, as above; and his death date differs between sources. 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)
- Willem Saayman, “Hofmeyr, Stefanus (1839-1905)”, Dictionary of African Christian Biography (reproduced from the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Eerdmans, 1998)
- 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)
- South African History Online: the Rev. Stephanus Johannes Gerhardus Hofmeyr, missionary in the Soutpansberg (an event record; we saw only its title)
See also Stephanus Hofmeyr, Kranspoort, Kranspoort removals, 1955 to 1964, Goedgedacht, Alexander McKidd and Madzhie.
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