BEGINNINGS

The origins of the Anglican Church in South Africa could hardly have been more different from that of West Africa. In West Africa, Anglicans came to a ‘province of freedom’ to participate in the building up of a new liberated humanity. In South Africa, the Anglican church was first established to minister to soldiers whose task was to protect a society dependent on slavery for its existence. Throughout the nineteenth century, military expansion brought more and more independent African societies under colonial rule. On the walls of Grahamstown Cathedral are commemorative plaques to British soldiers who died in the ‘Kaffir wars’ against the Xhosa people. ‘Kaffir’ occurs with such embarrassing frequency on the inscriptions that in liberated South Africa statues have been turned to face the wall, and offensive words on plaques have been deleted.

Cape Town was established in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a staging post for its operations in Batavia (modern Indonesia). In 1806, the British permanently took over the colony. They guaranteed the status of the established Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). The Dutch community, which also contained people of French Huguenot and German origin, strongly differentiated themselves from Khoi pastoralists and San hunters (the ‘Hottentots’, as they were disdainfully called). In 1806 slaves were still being imported from Malaya, Bengal, Madagascar and Mozambique. They slightly outnumbered white people. To the north and east lived Bantu speakers, with complex societies based on agricultural and pastoral economies.