Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

tini’s testimony 157
how they ended up having a rather intimate conversation. The
farmer’s child was ill and the missionary — all of them had rudimentary
medical training — attended to him/her. The Mission
Society’s legal position in the Transvaal necessitated loyalty to the
Transvaal state and maintaining cordial relations with the Boers. 13
Through the years this cordiality would grow into friendships between
an increasing number of German missionary and Boer families. 14
However, by the early 1890s it would not be sound diplomacy for a
missionary to be too solicitous with the Boers, while relations were
tense between them and the African communities the missionaries
were attempting to serve and to convert — a mistake Stech had made
and paid for dearly. 15 In the language used by the missionaries who
were more shrewd than Stech, one detects distancing from and
suspicion towards the Boers. Missionaries like Herbst and Krause
‘othered’ the Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking whites. Herbst called them
‘the Boer people’ and Krause identified the missionaries with the
African communities among whom they lived by referring to the Boers
as ‘the whites’ — while, ironically, the German missionaries were,
with very few exceptions, very white themselves. 16
To get back to the information the Van Wyks communicated to Herbst:
they told him that Stech had brought Tini to them before he departed
from the Transvaal. 17 When they asked Tini with whom she had had a
child, she answered: ‘From Mr Stech, and now Mrs Stech had sent me
away, because he wants to use me again’. 18 The contrasting roles
permitted for Mrs Emilie Stech and Tini in the male-dominated
13 Van der Merwe (n 5 above) 1-20.
14 GJ Jooste (1996) ‘Ras, volk en politiek in die Berlynse Sendinggenootskap’
unpublished DD thesis, University of Pretoria, 77-82.
15 L Kriel ‘Sonntag’s Mmaleboho, missionary diary as secular source in the
reconstruction of Bagananwa History 1892-1895’ (1997) 36 South African
Historical Journal; National archives of South Africa, Transvaal archives depot,
Pretoria (hereafter NASA TAB): SS. 4140, R. 17552/90 89-92, SR. 152 91: C Stech –
BJ Vorster, 1 Februarie 1891.
16
See A Kirkaldy (2002) ‘Capturing the soul. Encounters between German
missionaries and Tshivenda-speakers in the late nineteenth century’ unpublished
D Phil thesis, University of Cape Town, 200-223 (to be published by Protea Book
House) for an account of the missionary career of Klaas Koen, a black South
African (at the time categorised by the Germans as a ‘Hottentot and an African’)
trained by the BMS in Germany.
17
At this time it was not clear when Tini had stayed with the Van Wyks, but it was
apparently in the summer of 1891, shortly before the Stechs departed from the
Transvaal. See EA BMG Gegen Stech: BMW 1/4225 56-58: Beilage A, 27 Juli 1892 &
62-63: C Stech, Berlin, 23 September 1892.
18 EA BMG Gegen Stech: BMW 1/4225 5: A Herbst – O Krause, Superintendent, 10
Dezember 1891. Translation LK ‘Tinni soll auf die Frage der Bauersleute von wem
sie ihr Kind hätte geantwortet haben: von Herrn Stech, und jetzt hat Frau Stech
mich fortgeschickt, weil er mich wieder gebrauchen wollte.’