Land, Chiefs, Mining. Andrew Manson

two years of waiting in Rustenburg, they went to work among the baKgatla ba Kgafela in the Pilanesberg, with the permission of the most senior government official of the district, Commandant Paul Kruger. The Kgatla chief, Kgamanyane, allowed the Gonins (now with three children) to settle at Saulspoort, his headquarters. In June 1864, in order to have personal independence and also security of tenure, the Gonins bought their own farm, Welgeval (or Welgevallen), close to Saulspoort. Gonin was on good terms with Kgamanyane and quickly learnt Setswana but struggled to make converts among the reluctant baKgatla. There were, however, a large number of literate Africans living at Saulspoort – the oorlams. These were the men and women who Gonin recruited as his teacher-evangelists and depended upon for opening up new mission stations and spreading the gospel all over the Pilanesberg and up to the border with Bechuanaland. As the baKgatla were a people divided by an international border, their paramount chief living in Mochudi, Bechuanaland, Gonin opened another mission station there at the beginning of the twentieth century and converted many baKgatla to Christianity. Apart from his missionary work, Gonin also assisted the baKgatla to purchase land by registering it in his name, as during the nineteenth century Africans in the Transvaal were not allowed to register land in their own names. In 1910, Gonin had become the longest-serving DRC minister in South Africa, having served at Saulspoort continuously for forty-six years.

      FIGURE 6: Henri Gonin’s original church at Saulspoort, being renovated, 2014

       Source: The authors

      ENDNOTES

      1 Shillington, Luka Jantjie.

      2 Molema, Montshiwa.

      3 B. Mbenga and A. Manson, ‘People of the Dew’: A History of the Bafokeng of the Rustenburg District, South Africa, from Early Times to 2000 (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2010), 27-74; J. Bergh, ‘We Must Never Forget Where we Come From’: The Bafokeng and Their Land in the Nineteenth Century (History in Africa, 32 (2005); and G. J. Capps, ‘Tribal Landed Property: The Political Economy of the BaFokeng Chieftaincy, South Africa, 1837-1994’, D. Phil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2010.

      4 See M. Legassick, ‘The Sotho-Tswana peoples before 1800,’ in L. Thompson (ed.), African Societies in Southern Africa (London: Heinemann, 1969); Manson, ‘The Hurutshe in the Marico’, pp. 36-43.

      5 A. Manson, ‘Confict in the Western Highveld/Southern Kalahari, c. 1750 -1820’; and N. Parsons, ‘Prelude to the Difaqane in the Interior of Southern Africa, c.1600-1822, in C. Hamilton (ed.) The Mfecane Aftermath, Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History, (Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg: University of Witwatersrand Press and University of Natal Press, 1995).

      6 S. Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria (London 1833), pp. 225-227.

      7 J. Campbell, Travels in South Africa Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society Narrative of a Second Journey, (London: Westley, 1822) vol. 1, p.261.

      8 Records of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, Journal des Missions Evangelique, vol. 8, 1833, pp. 202-203.

      9 See Manson, ‘The Hurutshe in the Marico region’, pp. 66-74.

      10 Official correspondence of the London Missionary Society (henceforth LMS Correspondence), Box 23, Inglis to directors, 26 September 1848.

      11 This account of the baHurutshe during the Difaqane is taken from Manson, ‘The Hurutshe in the Marico District,’ pp. 62-90. More information on the relations between the baHurutshe and the Transvaal is available in A. Manson ‘The Hurutshe and the formation of the Transvaal state, 1835-1875’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 25, 1 (1992).

