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A CASE OF HOPELESS FAILURE - The Role of Missionaries in the Transformation of Southern Africa’s Indigenous Architecture"Without doubt it is a far more costly thing to kill the (indigenous population) INTRODUCTIONEuropean missionaries to southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries played a strangely ambiguous role in the history and affairs of the region. On the one hand they were driven by a strong desire to genuinely serve humanity and bring about material and social changes which would improve its quality of life. On the other hand they were possessed of a moral self-righteousness which led them to make hasty and uninformed judgments upon indigenous mores, norms and values they were scarcely equipped to understand. The first manifested itself in an involvement in local agriculture, irrigation and technology which, being environmental and hence independent of larger cultural issues, found a small measure of acceptance in rural society. The second sought to impose an alien morality and work ethos upon the local people without realising that these undermined their most basic social and cultural tenets and were therefore largely resisted. The dichotomy of this approach was not something which found separate expression in different individuals but was often incorporated within the same person. Casalis wrote at Thaba Bosiu, Lesotho, in about 1833, that:
It is not for nothing that the statue of Livingstone in Edinburgh represents the missionary-traveller with a Bible in one hand and the other resting upon an axe (Warneck 1888). Ironically enough, in the long run it was found that changes wrought by missionaries at a practical and economic level did more to further their spiritual cause than any amount of moralistic sermonising ever did from the pulpit. Local acceptance of early missionaries in the eastern Cape hinged more upon their technological ability to introduce furrow irrigation into an otherwise drought-stricken land than upon their Christian teachings (Williams 1959). This was also borne out by the experiences of Moffatt in the northern Cape. The ability of missionaries to make converts and hold them on their stations also seems to have been somewhat in doubt. Etherington (1977) stated that only 12% of people on mission settlements were there for "spiritual" reasons. The majority sought either material advantage or psychological security. Also, although some groups such as the Basotho and the Tswana openly welcomed missionaries, others like the Pedi, the Zulu and the Pondo vehemently rejected their presence as a matter of national policy. Despite Campbell's claim that:
they had strong objections to a missionary presence and often took appropriate action. Whole populations moved away from stations; individuals suspected of Christian leanings were administered magic and emetics; and converts were ostracized and quarantined to missionary settlements, thus being effectively purged from the group's polity and its social functions. Despite the continuing spread of a missionary presence into southern Africa during the 19th Century, by the time of the Anglo-Zulu conflict of 1879 very few converts had been won over to Christianity (Etherington 1977). Success in making converts also seems to have had little to do with the liberality, or otherwise, of missionary methods. Etherington (1977) states that:
Ultimately the success of the missionaries in southern Africa appears to have hinged upon their ability to provide viable agricultural land for indigenous settlement at a time when Black-owned land was being increasingly alienated for white usufruct. Residence on mission lands however had its price. Tyler (1891) reported in 1891 that the church at Nqumba, Natal, had adopted, among several others, the following rules:
This was more or less in line with the "moral" stances taken by most missionary societies, who generally held that:
The degree to which these "vile habits" had been abolished from local communities was commonly held by missionaries to be a measure of their success in the field. By the 1880s however they could not have countenanced the fruits of their labours with too much joy. The United Missionary Conference reports for 1884 consistently show that all these practices were still prevalent throughout southern Africa despite a missionary presence in some areas dating back over four generations (United Missionary Conference 1889). After Williams had conducted his research in the 1950s he also concluded that:
A change of heart appears to have occurred from the 1880s onwards when the initial success of the first trade schools at Morija in 1841 and Lovedale in 1857 spurred others to follow their example. By 1902 fifteen such institutions had opened their doors in southern Africa alone, and fifty-six throughout the African continent, all but seven of the latter having been founded after 1880 (Dennis 1902). Livingstone's children had laid aside the Bible and taken up the axe. A DIRECT MATERIAL INFLUENCEIt is obvious, from the foregoing, therefore, that changes to the indigenous built environment did not rank high on the list of missionary priorities. Yet, despite their preoccupation with "heathen" social practices, their concerns for local architecture were never hidden too far below the surface. The writings of early missionaries such as Campbell, Mackenzie, Casalis, Arbousset and Daumas make frequent references to the dwelling forms and building technologies they encountered. None of them however formulated any kind of philosophical response to vernacular structures, choosing instead to view them as some kind of barometer against which to measure progress of a larger social and cultural nature. Thus we find that Cape Government Reports from about the 1870s onwards begin to equate the use of square-plan dwellings with the degree of civilization achieved in any one particular region. The magistrate for Gatberg, Griqualand East, reported in 1879 that:
