The Role of the Missionaries in conquest - Chapter VIII - “Christianity and Civilization”

From the book: The Role of the Missionaries in conquest by Nosipho Majeke

IN THE EIGHTEEN-FIFTIES and after, British politicians were wont to invoke Divine Providence, the Queen and the might of Empire in one breath. As they saw it, "God's purpose was to make the Anglo-Saxon race predominant." Inspired by the profits of Empire, the language of politicians soared to heaven while rivers of blood of the oppressed people were flowing throughout the earth.

It was right and fitting that the missionaries, as agents of the Government, should take up this lofty tone of high moral responsibility, but what is surprising is to find it put into the mouth of a Black chief. In his book "Chief Moroka," S. M. Molema quotes the following letter as coming from the IRolong; chief to Sir George Grey:

"We desire to tender our warmest thanks to Her Majesty Queen Victoria for being an eye to the blind in sending a God-fearing man as Governor and High Commissioner to this benighted land, whose philanthropic heart has done so much already for that temporal and spiritual improvement of the aborigines both here and in other countries, and whose name guarantees further blessings for the future."

Sir George Grey was thus hailed as the great liberal administrator of brought the blessings of Christianity and Civilization to the African people. Let us see what exactly Grey planned and carried out in relation the peoples of this country. He was the first administrator who was not a military man and the choice is significant of the new stage reached in the subjugation of the Africans. The corner-stone of his policy was to break the power of the chiefs and destroy the tribal system, a task for which he had received ample training, for he had just come from the subjugation of the Maoris of New Zealand by methods that were to become familiar in his new sphere of colonial activity. He may well be called the direct inheritor of Dr. Philip's schemes for the expansion of the British Empire. His plans were as sweeping as the military plunder that had preceded him and paved the way for the application of those plans.

As we have said, the breaking down of one system, tribalism, was at the same time directed to the integration of the conquered peoples into the economic system of the invaders. If this was to bring "Christianity and Civilization" to the African people, we must carefully analyse the process, or we are left with an empty 'phrase that does nothing to explain how the people, who were set road by Grey's far-reaching schemes, are to-day destitute of human rights in the land of their birth. At this point we would do well to recall our first question: where did the missionaries come from? What was the nature of the civilization that sent them throughout the world to christianize the Non-White peoples? We indicated that to answer this question is to find the key to the activities of the most liberal of politicians as well as the most humanitarian of missionaries and the most ruthless of military commanders.

Sir George Grey took a practical view of his task when he said: "The Natives are to become useful servants, consumers of our goods, contributors to our revenue, in short, a source of strength and wealth to this Colony, such as Providence designed them to be."

We can at once recognise the similarity between this and Dr. Philip's statement when he demonstrated the benefits of "liberating" the Khoikhoin:

"By adopting a more liberal system of policy towards this interesting class of subjects, they will be more productive, there will be an increased consumption of British manufactures, taxes will be paid and farmers will have no cause to complain of a lack of labour."

Philip, Calderwood, Grey, they alt handled the same problem, each one carrying the solution a step further. The end of aim of Grey's policy was to create an army of workers who would actually build up the new civilization, known as "Western Civilization." By every possible means he sought to bind the Africans to a money economy. This applied to chiefs and headmen as well as to the mass of the people.

Money Economy

Grey's first line of approach was extremely simple. He proposed to employ Africans on public works, the making of roads and such like, which would open up their country to further penetration. For their labour they would receive payment in money, the coin of the new economy. He had tried this out on the tribes of southern Australia and later in New Zealand, and boasted that he had never found it to fail. When half the day's toil was over, they would receive sixpence; at the end of the day, another sixpence. Sometimes they received payment in kind, such as sugar, salt or coffee, the White man's food. When they were fined, the payment of the fine had to be in money.

This process of binding the Africans to a money economy had a revolutionising effect on all relationships within the tribe. It tended to dissolve the old tribal allegiances, to break those ancient ties between the people and the chiefs, between the headman and the chiefs, and also that allegiance of the chiefs and headmen towards the people.

The attack on the position of the chiefs was an important part of Grey's scheme. The problem of depriving them of power had long exercised the mind of military governors, since the chiefs were the leaders of their people in war as well as in peace. And the military machine had done its work pretty thoroughly. Insecurity had of itself disrupted the orderly life of the community and hunger was a mighty weapon of conquest. How could a chief, as head of his tribe, carry out his traditional functions, if the material conditions necessary to it were being razed to the ground? With his position thus weakened, it was an easy matter to undermine it further by forcing on him a representative of the Government. This policy had already been applied by Smith and it remained only for Grey to pursue it more vigorously.

