Youth Development prior to 1994 dept of foreign affairs ... - Kara.co.za

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PRIOR TO 1994
by
Prof. Mathole Motshekga
B.Iuris, LLB (UNISA), LLM (Harvard), LLD (UNISA)
FOUNDER DIRECTOR: Kara Heritage Institute
Paper presented for
DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Venue: Farm Inn,
Pretoria East
Date: 13 July 2007
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Contending Ideologies in South Africa
Some African slaves in the Americas resisted their masters and fled to mountains were they
continued to live independently and maintained their identity, culture and traditions. The majority of
the slaves who remained under white control were tamed through Christianity. During the 1700’s
freed slaves who remained within the white church establishment were discriminated against and
forced to secede from white churches to form independent Ethiopian churches.
The formation of the Ethiopian church was motivated by the prophesy in Psalm 68:31 which says
that Princesses shall come out of Egypt and Ethiopia shall stretch her hands towards god. The
biggest Ethiopian congregation which was formed by African – American secessionist led by
Bishop Turner was the African Episcopal Methodist (AME) church.
In South Africa churches and schools in African communities were colonized in the 1880’s – 90’s
by stricter mission control and a rush of immigrant white clergymen and teachers. This created a
grievance for many experienced African clergymen, who had previously been in charge of church
and school management and finance under only minimal mission control.
The missionary management of schools and churches in the African communities discriminated
against the African clergymen and suppressed African identity, culture and traditions. Some African
clergymen led their congregations out of the European missions to become independent churches,
often supported by local Chiefs as the national church of the local community. African clergymen
particularly in the Wesleyan (Methodist) and congregational churches claimed it was their right in
the spirit of Protestantism to form churches free from alien control.
The first independent African church was the Thembu National church, founded by Rev. Nehemiah
Tile in 1884.Tile quarreled with the Wesleyan mission when it tried to stop him from involvement in
Thembu politics, suppressed Xhosa culture and traditions in the church and condemned his
support of initiation ceremonies of the Thembu Nation when Thembuland was annexed by the
Cape colony Tile was arrested and imprisoned. But his influence spread to other black Wesleyan
ministers elsewhere.
In 1892 a section of Africans seceded from the Berlin mission to form the Independent Lutheran
Bapedi church led by its former white missionary. On the rand African preachers found ready
congregations among migrant workers in the urban areas of Kimberly, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
One such preacher was James Brander (or Kanyane Napo), who quarreled with the Anglican
mission over land he had obtained for a church in the Northern Transvaal. He settled at
Marabastad outside Pretoria in 1889 to found his own independent African church.
The Birth of the Ethiopian Church in South Africa
In Southern Transvaal (now Gauteng Province) African Wesleyan ministers, African like Tile in
Thembuland, quarreled with white missionaries over racial discrimination and suppression of
African identity, culture and traditions. In 1892 the African Wesleyan ministers marched out of a
mission conference in Pretoria, under the leadership of Mangena Mokone a powerful preacher,
who declared:
“We are called Revs. But we are worse than the boy working for the missionary.”
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Mokone combined with Kanyane Napo in one church for all Africans regardless of ethnicity.
They formed the Ethiopian church of South Africa in 1892 to fulfill the prophesy that ‘Ethiopia shall
soon stretch out her hands unto god Psalm 68 verse 31’. The number of Ethiopian churches in
Marabastad soon rose to twelve congregations Johannesburg and Orange Free State independent
Wesleyans congregations joined in 1893 – 94, under Revs. Jantjie Tantsi, Jacobus Xaba and
others. Mokone persuaded the Thembu church, now led by Jonas Goduka (since the death of Tile
in 1892) and calling itself the African Native Church to join the Ethiopian church in 1895.
At the same time Mokone began enquiries about the Ethiopian church affiliating to the African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, the largest and most powerful black church in the United
States of America. Mokone learnt about the AME church from charlotte Makgomo Manye, a South
Africa student at the AME church’s Wilberforce Institute. James Dwane, an ambitious new recruit
visited AME church in Philadelphia where he amalgamated the Ethiopian church of South Africa
and the AME church and made the former the fourteenth district of the latter. James Dwane was
appointed supervisor of the Ethiopian church while Mokone was reduced to presiding elder (1896)
of his own church and in his absence. This led to a split of the Ethiopian church.
However, the church under Dwane flourished and grew as never before incorporating more and
more African congregations including coloreds in Cape Town who broke away from white mission
control. Ethiopianism gave many Africans new hope in the face of white conquest, destruction of
African kingdoms and suppression of African identity, culture and traditions.
Although not all breakaway churches from European missions joined the Ethiopian church in the
1890’s they shared the Ethiopianist sentiments. The Zulu congregational church, founded at
Pietermaritzburg in 1897, was a protest against the American Board (Congregationalist) missionary
society handing over Afrivan congregations to the white settler congregational union of South
Africa. In the Eastern Cape Pambani Mzimba, the senior African minister of the Free (Presbyterian)
church of Scotland, seceded and founded The African Presbyterian church. By 1903 his church
had 6500 members and 22,000 followers, including former Methodists and Anglicans as well as
Presbyterians.