This was echoed by the United Missionary Conference of 1884, which grouped this return for Mount Arthur (Transkei) under the heading of "Moral Statistics":
It was left for an outsider to express local missionary policy on the question of architecture. The German academic and theologian, Gustav Warneck, wrote in 1879 that:
It is doubtful that many of the early missionaries were well, if at all, prepared for this aspect of their mission. The Glasgow Missionary Society pamphlet of 1796, "Report on the Character of a Missionary, etc." lays considerable stress upon "piety, prudence and aptitude to teach" but not once mentions the need for craft skills (Williams 1959). The London Missionary Society was a little more realistic on this point and in 1800 recommended that missionaries:
It was left for the French to take the initiative in this field. When Casalis and Arbousset were chosen to be sent out to southern Africa by the Paris Missionary Society, they were given basic training in the skills of drawing, building and architecture. Not only that, they were also joined by Gosselin who, as "missionary artisan", was sent out to assist them erect their first dwellings (Germond 1967). Casalis wrote at Moriah in 1833 that:
The "box of tools" brought from Europe included, among other items, agricultural implements and tools for the trades of stone quarrying and cutting, masonry, carpentry, joinery, coopering, shoe-making and surveying (Germond 1967). The attachment of Gosselin to the party was an inspired piece of fore-planning on the part of the French. Once his task of building mission houses for his colleagues was completed, his brief was also:
This policy foreshadowed events in the region by nearly half a century and paved the way for the subsequent establishment of Industrial Training Institutions in southern Africa. The first of these was founded, naturally enough, by the Paris Missionary Society at Morija, Lesotho, in 1841, but others soon followed this example. Lovedale in 1857, St Matthews in 1876, Leloaleng in 1879, Amanzimtoti in 1883 and Blythswood in 1884 were but a few (Dennis 1902). The report for Leloaleng in 1910 stated that:
while the Lovedale report for 1895 commented that:
Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of the Cape Colony, made the official position regarding industrial training clear when, in a message to Parliament in c1884 he stated that:
Charles Brownlee, Secretary for Native Affairs, issued a circular in 1873, in which he proclaimed that:
while Matthew Blyth, Chief Magistrate for the Division of Transkei, reported to the Cape Parliament in 1879 that:
It is not an easy matter to assess the results of these missionary efforts. We know that in such matters as initiation and teenage sexual morality they had little impact. This however does not appear to have been the case with building technology where some considerable influence seems to have been wielded through the medium of education. In 1879 some 173 "special apprentices" were undergoing training in various industrial institutions in the Cape (Cape of Good Hope Report of the Superintendent-General of Education, 1880), approximately 60% of whom were engaged in the building trades. Most appear to have originated from the Eastern Cape and Transkei region (Lovedale Missionary Institution 1896), where they also subsequently plied their trades (Cape of Good Hope Blue Books on Native Affairs 1880), but it is not impossible that, with time, they spread further afield. Certainly the missionaries themselves were not slow in proclaiming the fruits of their labours, as seen from this report from Leloaleng, made in 1910:
In the case of some specialised areas of construction such as roof carpentry, stone masonry and brick making, the effects of missionary education remain evident to the present day. Despite this obvious element of technological transposition however, the nature of the indigenous rural environment has remained essentially vernacular. Dwelling plans have, in most cases, retained their traditional circular form, materials have remained local and “found” and the technologies concerned, although new, have been harnessed to fulfill the same social roles as the ones they have replaced. Most important, this missionary input does not appear to have had a direct effect upon the nature and form of indigenous settlement patterns which are a more direct manifestation of local "culture" than the dwelling form itself. (Frescura 1987) AN INDIRECT MATERIAL INFLUENCEThe work of missionaries during the last century should not be viewed in isolation from the activities of either traders or government officials. In many ways they shared common interests and often what was of benefit to the one group was equally good for the others. They can also be seen to be part of a progression of events which paved the way for the colonialisation of indigenous groups not only in southern Africa, but the world over. Warneck wrote in 1879 that:
He saw the missionary as generating a demand for consumer goods while, at the same time, creating conditions which facilitated the establishment of trade links.