There were three lines of attack: first, payment of the chief in money; secondly, placing a White magistrate over the chief; thirdly, driving a wedge between the headman and the chief. As to the first:

"Under such a plan" (of payment), wrote Grey, "every chief will be dependent on the Government and will, therefore, have the strongest interest in its maintenance and success."

This was a cynically accurate observation. The chief, having thus relinquished his independence, would owe allegiance to the master who paid him. No longer could he afford to be the guardian of his people. The logical result of going to the little box to receive his pay, was that he could be utilized to betray his people.

The second part of the scheme was, of course, bound up with the first; the money payment was supposed to be a convenient substitute for the revenue derived from fines, which the chief would lose if cases were tried by a White magistrate. But by submitting to such an arrangement he lost very much more than his revenue. He lost his very birthright, his chieftainship. The Government adopted the usual lactic of professing to have the welfare of the people at heart””including that of the chief. Grey proposed that the chief should be "daily brought into contact with a talented and honourable European gentleman who will hourly interest himself in the advance and improvement of the entire tribe." One such European gentleman privately reported that:

"I have carefully explained to the chief that I have to act as his friend and not as the chief of his tribe. ... I need scarcely say I laboured to correct the impression that white men were to be sent by the Government as chiefs."

We need scarcely say the truth was far otherwise. The magistrate constituted a new authority directing the people to a new allegiance, away from the chief. The law was the law of the Great White Queen. The African believed he could appeal to the Great White Queen for justice. Thus the minds of the people were prepared for the acceptance of a system of laws that were to bind them fast to the wheels of the new economy. Likewise in the payment of headmen the Government drove a wedge, not only between them and their chief, but between them and their people. They, too, in serving a new master could be used to betray their people. Grey's immediate purpose, however, was to undermine the power of the chiefs. A certain Mr. Chalmers, a magistrate's clerk, has left a record of the scheme.

"The instructions of Sir George Grey were that we were to treat the councillors or headmen in such a manner as to win them from their chiefs to the Government and by their instrumentality win the people to us and overthrow the chiefs, who had always been such a source of anxiety, danger and loss to the whole country and to the Imperial Government."

"Our main hope and power in carrying out the policy," he continued, "lay in the councillors. Through them a great revolution was quietly, unostentatiously, but surely effected in the (future) management of the natives."

And he concluded with the following words:

"Suffice it is to say that the power of the chiefs has been completely and forever broken."
An apt footnote to all these schemes is supplied by Senator
Brookes in his book, "The History of Native Policy in South Africa."

He writes:

"Doubtless the fact that the Grey System was financially self-supporting weighed heavily in its favour at the Colonial Office. The payments to chiefs and headmen were met out in the annual Hut Tax."

First problem of education

These levers or instruments for transforming the lives of the people and their modes of thought were not left to operate by themselves. They were reinforced by other powerful agencies. In fact, the problem presented itself as one of educating the people into the economic system of their conquerors. This was a many-sided task involving much more than formal teaching; at this stage, it meant opening up channels that led imperceptibly but inescapably to the new economy. Grey was aware of the many-sidedness of the task and enlisted the aid of those most fitted for it. He placed the missionaries at the centre of his schemes for education. He gave financial support for increased missionary activity and the establishment of mission school. It is clear he related education, directly to his labour policy. Soon after his arrival he called a meeting of missionaries at Lovedale and laid his plans before them. “Native” education, he said, was too bookish. In handling the Maoris of New Zealand (whom he had had under his jurisdiction for nine years) he had found it most useful to promote schemes for industrial education. He now proposed that the missionary institutions should undertake the same training for African students, and gave them increased grants for the purpose. Several centres for training in "the more useful mechanical arts" were established; the Rev. Ayliff, for example, became the head of an industrial college at Healdtown, while Lovedale fell into line with the new policy. Consultation between the Governor and the heads of Lovedale College (writes Dr. Shepherd in his "History of Lovedale" ) resulted in "a cordial understanding and agreement between them as to the institution, to - be conducted by the mission, under the patronage and with the assistance of Government." While the Institution was now to be combined with an industrial department, the missionaries were instructed to "give higher education to a portion of the native youths, to raise up among them what might be called an educated class, from which might be selected teachers of the young, catechists, evangelists and ultimately even fully-qualified preachers of the gospel." Moreover, African teacher-missionaries, thus trained, were to receive special Government grants towards their salaries.