Admission of the Ethiopian church into the AME church
Following the agreement between James Zwane and the AME church Authorities in Philadelphia
Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church arrived in South Africa to
admit the Ethiopian church formally into the AME church as its fourteenth Episcopal district in
1898. Turner was already famous as the main spokesperson of the “Back to Africa” campaign.
In America the AME church and the Prince Hall Masonic Lodges were the main motive forces for
change. The Prince Hall Lodges produced Pan African leaders such as Brooker T. Washington,
W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. The AME church and the Prince Hall Lodges shared
resourced and facilities.
In South Africa Turner, like the Pan Africanist members of the Prince Hall Lodges, preached
African pride, self-help and self-reliance everywhere he went. During his stay in South Africa sixty
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five AME church ministers were ordained, under James Dwane as acting vicar-bishop. Nine subdistricts
were organized in the two republics and Cape colony.
Bishop Turner was banned from entering Natal, Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, but African
missionaries of the AME church spread the word to Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, for which a
Bulawayo sub-district was founded in 1899. Meanwhile the Negro Baptist convention, which had
founded its first congregation for Black American sailors at Cape Town in 1894, extended a
mission to Natal in 1899. The mission became known as the Cushite church, cush being an
alternative name to Ethiopia used for Africa in the Bible.
The Native Question in South Africa
When Bishop Turner returned to the United States, he failed to persuade the AME church to
confirm the appointment of James Dwane as vicar-bishop for South Africa. Meanwhile the Anglican
Church and the colonial authorities were concerned about the growth of the Ethiopian movement
which they described as the black peril (or swart gevaar). The Anglican Church exploited the
grievance of James Dwane against the AME church and persuaded him to secede from the AME
church and form the Order of Ethiopia, with him as its Anglican bishop.
Dwane summoned a conference of Ethiopian church delegates to the Eastern Cape at the time the
South African (Anglo-Boer) war broke out. With only two delegates from the Transvaal and Orange
Free State present, he carried the Cape delegated with him. When the Transvaal heard of the
resolution they firmly rejected the secession. Dwane rejoined the AME church. But the Anglican in
collaboration founded an Order of Ethiopia for Dwane in furtherance of the Divide and Rule
strategy.
Only a minority in the Eastern Cape followed Dwane into the Order of Ethiopia. The majority
remaining within the AME church elected Tantsi as their new leader. Then in 1900 Levi Coppin
arrived from America as the first resident Bishop. Coppin arrived in Cape Town where he was
received by a black American community. His primary goal was to redeem the African masses and
to crush the missionaries who referred to keep Africans underdeveloped.
Under Coppin’s leadership the AME expanded its educational efforts rapidly. It planned to found
educational institutes in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Basutoland and Pondoland. It involved itself
in the popular boom in African elementary education, which followed the South African war and
had spread as far North as BaRotseland. Numerous African students were sent to black colleges
and universities in the US. At least 150 such students studied there in the 1895-1905 decade,
including doctors and scientists, but not all returned home.
The Birth of Pan African National Consciousness
The Ethiopian (i.e. Black) theology and Prince Hall African studies encouraged Africans in the
Diaspora and the continent to return to their African roots. The Pan Africanists, notably, William
Henry Sylvester and W.E.B Du Bois organized the Pan African Congress in London in 1900. The
conference was attended by people of African descent from three continents. W.E.B Du Bois, the
keynote speaker predicted that racism would be the biggest problem of the 20 th century. The
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delegates made strong attacks on “the desire of the English capitalists to re-enslave the blackman,
especially in South Africa, and on Boer atrocities against Africans in the Anglo-Boer war.
The black American community at Cape Town was strengthened around 1900 by the arrival of
AME officials with Bishop Coppin and delegates from Pan African Conference. The two delegates
were the Ghananian –born journalist F.Z.S Peregrint in 1900, and the Trinidadian lawyer Henry
Sylvester Williams (secretary of the Pan African Association) in 1901. Williams and Peregrino and
others took the message of Pan African pride and National consciousness to the interior as far as
BaRotseland. But this early Pan African influence declined with the break up of AME church in
South Africa after 1904.
However, Ethiopianism became the first national movement that linked Africans in the Coastal
areas and interior Republic, even before South Africa was united by British conquest. It promoted
Pan African National consciousness among black South Africans. White employers were worried
about the effect of Ethiopianism on the labour market after the war, when employing was
expanding and wages were considered too high by employers. The Ethiopianists were aggrieved
by the forcibly dispossession of land and its natural resources. The news editors of the Rand Daily
Mail put their position in the following words:
“This is our country; these are our farms and mines, why are we not working them for
ourselves and for our benefit, instead of working them for the white people and giving them
all the benefits.”
But Ethiopian was a double edged sword in producing white reaction which increased racial
discrimination.
