Hot meetings and hard kraals: African biblewomen in Transvaal Methodism, 1924-60

Missionalia

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 73-104

  Gaitskell, Deborah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849340481     PISSN: 02569507     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (75)

1. This paper was originally published, with permission, in the Journal of Religion in Africa, XXX-3 (2000), pp.277-309
2. M. Brandel-Syrier, Black Woman in Search of God (London, 1962), p. 97
3. See also D. Gaitskell, 'Devout Domesticity'? A Century of African Women's Christianity in South Africa, in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, 1990)
4. A. Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 595, 602
5. D. Gaitskell. Power in Prayer and Service: Women's Christian Organizations, in R. Elphick and R Davenport (eds.), Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History (Oxford and Capetown, 1997), p. 254
6. M. Epprecht, Domesticity and Piety in Colonial Lesotho: The Private Politics of Basotho Women's Pious Associations, Journal of South African Studies 19, 2 (June 1993), p. 223
7. D. Gaitskell, Praying and Preaching: The Distinctive Spirituality of African Women's Church Organizations, in H. Bredekamp and R. Ross (eds.), Missions and Christianity in South African History (Johannesburg, 1995)
8. F. D. Muzorewa, Through Prayer to Action: The Rukwadzano Women of Rhodesia, in T. Ranger and J. Weller (eds), Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa (London, 1975)
9. T. Ranger, Are We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family and African Politics in Zimbabwe1920-64 (London, 1995), pp. 39-43
10. D. Maxwell, Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People (Westport, 1999), pp. 106-8
11. T. Mpumlwana, "My Perspective on Women and Their Role in Church and Society", in D. Ackerman, J. A. Draper and E. Mashinini (eds), Women Hold Up Half the Sky: Women in the Church in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 1991), p. 372
12. On the influential role of clergy wives further north, see Anne Marie Stoner-Eby, "Not Merely Cooks: The Missionary Wives of the African Leadership of the Universities" Mission to Central Africa, 1880-1940", unpublished paper presented to seminar on Gender in Empire and Commonwealth, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1999
13. S. Bourquin (ed.), Paulina Dlamini: Servant of Two Kings, comp. By H. Filter (Pietermaritzburg, 1986), p. 86, 82-5, 93, 108
14. R. R. Edgar and H. Sapire, African Apocalypse: The Story of Nintetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet (Athens, Ohio, 2000), Chs. 1,2
15. T. Scarnecchia, 'Mai Chaza's Guta re Jehova (City of God): Gender, Healing and Urban Identity in an African Independent Church, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, (1997), pp. 91-2
16. School of Oriental and African Studies, Methodist Missionary Society Archives (MMS) 1141, Aliwal North Quarterly Report, 1917
17. Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, Annual Report (1927), P. 57; MMS 845, Kidwell to Ayre, 4 Dec. 1938
18. R. A. Tucker and W. Liefeld, Daughters of the Church (Grand Rapids, 1987), p. 340
19. R. A. Tucker, The Role of the Bible Women In World Evangelism, Missiology: An International Review, XIII, 2, April 1985, p. 141
20. as quoted in P. Attwell (ed), Take Our Hands: The Methodist Women"s Auxiliary of Southern Africa 1916-1996 (Cape Town, 1997), p. 75
21. F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1980), pp. 126-128
22. L. Williamson, Heavenly Bodies: The Biblewomen in 19th Century London, paper presented to the Women's Historical Network Conference, London, Sept. 1996
23. J. Haggis, 'Good Wives and Mothers' or 'Dedicated Workers'? Contradictions of Domesticity in the 'Mission Sisterhood', Travancore, South India, in K. Ram and M. Jolly (eds.), Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge, 1998)
24. St Cuthbert's Mission in the Diocese of St John's, Kaffraria, Report for 1916
25. Attwell, Take Our Hands, ch. 6
26. J. D. Y. Peel, Two Pastors and their Histories. Samuel Johnson and C. C. Reindorf, in P. Jenkins (ed.), The Recovery of the West African Past - African Pastors and African History in the Nineteenth Century: C. C. Reindorf and Samuel Johnson (Basel, 1988), p. 75
27. and J. D. Y. Peel, Problems and Opportunities in an Anthropologist's Use of a Missionary Archive, in R. A. Bickers and R. Seton (eds.), Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues (Richmond, 1996)
28. Hastings, The Church in Africa, pp. 437-8
29. Transvaal Methodist (hereafter TM - copies read in Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown), June 23, p. 21; Aug. 1923, pp. 29-30
30. For the wider historical context, see W. J. G. Mears, Methodism in the Transvaal: An Outline (n. p. n. d.;?Johannesburg, ?1972)
31. Wesleyan Methodist Church Directory of the Transvaal and Swaziland District (hereafter WMC Tvl Directory), 1924-5, p. 38
32. TM, Sept. 1924, pp. 22-3