Two points are noteworthy here. First, Grey's educational policy recognised the necessity for creating a special, privileged "class" of educated Africans who would carry out the work of the missionaries among their own people ”” a class which, like the headmen and the chiefs, would tend to owe allegiance, not to their own people, but to the Government of the White man. As the astute Governor had said of his plan to subsidize the chiefs: "They will have the strongest interest in its maintenance and success."

Secondly, we would observe how consistent the rulers have been in relating the education of the Black man to their economic needs, to their requirements of labour. From the beginning up to the Eiselin Commission of 1952 the question has always been: How shall we prepare the Black man for his particular place in this society? Inspired by faith in the White man's Christianity and Civilization, the Black man assumed that he would share in its benefits. But the rulers were never in any doubt as to the particular place he should occupy in that civilization, and the particular education required for it. Like Rhodes, Grey emphasised the necessity to "eradicate native indolence." His schemes for training Africans in "the more useful mechanical arts," flowed from his original standpoint that" The Natives are to become useful servants . . . such as Providence designed them to be." Grey's generous support of the missionaries was recognition of how far-reaching their influence could be. Taking their educational task in its wider aspect, they had to help to build up a whole system of new ideas, new needs and desires, new allegiances, new authorities, and a new morality, all leading to an acceptance of the new civilization by the Africans. From the beginning the mission station was a school where Christian dogma and moral instruction went hand in hand. The convert was taught the importance of faith and obedience to the word of God, and the indisputability of faith as being above reason. Thus his individual relationship to God set up a new authority in his mind. At the same time he learned new ideas of good and evil, reward and punishment and sin, ideas appropriate to the White man's civilization. The tribal morality, that had hitherto exercised authority over him, became immorality. For example, the custom of lobolo was denounced as "the sin of buying wives."

The new morality had a great deal to do with the undermining of tribal culture. But the particular aspect we stress here is the link between the new morality and the new money-economy.

Commerce and Christianity

One might say that the Lancashire cotton trade owed a debt of gratitude to the moral teachings of the missionaries. New needs and desires, and the new sense of the sinful body, led straight to the local trading-store. But a man could buy nothing there without paying for it, in the coin of the White man, or in cattle or grain, or by getting into debt. So he had no choice but to go out and labour for the White man. Now as to their connection with trade the missionaries themselves were perfectly frank. We recall Dr. Philip's emphasis on the creation of "artificial wants." The Rev. Kay, a Wesleyan missionary, put it neatly when he said:

"Christianity laid the foundations of Commerce." And Charles Brownlee, son of the Rev. Brownlee, and magistrate with the maNgqika, could state from practical experience. "To the missionaries mainly we owe the great revenue derived from native trade."

It is a long tradition that has linked Commerce with Christianity.

In the Middle Ages the economic expansion of Europe was at the root of the Christian Crusades against the Mohammedans; the Spanish and Portuguese slave-traders and plunderers of the New World went forth with a holy cross at the mast-head of their ships; it was the combined inspiration of Christian piety and profit that sent the Elizabethan adventurers in the late sixteenth century to join in the commercial crusade begun by their rivals and that had stood the British in good stead from that time onwards. In Grey's time there was a certain David Livingstone, who, though he wore the sober black cloth of a Scots minister of the gospel, carried on something of the tradition of the Elizabethan adventurers. He and Grey kept up a keen correspondence on the question of opening up Central Africa to commerce and Christianity, establishing British settlements on the Zambesi and founding a great cotton trade.

"We (missionaries) are spoken of in contempt as traders," wrote Livingstone, "but who has a better right to trade than we? Who in fairness ought to reap the profits of the markets, which we make and render secure, than ourselves?"

Such were the links, then, between Christianity, commerce and labour. While the African had no means of knowing the economic implications of his act of faith, Christianity did not exist in a vacuum. Its evangelists spoke freely of heaven and hell, but its roots were planted firmly in the capitalist civilization of their masters, an industrial civilization that was sending its many agents into Africa, Asia and India in the search for new markets and raw materials, for new lands to conquer and countless Black hands to labour for it. Christianity itself was an ideological weapon of what was called "Western Civilization."