The impact of trading activity on rural southern Africa is made clear by the various statements to this effect found in Government reports during the 1870s and 1880s. Charles Bell, Resident Magistrate of Berea, Lesotho, said in 1879 that:
MW Liefeldt, Assistant Magistrate for Matatiele, East Griqualand echoed the reports of many of his colleagues when he stated in 1879 that:
The larger picture was described by the missionary Duvoisin who, in 1885, wrote from Berea, Lesotho, that:
The missionary concern for actively promoting consumer goods usually stopped at European clothing and agricultural implements, but it is not impossible that, from time to time, other goods could also have been promoted. Warneck tells that a conference of native pastors, deacons and teachers held at the Pacific island of Rarotonga passed a resolution encouraging:
The missionaries' relationship with colonial officials is perhaps not quite as clear-cut as in the previous case. Certainly we know that the former performed a number of ad hoc duties on behalf of the Government such as reporting on events in remote areas and fulfilling various diplomatic functions (Williams 1959). In some cases there was active collusion between the two parties, to the detriment of indigenous interests (Etherington 1977). Generally however interaction took place on a more formal level, with missionaries encouraging local people to obey the laws and pay their hut taxes, and occasionally interceding on their behalf with officialdom. Sometimes written recommendations would be submitted to the authorities, such as those made to the Cape Parliament by the Moravian missionary Meyer, stationed at Elukolweni, who in 1875 asked, among other things, that hut tax relief be offered:
It is not thought that the colonial officials acceded to this request, if for no other reason than the fact that hut-tax had already become an important source of revenue with which to subsidise the administration of the outlying districts. A COVERT MATERIAL INFLUENCEA factor which was to have a profound influence upon the long term social and economic make-up of southern Africa was the creation of a migrant labour system from the 1870s onwards. Provisions for the contractual binding of labourers to employers had already been in force in the Cape since the early years of the nineteenth century (Burchell 1953), but these were largely directed at the Khoi who, even then, did not inhabit the region in sufficient numbers to satisfy the needs of the Colonial employment market. With the discovery, and subsequent development, of the Cape diamond fields from 1866 onwards came the extension of the local infrastructure as well as the rapid growth of such coastal commercial centers as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London. This created a need for large numbers of skilled and unskilled labourers to work on public and private enterprises in the Colony. The resultant shortage of labour caused both private employers and the Cape Government to look further afield for potential sources of workers, the most obvious being the Transkei and eastern Cape. A newspaper editorial of March 1873, on the subject of local labour, among other things urged missionaries to:
The Secretary for Native Affairs in the Cape administration, Charles Brownlee, also saw mission stations as a potential source of labour and issued a circular in November of that year where he stated:
He then went on to outline a scheme whereby youths from mission stations could be formed into groups of fifty, under the "guidance" of a paid elder, who would see to their "moral" welfare during their sojourn in the Cape as migrant manual labourers. The Report on Immigration and Labour Supply to the Cape Parliament for the year 1875 reported that some progress had been made in this direction. It stated that:
Another powerful inducement for young men to enter the Colony's labour market was the introduction of a hut tax from the 1850s onwards (Jeff Peires, pers comm). Although at first this was not applied uniformly in the rural areas, in 1870 it was enacted on a broad basis as an urban and rural house tax which was intended as a straightforward revenue-generating measure (Foster, Tennant and Jackson 1887). This not only provided a disproportionately large slice of the income necessary to create a system of first tier local administration in the rural areas (Cape of Good Hope Blue Books on Native Affairs 1880) but it also created the need for local people to go into towns in order to earn the money for its payment. WG Cumming, Resident Magistrate of Xalanga, Transkei, commented in 1880 that:
It is probable however that the rural community’s need to earn wages was considerably sharpened by the availability of consumer goods through local trading stores. Such items as ploughs and blankets would have found ready acceptance in local life without necessarily causing too much cultural upheaval in the process. Later on other articles, such as furniture and building materials, would have become available through the same channels. Consequently, the effect of a migrant labour system upon the local built environment must be seen to have achieved the following:
The differences between missionaries and employers are therefore quite evident. The former set standards which they then expected the people themselves to find the means to meet; the latter on the other hand not only trained workers in the technology of European building traditions but also gave them the opportunity of sharing in them by giving them those means. Both were part of the same process of rural alienation, but the missionaries offered ideological comfort, while employers were more material in their rewards. Judging from available evidence it was the material benefits which ultimately carried the day. THE MYTH OF MISSIONARY INFLUENCEIt is true, therefore, that a substantial case can be made to support the proposition that missionaries did, eventually, make a contribution to the transformation of indigenous architecture in Southern Africa, even if this was only achieved in conjunction with the work of other colonial agencies: the farmer, the trader, and the government agent. However, such changes were only wrought in the context of the individual dwelling, and one needs to question the degree to which the introduction of new materials, building technologies, and furniture can be deemed to have altered the cultural and spiritual core of the people themselves. The current discourse in Architecture remains firmly grounded in the precepts of liberal modernism, phenomenology and structuralism; ideas which have formed the basis of analysis by architectural historians for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The descriptive approach made within the structural bounds of style and stereotype might well serve to record changing patterns of material culture, but fails to recognize their significance within a broader spectrum of social practices and cultural beliefs. Indeed, it is the fundamental failing of such an approach to assign wider cultural and cosmological significance to alterations in material culture. During the second half of the twentieth century, a number of scholars began to question the validity of such an approach. During the 1960s Rapoport (1969) pointed out the clear connection between the house form and culture of its builders, while subsequent authors, such as Oliver (1968, 1971, 1975), Prussin (1986, 1995) and Blier (1987), have fore fronted the idea of architecture as a series of symbols and texts. Dithey (1962) has pointed out that “Every expression of life has a meaning insofar as it is a sign which expresses something that is part of life”. Blier (1987) also states that:
Thus, if were are to fully understand the impact that any changes in material culture might have had upon the value systems of indigenous South Africans, these need to be read in the broad framework of their beliefs. Missionaries, by the very nature of their activities, sought to alter the basic system of social, cultural and spiritual beliefs of indigenous people. In this they patently failed, and although by 1910 they could show some small advances, in the context of a wider Southern African rural society these were negligible and usually of a cosmetic nature. The fact that they chose to highlight supposed progress in such areas as the payment of taxes, the wearing of clothes, and the construction of neat, whitewashed cottages, was both a misrepresentation of their role in the process, and an annexation of the work of other colonial agencies. The lie was, in itself, understandable. After a century of proselytizing one can only imagine the levels of frustration in the missionary community faced with seemingly monolithic and unchangeable value systems. Thus, if they did create a myth, this was the self-serving result of delusion and a need to give a degree of significance to otherwise wasted lives. There was also the need to show results for the benefit of overseas funders, whose faith might have seemed limitless, but whose pockets had measurable limits. The pragmatic burghers of northern and central Europe had long been used to the belief that the achievements of a people could be measured by the complexity of their architecture, and by the richness of their artifacts, and to most of them tangible changes in indigenous material culture must have seemed evidence of Christian progress. Thus, for a while longer at least, the flow of funds continued. By such means, therefore, self-delusion, religious propaganda, and false perceptions, the myth that material culture was somehow equated to spiritual change, was created and rapidly became the accepted measure in the evaluation of missionary efforts. By the 1950s, two disastrous world wars and the impending collapse of the colonial system forced many missionary societies to take stock of their work. In southern Africa, at least, the realization was beginning to spread that, regardless of any outward advances in material culture, the manifestations of wider, deep seated beliefs were still in evidence. To the despair of most missionaries the practices of initiation and male circumcision were becoming even more overt, child-price or lobola was still being paid, sacrifices to the ancestors were still being made, and premarital sex had, if anything, become all the more prevalent. Yet, despite the fact that many missionaries were scholars and ethnographers in their own right, they failed to recognize the centrality of the cattle byre in the indigenous value system, and never attempted to undermine its social or spiritual significance. Indigenous Southern African cosmology views the plan of the family homestead as a microcosm of their life. At its center resides the byre, which provides the men with a place of gathering, holds the wealth of the community in cattle and surplus food, and acts as a place of burial. It is therefore a place of the “shades”, where men can commune with their ancestors and, with their implied guidance and wisdom, can pass laws, and