Whites feared the black peril (Swartgevaal of a Pan African rising against white rule, and saw
Ethiopianist preachers as dangerous agitators. The threat of white mob violence over the black
peril stimulated the growth of African vigilance committees in Cape Town, the Transkei and
Transvaal, around 1903 – 04. These committees made representations to local government
authorities. The Ethipian movement had a spiritual and political dimension. After the Anglo-Boer
(South African) war the political activists in the Ethiopian movement founded Native Congresses in
each of the four colonies. The South African Native Congress, founded in 1902, re-named itself the
Cape Native Congress when other congresses were formed for Natal, the Transvaal and Orange
River colony.
African grievances against the colonial authorities were exarcebated by the treaty of Vereeniging
(1902) which reconciled the English and Dutch on the basis of the color bar clause which excluded
Africans from the administration of country. The governor-general of South Africa, Lord Milner
(1901 – 1905), created a separate administration for Africans. The focus of his Native
administration was to disarm Africans and keep them peaceful; the second aim was to ensure a
regular labour supply to mines and white farms.
By the time the Anglo-Boer (South Africa) war ended, the army and mounted police had persuaded
nearly all Africans in the conquered area to surrender their arms and register for taxation. The army
even compiled a history of the Native Tribes of the Transvaal from oral traditions between
chiefeloms. But the man placed in charge of Native affairs department, Godfrey Lagden, openly
despised African culture. Lagden was also appointed chairperson of the South African Native
Affairs commission of 1903 – 05. the commission toured all the colonies taking evidence on how to
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partition the land between white and black areas and at the same time ensure black labour supply
to white areas.
State education under Milner was intended to anglicize Afrikaners with values of service to the
British Empire. The English language was the medium for teaching and Afrikaans was ignored
history was taught as the civilization of the world by the ex-republics was almost entirely confined
to whites.
African education was left to African initiative. After the Anglo-Boer war there were more
independent African schools-run by Ethiopianist church or traditional authorities than white schools
in the Transvaal.
The Afrikaner Nationalists reacted to the policy of Anglicization in State schools by placing their
children in independent schools run by the so-called Christian-National education originated as a
separate school system for Calvinist children in the Netherlands. In South Africa it meant that
children should be taught their National history in their Afrikaner language. The movement spread
through all three Dutch reformed churches and took the old Transvaal capital of Potchefstroom
(Tlokweng) as its base.
When a new poll tax was imposed on Africans in Natal in 1905-06 they provoked Cecil Rhodes, the
son of a vicar, was born in 1853. In 1879 he came to South Africa to become a diamond
prospector, and founded de Beers consolidated mines, Ltd. By 1891 de Beers controlled 90
percent of the world’s diamond production and Rhodes developed a vision of rich white supremacy,
the legacy of which still keeps the people of Africa in a constant state of poverty and civil wars. But
Cecil Rhodes did not do this alone.
The member of Cecil Rhodes was John Ruskin, professor of fine arts at Oxford University where
Cecil Rhodes did his undergraduate degrees. John Ruskin called for the education of the working
man to create an expanded middle class, which would labour on behalf of the aristocracy. This
middle class would then be controlled behind the scenes in a form of legal slavery through banking
and supply of credit.
Cecil Rhodes believed in a tightly and centrally controlled autocracy by an elite and enlightened
ruling class:
“My continual aim had been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others,
sometimes even of one man to all others”.
Rhodes traced back this ideology to Plato who called for a ruling class of philosopher Kings with a
powerful army to keep it in power and a society completely subordinate to the monolithic authority
of the rulers.
Cecil Rhodes clearly set out his plans for world domination as early as 1877. He was disillusioned
by the inward looking nature of his fellow master Masons who made him to write his confession of
faith:
“I contend that we [the English] are the finest race in the world and that the more of the
world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at
present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration
there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence…….
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At the present day I became a member of the Masonic Oder; I see the wealth and power
they possess…….. and I wonder that a large body of men can devote themselves to what
at times appear the most ridiculous and absurd rites without an object and without an
end….. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the
bringing of the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one
Empire”.
The racial and imperialist ideology of Cecil Rhodes played a decisive role in shaping the future of
Southern Africa.
Empowered by his ever-growing wealth and his monopoly over the South African diamond fields,
inspired by Malthusian eugenics and John Ruskin, financially backed by the Rothschild family, and
fuelled by his racism, Rhodes continued to refine his ideas in the seven wills, which he wrote
during his lifetime. After Rhodes death Lord Nathan Rothschild, a fellow master Mason, became
the trustee of Rhodes entire estate.
Rothschild immediately appointed Lord Alfred Milner, a fellow master Mason, to recruit a group of
young Freemasons from Oxford University and Tonybee Hall to become founder members of the
Round Table. Lord Milner’s view on the British Emperialist Order is best summed up by his own
words:
“My patriotism knows no geographical but only racial limits. I am a British race patriot”.
The Rhodes Round Table comes from a perverted religious foundation. The name Round Table
comes from the court of legendary British King Arthur (whose quest for the Holy Grail is intricately
linked with Freemasonry and the Illuminati). The Rhodes Round Table or secret society was
structured along Masonic lines. It consisted of a pyramid hierarchy, with inner and outer circle of It
consisted of a pyramid hierarchy, with inner and outer circle of
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