The Nongqause cattle killing

We have seen the remarkable range of Grey's plans in relation to the Africans. The still more remarkable thing is that Providence seemed to take a hand in his scheme. Every step in his policy had been designed to increase the labour force required on the farms and in the towns and villages springing up in the Colony. The Nongqause Cattle-Killing, an act of terrible faith on the part of the Xhosa and Thembu people, increased that labour force by hundreds of thousands. From the hearsay records that have come down to us, the story may be briefly told.

One day a young girl by the name of Nongqause, the daughter of Mhlakaza, came running to tell her father that some strange people had appeared in a boat on the river near her home. She had been afraid of them, because they were light complexioned, and though they spoke in her own tongue, she had never seen such people before. But they had signed to her and addressed her in a friendly way. At her news, Mhlakaza hastened with Nongqause to see what manner of men they were. On arriving at the spot, he could not at first see anyone, but Nongqause pointed out their shadows among the tall reeds. The strangers did not reveal their identity and, while still concealing themselves, reassured Mhlakaza that they came as his friend and the friend of his people. They had heard of the sufferings of the Xhosa people and pitied their distressed condition.

Then with a great air of mystery they told Mhlakaza that they knew of a way to restore peace and bring happiness and plenty to his people. Mhlakaza greatly wondered at what the strangers had to say and again they assured him that they had come from far across the water in their great desire to help the maXhosa. When they had said all, they disappeared among the reeds as mysteriously as they had come.

Now Mhlakaza, who was a seer, was much moved at what the strangers had commanded him to do, and he and Nongqause went and told the people all that they had heard. They bade them prepare for the day of liberation, the "Great Day of the Lord." They prophesied the resurrection of men and cattle, and the tilling of the fields with ripe corn where no man had sowed: dead heroes ”” Makhanda, Ngqika, Hintsa””would rise again and lead their people into freedom. The heavens themselves would herald the dawn of that day of liberation, for the sun would descend, not to the west, but to the east; there would be darkness and thunder and lightning and a mighty whirlwind would sweep the While man down into the sea together with all those who did not believe the prophesy. But before these miracles could come to pass, the people were commanded to slaughter all their cattle, cast away all their grain, leave their corn-pits empty and their fields untilled.

Many among the Ngqika, Gcaleka and Thembu tribes believed this prophecy, but many refused to believe. "The cattle are the race, they being dead, the race dies." said a Thembu chief, and refused to slaughter his cattle. On the other hand it is said that Suthu, mother of Sandile, and the first woman among the Ngqika to become christianized, urged the fulfilling of this monstrous deed. No situation could have been better calculated to hasten the disintegration that had already begun and bring about greater disunity. So desperate a belief was in itself a mark of the demoralisation of the people. Several chiefs tried to stem the tide of fanaticism that swept the country; chief was divided against chief, brother against brother. Famine and fratricidal strife delivered the Africans into the hands of the White man. It was never possible to reckon how many people perished, though it has been estimated at many thousands. Those who survived streamed southwards search of food.

Origin of the cattle killing?

A mystery has been allowed to surround the origin of the Nodiqause Cattle-Killing. The customary Government Commission of Enquiry after the event concentrated on proving the guilt of the chiefs””not for the first time””and much herrenvolk ink has subsequently been spilt endorsing its conclusions. Those who describe Hintsa, Chief of the maGcaleka, as "that treacherous and ungrateful savage," ask us to believe that Sarili, his son, and Moshoeshoe, Chief of the baSotho, together concocted this dire plan of self destruction in order to let loose a desperate and maddened horde upon the Colony. As recent a writer as Dr. J. van der Poel has stated:

"There is no doubt at all that Moshesh was the instigator of the unrest, his idea being to precipitate a crowd of starving kaffirs on the Colony while he dealt with the Free State."

We totally reject such an explanation of the event. In the midst of the plunder and intrigue of Boer and British going on around him, every effort of Moshoeshoe's acute intelligence was directed to saving and unifying his people, not to their destruction. Charles Brownlee, the magistrate, remarked of the Nongqause Cattle-Killing that "This will do more to destroy the people than any war" ””which was indeed true. All the more impossible, therefore, for Moshoeshoe to resort to so desperate a plan, whose prime effect was to fling the already disorganised Xhosa into greater confusion and disunity. This same Brownlee, in his "Reminiscences," reveals how he utilizes the perplexity into which Sandile was thrown by the prophet’s command to slaughter his cattle, to widen the breach between him and his brother, Maqoma. It may be said here that the herrenvolk argument, even on their own evidence, was not proven. The Basutoland Records show the Chief Commissioner of "Kaffraria," Colonel Maclean, the magistrate, Charles Brownlee, and the missionary, the Rev. John Ayliff, all trying to find proof of collusion between Moshoeshoe and Sarili, yet in 1856 they have to report””as Ayliff had done in the case of Hintsa””that "though they used their utmost endeavours, they have failed in learning anything of these or later messages." If Moshoeshoe's envoys brought to Sarili the message of unity, it was in keeping with his policy; but that he was the instigator of the wholesale slaughter of cattle, is wholly alien to that policy. As we have suggested, it was in British interests to isolate Moshoeshoe from any possible ally, so that the disorganisation of the maXhosa brought about by the Cattle-Killing, strengthened the position of the Government and weakened that of Moshoeshoe.