administer the affairs of the group. Cosmologically, it represents Order, whereas beyond the bounds of the settlement resides Chaos, where the natural environment can grow without constraint, and where wild animals, strangers, enemy warriors and dark terrors can reside. In between this inner Order and outer Chaos lies a transitional belt of land controlled by women, who are given the task of running the everyday affairs of the group, and thereby to mediate between Order and Chaos. It is thus that women control the residential areas, the planting of agricultural land, the food resources, and the preparation of meals. In indigenous value systems, women are perceived to be inherently “hot”, while the men are inherently “cool”. It is thus the role of women to “cool” down the areas of transition between Order and Chaos. This may be done in a number of ways: walls need to be plastered with a mixture of clay and cow dung, itself a cool material; spaces between the homestead and its surrounds need to be kept free of encroaching vegetation; teenagers and visitors are unpredictable factors and thus need to be housed separate from the family. Even the planting and maintenance of gardens can be interpreted as an effort to harness “hot” and potentially unruly elements of nature by growing them under controlled conditions. The men, on the other hand, are tasked with the maintenance of Order, access to ancestral wisdom, and the governance of ancient laws and customs. The role of the byre is therefore central to indigenous belief systems, and because its place within the structure of the family homestead has remained unchallenged throughout the period of missionary presence in Southern Africa, most of the core values that it represents have gone unaltered. It is true that a reduction in polygamy has had an influence upon the size of the homestead, but not upon its essential structure. Besides, as Livingstone (1963) noted among the Tswana in the 1870s, the majority of their men were not polygamous, a small minority had two wives, largely as a product of the Levirate system, and only those in positions of political leadership had the means to maintain large polygamous families. CONCLUSIONIt is evident that although immigrant European settlers to this region did introduce new technologies and building forms to the lexicon of indigenous architecture, the results were neither immediate nor were they widely accepted. Indeed, most transitions were not the result of blind borrowings, nor were they aesthetic in nature, but only took place after a number of social and economic preconditions had been met. Working within the wider spectrum of colonialism, missionaries played an important part in such transitions, but were not the only agents for change, and often played a subsidiary role to the more pragmatic presence of farmers and traders. With the one exception of Lesotho, where the Paris Missionary Society introduced a lay brother tasked with the transfer of building skills to local people, mission stations only began to make a practical impact upon local architecture with the founding of Industrial Training Schools in the mis-1850s. Even then, missionaries equated changes to material culture and living standards to a growing Christian influence, and ignored the underlying principles of indigenous architecture which underpinned virtually all of the social and spiritual practices that they were trying to eradicate. Thus, while local people often accepted that construction and maintenance of “neat white-washed cottages” was one of the prices they would have to pay for the benefit of living within the bounds of mission stations, with all their encompassing technological benefits, other aspects of their architecture, such as the planning of the family homestead were left unchallenged right up to the present day. Given the fact that, from the outset, missionaries sought the radical restructuring of indigenous life and value systems, the net outcome of their efforts has been negligible. Looking back on two hundred years of hard toil, devastating droughts, death by wild animals, enraged tribes and unrecorded illnesses, minimal spiritual returns and incomprehensible cultural clashes, Missionary Societies must be left to ponder two vital questions: for whose benefit was this work done, and outside of the spiritual growth undertaken by their own members, did their efforts have any real meaning. The outcome of any honest deliberation in such matters must come to many negative conclusions. We must also question the degree to which the negative experience of missionaries in Africa has coloured modern European and North American perceptions of the continent. Despite nearly five centuries of active engagement with the people of Africa, Western nations still remain woefully ignorant of African values and aspirations, and perhaps the major task remaining to missionaries in the field is to correct two centuries of misconceptions and mis-readings resultant from their own work, and to disabuse world scholars as to the nature and richness of African history and culture. POSTSCRIPTThis paper should have been presented at an international conference due to be held in Belgium in 2008. Regrettably this was prevented by an administrative snafu. It has since been submitted for publication elsewhere, and is currently awaiting editorial approval. BIBLIOGRAPHYBLIER, Suzanne Preston. 1987. The Anatomy of Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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