Page 181 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

Nineteenth-Century Challenges and Progress

another “about-turn” (U-turn) with the establishment of a biblical, Spirit-
filled group of believers who will even go out of Timbuktu with good
news for other nations.

South African Christianity

I want to note that several forces were at work in South Africa during
the nineteenth century: (1) indigenous peoples with their traditional
religion; (2) Afrikaners, who were descendants of Dutch settlers and
saw themselves as a chosen people with divine right to the land; (3)
Cape Folk, or as often referred to by the Afrikaners, “Coloured,” some
of whom were descendants of slaves who had been brought to the Cape
as early as 1658 and others who were a mixture of Dutch, Khoi, and
Malagasy ancestry; (4) British immigrants; and (5) missionaries.

I have already noted the early missionary work at the Cape. For the
African, the influences of Dutch and British Christianity was far-reaching.
In 1795, the Cape was declared a British Colony. While the settlers became
independent for a few years in the early 1800s, the British once again
declared the Cape a British possession in 1814 after they successfully
negotiated a settlement from the Netherlands for $6 million (Paas, 70).
Then, many British citizens immigrated to the Cape, and British missionary
organizations, such as the London Missionary Society, soon followed.

The Dutch brought their religion with them to Africa. They were true
to the Protestant church in their homeland, which, in Dutch, was the
Nederduitch Gereformeerde Kerk. In English, we refer to it as the “Dutch
Reformed Church.” By the 1830s, the Afrikaners (also referred to as
Boers) began to feel uncomfortable in the Cape area because too many
other forces seemed to be at work. As a result, they withdrew and thus
began their “Great Trek” across the Orange River and into the interior
across the Vaal River. Here they met strong resistance from Shaka,
(the Chief of the Zulu) and his people. However, after much bloodshed,
they managed to establish the Orange Free State and the Transvaal
in the 1850s. Concerning this large migration of Afrikaners and the
development of a government based on superiority, Livingstone stated:

In their own estimation, they are the chosen people of God, and all
the coloured race are “black property” or “creatures”—heathen given

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