Herrenvolk historians themselves comment on the strange absence of any attempt to attack the Colony, which, they allege, was the reason for destroying the cattle. This was in marked CONTRAST to the behaviour of the Xhosa chiefs in 1850 when they carefully planned a concerted attack from three directions. But there was nothing strange about it. Since 1846, not to speak of what had gone before, they had been continually harried by open aggression, and just prior to the Cattle-Killing, Smith had, in his own words, "carried on systematically that devastation that will induce the people to submit to terms." And when did a people ever prepare for war by famine?

Grey's own behaviour contradicts the alleged fear of a violent attack on the Colony. In the period preceding the promised day of miraculous liberation, he had been buying up cheaply the grain so recklessly squandered and the cattle that could not be slaughtered fast enough by a people crazed by faith. Without undue haste or anxiety he bade his military commander have a force in readiness, while he himself, shortly before the Day, entered the territory to see for himself the extent of the self-destruction of the people, and, as it is recorded, brought back with him two or three captured chiefs. Then, as a disillusioned and starving people, leaving their dead behind them, made their way into the Colony, they were received by the magistrates, and sent as labourers wherever required. It is estimated that about 34,000 took service with White farmers.

While it is not important””or indeed necessary””to disprove the accusations of the Government against the chiefs, it clears the way to ask: what, then, lay behind the Nongqause Cattle Killing? The more one looks into this national tragedy, the more one realizes that the falsification permeating the whole of the herrenvolk history of South Africa distorts this event also.

To this day many Africans are of the opinion that the strangers to spoke so mysteriously to the young Nongqause and then concealed themselves the reeds, were actually sent by the White people. Be that as it may, one has to meet the fact that the destruction of cattle was directly””even violently””opposed to the whole social system of the maXhosa and therefore at variance with their whole way of thinking. How, then, could they have been moved to carry out an act of faith that led to their destruction? It could only happen to a people in a profound state of demoralization, and in one sense it marked the final triumph of the British military machine that had been battering at tribalism for more than fifty years. But the particular form in which that demoralization expressed itself was, in our opinion, due to the influence of the missionaries, in fact, directly due to their teachings.

It is well known that the more desperate a people become, the more prone they are to call upon supernatural aid. They seek deliverance from an intolerable position. In this instance the soil had been well ploughed by the relentless devastations of war, so that the Christian message of peace would gain a willing hearing. How often must the missionaries have taught the blessings of faith and told the tale of how the ancient Israelites were by a series of miracles delivered from bondage and led into a promised land, flowing with milk and honey was not the first time, nor the last, that an oppressed people themselves with the Israelites, whose story of deliverance from yoke of the oppressor is part of the heritage of christians.

The impact of the White man's religion was capable of producing just such an act of blind faith as the Nongqause Cattle-Killing involved. Here was an appeal to the supernatural to which the people were all too ready to respond. Before the unknown forces of nature, the tribalist's only weapon is the magic rite; and confronted with the military force of an unknown civilization, he would seize upon those elements in the Christian gospel which seemed most likely to offer him protection: the belief in miracles, the resurrection of the dead, the promise of peace and plenty after tribulation and sorrow. It is in this sense that we say the Nongqause Cattle-Killing was missionary-inspired. It was the first fruits of the subjugation over the minds of the people. At the end of the wars of aggression the people were in a condition to be swept into a madness by wild rumour, superstition and faith.