      12 LMS Correspondence, Box 24, Edwards to Tidman, 19 June 1849.

      13 LMS Correspondence, Edwards to directors, 9 September 1849.

      14 See Manson, ‘The Hurutshe’, pp. 96-98.

      15 LMS Correspondence, Inglis to Tidman, 24 August 1850.

      16 Landau uses the baHurutshe’s return to the Marico as a case in point for the creation of ‘tribes’ by Europeans during the colonial period. Potgieter apparently ‘stipulated that only “they, the Barurutse”’ [sic] could return to Mosega, thus ‘blocking add-ons, allies, subordinate lords and so on’. By so doing he allegedly fashioned the baHurutshe into a distinct ‘tribal’ entity. But the evidence suggests that they were quite heterogenous, nor had Potgieter any coercive means of enforcing such a stipulation. The notion that African communities were simply some sort of helpless ‘tabula rasa’ on which Europeans drew tribal maps is one that needs repudiating. See Popular Politics, p.121.

      17 Morton, ‘Slave Raiding’, pp. 102-3. ‘Captive Labour in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention’, in Eldredge and Morton (eds.), Slavery in South Africa, (Boulder and Scottsville: Westview Press and University of Natal Press, 1994), p. 175.

      18 J. Freeman, A Tour in South Africa (London 1851), p. 274.

      19 Delius, The Land Belongs to us: The Pedi Polity, the Boers, and the British in the Nineteenth Century Transvaal (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983) p. 35.

      20 Cited in Morton, ‘Slave Raiding’, 107; ‘Captive Labor in the Western Transvaal after the Sand River Convention’, in Eldredge and Morton (eds), Slavery in South Africa, p. 175.

      21 For more information on the oorlam phenomenon, see the seminal article by P. Delius and S.Trapido, “‘Inboekselings and Oorlams’: The Creation and Transformation of a Servile Class,’ Journal of Southern African Studies, vol.8, no 2, (1982).

      22 For an account of these communities see A. Manson and B. Mbenga, ‘The Evolution and Destruction of Oorlam Communities in the Rustenburg District of South Africa: The Cases of Welgeval and Bethlehem, c. 1850-1980”, African Historical Review, vol 41 (2), ( 2009); B. Tema, The People of Welgeval, (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2005) is an autobiographical account of growing up on the farm.

      23 National Archives’ Depot, Transvaal Archive (TA) of the State Secretary (henceforth SS), vol.5, r 468/53, Report of Viljoen’s Meeting by Afteraardigden (Representative), 16 January 1853. Unless indicated all archival sources are contained in the TA section of the SA Depot in Pretoria.

      24 For more detail see J.A.I. Agar-Hamilton, The Native Policy of the Voortrekkers, (Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1928), p. 116; and W. Cochrane, Memoirs of Reverend Walter Inglis (Toronto, 1887).

      25 Cited in R. Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895, (London, 1899), p. 596.

      26 Cited in J. Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa (London 1868), p. 88; and State Archives SS vol.5, r517/53 J.W. Viljoen to A.W. Pretorius, 16 April 1853.

      27 See J. Grobler, ‘Jan Viljoen, the South African Republic and the Bakwena, 1848-1882’, South African Historical Journal, no 36, (May 1997) pp. 241-249.

      28 For example the Swazi and the Ohrigstad trekkers, and in the Zoutpansberg.

      29 Grobler, ‘Jan Viljoen’, p. 247-248.

      30 Transvaal Archives, SS vol. 11, r1127/56, J.W. Viljoen to A.W. Pretorius, 30 July 1856.

      31 Cited in W. Kistner, The Anti-Slavery Agitation against the Transvaal Republic, 1852-1862 (Parow 1952), p. 221 from Eerste Volksraad Notule, E.R.V 105, 1858.

      32 Cited in Kistner, Anti-Slavery Agitation, p. 222, from LMS correspondence, Mackenzie to Tidman, 8 September 1864.

      33 Manson, ‘The Hurutshe in the Marico District’, pp. 142-144.

      34 HMB, Report from Linokana Station, 1864, p. 189.

      35 See G. Relly, ‘The Transformation of Rural Relationships in the Western Transvaal’, M.A Thesis, University of London, 1978; J. Bergh and H.M. Feinstein, ‘Trusteeship and