A Christian Community in South Africa,
1838-2008
Fiona Vernal
OUP £45 (978-0-19-984340-4)
Church Times Bookshop £40.50 (Use
code CT635 )
AT FIRST sight, this might appear to be a book with a very
limited appeal. Its author is an American academic historian, who
has recorded the history of a small Methodist mission in the
Xhosa-speaking Eastern Cape of South Africa. She concentrates on
this one place, with little reference to the wider environment.
In nearly 300 well-filled pages of text, she explores Xhosa
people's understanding of relationships, of health, and of
knowledge, and their skills in moulding Christianity to meet their
own reality; but, with one great exception, there is hardly any
sense that the national issues of apartheid and white supremacy
made an impact on the community. And there are few references to
other Christian enterprises in the country.
But there there are unique features in the Farmerfield Mission,
which justify this exclusive study. It came into being in the first
place, not through the enterprise of missionaries, but at the
request of African Christians themselves; their energies kept it
going, even when, at times, the Methodist leadership would have
been happy to see it fade away. It was envisaged as being a kind of
élite Christian village, with higher than normal standards of
behaviour and commitment. And, most significantly, it was formed
and developed in an area claimed by white colonials as their land,
not on "reserves" set aside for Africans.
It was this last factor that made it a target for the apartheid
regime's policy of mass removals of "black spots". At this point,
the author engages in detail with the national issues concerned,
with the oppressive intricacies of the South African laws and
customs regarding land-tenure. She makes it clear that the
displacing of Africans by the theft of their lands was going on
long before it was hardened into national policy by the apartheid
regime. Deeper than their protest against Bantu Education, Job
Reservation, the Immorality Act, or their exclusion from the
franchise, it was the sense that they had been cheated out of their
land that stirred the most painful anger in African people - and
still does.
This book offers a microcosm of the South African tragedy at
this level, and as such is a valuable window into 200 years of
oppression. Successive British governments enabled and permitted
this oppression, which is deep in our culture. Our treatment of
land as a commodity and our notion of outright ownership amount to
theft from our Creator as well as from our neighbour; for "the
earth is the Lord's."
The Rt Revd John Davies is a former Bishop of Shrewsbury;
for 15 years he was a mission priest and university chaplain in
South Africa.