In trying to assess how such a national tragedy occurred it is legitimate to be guided by a judgment of its results. At one stroke Sir George Grey's labour requirements were satisfied beyond expectation. The cattle had been slaughtered and the corn-pits were empty, but his labour bureaus were filled to the brim. The magistrates””Grey's "honourable European gentlemen" ””worked over-time drafting thousands of starving men to the various applicants for cheap labour; like the missionaries before them they had to become recruiting agents. Thousands of men were indentured to farmers for a term of five years at the rate of 5/- a month. (See "Native Labour in South Africa," by Sheila van der Horst.) So great was the embarrassment of riches from the destitution of the Africans that in 1857, the year of the Nongqause Cattle-Killing, six Acts of Parliament were passed to control the "influx of Natives." If herrenvolk historians can ascribe to Grey at this time the role of the "saviour of thousands," then equally may they describe the Rehabilitation Scheme (the second "Nongqause" ) as a scheme to "save" the Reserves.

With new territorial gains, also, the Governor could now pursue his plans for the importation of large numbers of European immigrants. For this, he had sent an armed force against Sarili and the remaining maGcaleka to drive them across the Bashee to a bare tract of territory near the sea. To the land that was already dead through an act of blind faith, had succeeded a state of war””Ilizwe lifile. In the confiscated territory Grey planted German legionaries and peasants, leaving some Reserves for "loyal Natives." In so doing he aimed to cut off Moshoeshoe from the coast tribes and link the Cape Colony in the north-east with Natal.

This faithful servant of British Imperialism had this in common with Dr. Philip, Rhodes and General Smuts, that his vision was never confined merely to the Cape. Beyond its borders the conflict between Black and White on the military level was still in progress and it was by no means certain yet that the issue would be in flavour of the Whites.

In the Cape Colony, however, the military power of the maXhosa and the baThembu had been broken; a vast labour force had acquired and the Europeans could look forward to a period of unprecedented prosperity. From Dr. van der Horst's "Native Labour in South Africa" we get some idea of the extent of economic development during the late fifties of last century. Farming, trade and industry nourished; import and export figures showed a rapid rise.

Grey's importation of thousands of Indian labourers, too, was an index of the ever-growing need for cheap labour. The pattern of modern South African society was in the making.

In summing up the results of the Nongqause Cattle-Killing, the picture would not be complete if we omitted the fact that the missionaries were now in a position to exercise their various functions on a much larger scale than before. In his "History of Lovedale," Dr. Shepherd writes:

"Doors were opened for missionary work in hitherto untouched districts and a period of steady and afterwards rapid expansion began."

During the wars of aggression against the maXhosa the missionaries had assisted the Government in a variety of ways, their most distinctive role being that of agents of "divide and rule." In assessing the forces that brought about the downfall of the maXhosa, there is no doubt that a most important factor was the breach made in the Xhosa ranks by the missionaries. The first and catastrophic breach was that which separated Ngqika from Hintsa and Ndlambe, thus setting Xhosa against Xhosa. This was the crucial point of disruption. At the very time when these three should have been welded into one force””for together they were in a strong position and the British knew it””Ngqika was persuaded to accept the "friendship" of Britain, and with his own hand he gave the enemy access MA Xhosa territory. The winning over of Phatho and his brothers by the Wesleyans further widened that breach between Xhosa and Xhosa. The division between Gcaleka and Fingo was not comparable in its effects to that first betrayal by Ngqika. It came at a time when the Xhosa military strength was already seriously impaired.

While the impression is frequently conveyed that Fingo regiments were used in the wars against the Xhosa, the truth of the matter is they were a comparatively small group and their military contribution necessarily insignificant. We cannot get away from the fact that the House of Phalo (Xhosa) was defeated largely by the actions of the Xhosa themselves.

Grey's administration had opened up a new stage of conquest and with it a new era of economic development. Within this framework an extended field of activity lay before the missionaries. Their educational task had only begun. A large labour force had been precipitated into the economic system of the conquerors, but their hold over it was a precarious one and would have to be reinforced by every device of persuasion as well as compulsion. This is where the missionaries could play an indispensable part. They would have to be the educators preparing the Non-Europeans as a whole to take their particular place in the new civilization; they would have to be the conciliators reconciling them to that place in society.

Their task would be to disarm the people morally and intellectually in order to ensure the continuance of White domination.

The achieving of British supremacy in Southern Africa, however, was still far from being completed on the military plane. In the following chapters we shall attempt to give it in broad outline, indicating how the activities of the missionaries fitted into the other fields of conquest. As the military aggression accelerates, they necessarily recede into the background. But we must not lose sight of the fact that precisely as the territorial conquest advances, so the secondary function of the missionary as educator comes increasingly into force. With the completion of the military phase of conquest the missionary emerges as an all-important agent in assisting the herrenvolk in their attempt to perpetuate the subjugation of the people.