33. TM, Nov. 1924, pp. 24-5. I have also used Mrs Allcock"s original typescript, "Transvaal Methodist. November 1924. First Biblewoman", shown me by her daughter Ruth in 1978
34. Allcock Papers, Mrs Allcock to her family, 15 Oct. 1924
35. TM, March 1925, p. 23
36. A cart and donkey were provided for her a couple of years later, so she could consolidate work in more distant kraals. WMC Tvl Directory, 1928-9, p. 31
37. TM, Feb. 1926, pp.25-6
38. TM, Dec. 1934, p. 19
39. TM, Sept. 1927, pp. 22-3
40. TM, Feb. 1929, p. 15
41. Edgar and Sapire, African Apocalypse, pp. 3-15, 48-51
42. T. Clynick, Community Politics on the Lichtenburg Alluvial Diamond Fields, 1926-1929, in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, 1987), pp. 236, 241
43. The 'poor whites' of the diggings have been researched rather more than the blacks, but see also C Van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 144-163, for the attempts of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union to organise black workers on the diggings and nearby farms in 1928-29, and the white police assessment of black locations on alluvial diggings a little further south near Makwassie as slums populated by beer brewers, prostitutes and men with no visible means of support'
44. T. Clynick, 'Digging a Way into the Working Class': Unemployment and Consciousness amongst the Afrikaner Poor on the Lichtenburg Alluvial Diamond Diggings, 1926-1929, in R. Morrell (ed.), White But Poor: Essays on the History of Poor Whites in Southern Africa 1880-1940 (Pretoria, 1992), pp. 72, 86
45. H. Bradford, We Women Will Show Them: Beer Protests in the Natal Countryside, 1929, in J. Crush and C. Ambler (eds.), Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens, Ohio, 1992), pp. 220-221
46. Ellen Hellmann's research, quoted in P. La Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1988), p. 46, section on Liquor and Popular Resistance, 1920-1936
47. A Colbey, The Rules of the Game: Struggles in Black Recreation and Social Welfare Policy in South Africa (Westport, 1997), p. 114, in a fascinating chapter, Kill-the-Weekend: Social Drinking, Drunkenness, and Temperance among the African Middle Class
48. For two key Tswana temperance advocates, Dr. Molema and Sol Plaatje, see La Hausse, Brewers, p. 20
49. P. Landau, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1995), p. 109
50. TM, Feb. 1944, p. 14
51. TM, April 1948, p. 6
52. TM, Feb 1933, pp. 18-19
53. J. Crush, "The Construction of Compound Authority: Drinking at Havelock, 1938-1944", in Crush and Ambler, Liquor and Labour, pp. 368-72. The Havelock asbestos mine was near Piggs Peak - but only opened in 1938, after Claudia Nkosi had died
54. Allcock papers, "Bible Woman"s Report 1st June to 30th September, 1929", passim
55. TM, July 1930, p. 17
56. TM, May 1936, p. 12
57. TM, July 1938, p. 17
58. TM, Sept. 1939, p. 19
59. TM, June 1940, p. 15
60. TM, Sept. 1941, p. 20
61. TM, Aug. 1942, p. 10
62. TM, June 1943, p. 14
63. TM, May 1946, p. 14
64. TM, Jan. 1949, p. 11
65. Lovedale Missionary Institution. Handbook of Information for Parents and Guardians (Lovedale Press, 1950), pp. 19-20
66. K. Bliss, The Service and Status of Women in the Churches (London, 1952), p. 111
67. File: "Reports on Women from Lovedale Bible School", from G. Owen Lloyd, 11 Dec. 1946
68. "Lovedale Bible School Annual Report 1948", pp. 2-3, 12
69. Lovedale Missionary Institution Report for 1955 (Lovedale), p. 18
70. Proverbs 20:1 again! On Payneville, see P. Bonner, Backs to the Fence: Law, Liquor, and the Search for Social Control in East Rand Town, 1929-42, in Crush and Ambler, Liquor and Labor
71. Methodist Missionary Review, 1953, 1955, p. 51; 1959, p. 31; Cory MS 15,604 Biblewomen, Box: National & Cape District, File: "Sundry Correspondence", 2, "List of Biblewomen 1960-61". File 1 has the chilling aside from a WA member who had been given permission to destroy irrelevant correspondence: she had not done away with any past records, "only a pile of personal Biblewomen reports, which really were not of use to anyone." M. Massey to Mrs Filmer, 18.11.1953
72. Cory MS 15,604 Biblewomen, Box: National & Cape District, File: 'Sundry Correspondence', 2, 'Biblewomen's and African Nurses' Report" [1960-61]
73. F. M. Carey, Opportunities for and Constraints on Women's Ministry in the Church in Pakistan, essay for M. Th. course, Edinburgh University, notes concern by 1965 at the poor image of the Biblewomen's ministry in the Christian community in Pakistan, which led to a cessation of such training in 1966. The quality of candidates had declined - families seemingly sending those 'neither intelligent enough to get a well paid job like teaching or nursing, nor marriageable [perhaps with a physical disability]' (pp. 2-3). I am most grateful to Freda Carey for sharing the fruit of her experience working in theological education in Pakistan
74. D. M. Balia, Black Methodists and White Supremacy (Durban, 1991), ch. 6, 'Pilgrimage of Blackness'
75. Haggis, 'Good wives and mothers', pp. 93-94