Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

tini’s testimony 167
the girdle, he must definitely have tried to induce an abortion. The
remarkable aspect is that the Mission Directorate chose not to pursue
this line of reasoning. The fate of the unborn child was not their
concern; whether a missionary had been adulterous or not, was the
matter under investigation. Mrs Stech’s testimony fitted into the
argument of their case because, regardless of the lengths she was
going into to describe the treacherous character of Tini Fisher, she did
confirm that Tini had told her that her husband was the father of the
child. Conjoined with his evasiveness and all the inconsistencies in his
own testimonies, this sealed Stech’s fate.
In 1893 Christian Stech’s name still appears in a German newspaper
under an announcement of a religious revival meeting. To the alarm
and disapproval of the Society, Stech was still introduced as an
experienced missionary who would talk about his adventures in ‘wild
and dangerous Africa’. While reminiscing about South Africa, did he
think about the lie he told his children when they had discovered the
corpse of his stillborn baby in the waterhole at Blauberg, that an ‘evil
witchdoctor’ had placed the corpse there to scare them? 53 Regrettably,
the last years of Stech’s service at Blauberg cast a shadow of
stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes over the preceding period of
his seemingly fruitful service among the Hananwa and other
marginalised communities.
And what about Tini Fisher?
The mission society, fearing for their reputation, were not eager to
make Stech’s misconduct more public than it already was, especially
not in Germany, where the scandal could still be contained in a file of
paperwork in the mission’s headquarters. The Disciplinary Procedure
and all the accompanying documents were sealed and thus concealed
from historians’ eyes for almost a century. Ironically, with the sealing
of the Stech-Fisher case, Tini’s ordeal was forgotten with Stech’s
misbehaviour; just as Tini’s insistence on the recognition of her story
was forgotten with the circumstances of Stech’s humiliating dismissal.
By the time the Director of the BMS had informed Stech of his
dismissal, the missionaries in South Africa had lost contact with Tini
Fischer. On 1 August 1892, three days after she had given her final,
condemning evidence against her seducer in the house of Mr Dewitz,
with Superintendent Krause writing it down at a table provided by Mrs
Dewitz, she married a German by the name of Zangel, 54 thereby
strongly asserting a position for herself in the white community. The
Mission Society’s inquest was not concerned with Tini; their aim was
to reprimand Stech. When Tini had served this purpose, she
53
EA BMG Gegen Stech: BMW 1/4225 45-53: C Stech – BMG, 2 Juni 1892.
54 EA BMG Gegen Stech: BMW 1/4225, 56-58: Beilage A, 27 Juli 1892.