South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the ...

2.3 Images ofthe Other 57
'Heathen' Africans made a decisive effort to exclude mission-educated Africans and started to
quarantine those communities. The decision "not to intermarry with the Mission Natives, as they
have become as white men",115 resulted in a strict division between Christian and non-Christian
communities.
Christian Africans were well aware that traditional "chiefs [did] not desire to have Christians
amongst them, and [would] deal with undue severity [towards] them". When Adams met the Zulu
king Mpande in 1843, Mpande told him at first that he had told his people to "go to meeting and
attend to his [the missionary's] instructions. But the people soon began to call themselves the people
of the missionary, and refused to obey me; I had no authority over them - they cast off their
allegiance to their king, and were of no use to me".116 Without doubt there was a conflict of interests
as the king was convinced that "the missionary should not have told the people in the beginning
that he, the king, could not be their captain".117 Through this statement, it becomes clear that
the king and his chiefs were afraid of losing control over their people. Missionaries ought not to
''become the captains" of those who went to the mission stations. Amakholwa, however, recognised
their missionaries as leaders: a few missionaries were even accorded the title nkosi (chief) in addition
to the more common mfundisi (teacher).118
With a few exceptions, the resistance of traditional Nguni against Christianity aimed at preventing
the establishment of centres of disloyalty and subversion. 119 As a result, the heathen Africans
looked upon members of the mission-educated black middle class as "separate people" and even
their own relatives looked upon them "coldly".120 Amakholwa in fact were treated as "dead men or
strangers" and quite often, as a final insult, Zulus accorded the mission station residents the same
disparaging designation as that which white men gave to all blacks: "they called them kqffirl,.121
Their answer to the decision of amakholwa to join the mission stations and become converts was to
deprive them of the benefits as well as the duties of their Zulu citizenship. In other words, men and
women who consented to baptism ceased for all practical purposes to be Zulus: they lost all connections
to their tribes once they decided to become a converts. In accordance with their new condition,
they were not permitted to khonza (i.e., to pay homage to the king). Chiefs refused to allocate
land to Christians, who could hold property and farm only on mission stations. Finally, there was a
strict social exclusion as they were quite shut out from traditional festivals celebrations.
Etherington describes cases reported by missionaries of physical attacks and killings of converts
who wished to be baptised. l22 Until the end of the nineteenth century, Christianity and membership
of the Zulu nation were mutually exclusive. It is only in the twentieth century that the strict
115 Testimony of Mahobe, Evidence: 376.
116 Adams to Anderson, May 30, 1843 (ABC 15.4, II); quoted in N. Etherington, 1978: 75.
117 Ibid.
118 See N. Etherington, 1978: 99.
119 One exception to the condemnation of Christianity were the Qadi under king Mqhawe, who lived not far from the
Inanda mission station. Mqhawe reported that there was 'a whole school' of Christians in his tribe and gave the Inanda
mission station a qualified endorsement:
"It is a good thing that children should be taught; it makes men of them. I have a school in my location and I send my
children there. I was amongst the first chiefs to have missionaries in my tribe: I was at the school myself, but I left it
because it was said that becoming a Christian made people throwaway their wives. I do not send my daughters, but they
go to the service on Sundays. I am not settled or I would do so. I grew up amongst missionaries and I think it is a good
thing to have a good teacher... My uncle became a minister [he is referring to James Dube)". (Testimony of Umaqawe,
Evidence: 224, 228); quoted in N. Etherington 1978: 69.
120 See N. Etherington, 1978: 68.
121 N. Etherington, 1978: 80.
122 Ibid. 1978: 84-5.