From time to time in history, whole countries have been fed certain lies by their governments, which have had catastrophic consequences.Germans were fed the lie that they were a superior race and that it was necessary for them to bring the world under Aryan domination.
This lie was made part of the school syllabus and drilled into German children in the late 1800s.
The aggressive behaviour of the Germans and the two world wars (1914 and 1939) were a direct result of the lie. Another instance of indoctrination fed to school children in Russia, China and various countries around the world, was communism.
However, communism brought about economic hardship and left human suffering in its wake wherever it was embraced.
In South Africa there is a great lie too which pervades society – the lie that colonisation was a wrong committed against the people.
Up until the advent of the League of Nations and International Law, established after World War 1 to protect civilian populations and curb invasions, colonisation was an inevitable occurrence in every undeveloped country.
Any history book worth its salt shows how many times countries changed hands through the ages during the different empires.
From the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, Normans, Spanish and British Empire, to name a few, countries were ruled by different tribes and races countless times according to the exploration drive, knowledge and technical ability of the colonisers.
Many tribes of central African settlers moved down into Natal and the northern part of South Africa and, in the late 1700s, the stronger tribes like the Zulus under Shaka invented new types of warfare and colonised Natal, causing the amaMfengu (Fingoes – a mixture of tribes) to flee to the Eastern Cape.
On the opposite side of the country, the British colonised the Cape and a number of “Afrikaners” (Cape Dutch and others) trekked east and then north in the 1830s to escape British rule.
When one considers previous empires, the British were probably the kindest and most progressive.
The primary motivation for the Great Trek was because British policy treated all races as equals before the law, and induced restrictive laws on slavery which did not adequately compensate slave owners and caused ruthless owners of servants and slaves to be arrested and convicted.
Under British-inspired rule in the 19th and 20th century, people of colour were allowed to vote in the Cape.
Jan Smuts was set on dealing with personal inequalities but unfortunately was defeated in the 1948 parliamentary elections.
Incidentally, the United Party under Smuts got 100000 more votes than the apartheid Nationalist Party under DF Malan, but the unfortunate delineation of constituencies gave the National Party more seats in parliament and therefore the reins of government.
South Africa’s colonisation would have possibly been one of the fairest and most enlightened colonisations to date had the National Party not got into power.
Seeing that colonisation was inevitable, why is it widely believed that it was a bad thing?
Many of the colonists were missionaries, teachers and doctors, who had a profound effect on the positive history of the country and were driven by a strong desire to genuinely serve humanity and bring about material and social changes.
Rural society generally accepted the missionaries’ involvement in agriculture, irrigation, education, medicine and technology, and successful mission/trade schools were built, for example the one at Lovedale in 1857, which many African leaders attended, such as Sir Seretse Khama of Botswana, Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, ZK Mathews, Govan Mbeki, Tiyo Soga, Charles Nqakula, King Sobhuza II, Sir Mwanawina Lewanika III, Ellen Kuzwayo, Sam Nolutshungu, Sir Walter Stanford and William Wellington Gqoba.
A total of 15 such institutions had been built by 1902 in South Africa, which were completely “colour-blind” and trained students of all races. Healdtown, where Nelson Mandela was schooled, was one of these.
Missionaries often fought against the authorities for issues such as requesting that parliament drop “tax hut payments”, which it did.
The founding member and first president of the South African Native National Congress (which became the ANC in 1923) was John Langalibalele Dube, schooled at the Inanda Mission Station in Natal.
Dube’s grandmother was a convert of the Lindley Mission Station and his father became a minister and leading figure of the AmaQadi tribe. In 1946, W Vilakazi, a poet and author, wrote that Dube was “a great, if not the greatest, black man of the missionary epoch in South Africa”.
Izibongo is a praise poem written by the Thembu poet DLP Yali-Manisi. Below is a verse in Xhosa:
“Siyabulela thina basemaXhoseni
Ngokufika kweento zooRose nezooBheni
Ukuz’ amaXhos’ avulek’ ingqondo
Kulo mhla yaqal’ ukubhalwa le ntetho
Intethw’ engqongqotho yasemaXhoseni”
The English translation being:
We Xhosa are ever grateful/ That men like the Ross’ and the Bennies (missionaries)/ Came to open the minds of the Xhosa people/ By putting into writing/ The peerless language of the Xhosa
Geoff Embling is a freelance writer based in Cape Town
Tale of colonisation not always one with bad end
This lie was made part of the school syllabus and drilled into German children in the late 1800s.
The aggressive behaviour of the Germans and the two world wars (1914 and 1939) were a direct result of the lie. Another instance of indoctrination fed to school children in Russia, China and various countries around the world, was communism.
However, communism brought about economic hardship and left human suffering in its wake wherever it was embraced.
In South Africa there is a great lie too which pervades society – the lie that colonisation was a wrong committed against the people.
Up until the advent of the League of Nations and International Law, established after World War 1 to protect civilian populations and curb invasions, colonisation was an inevitable occurrence in every undeveloped country.
Any history book worth its salt shows how many times countries changed hands through the ages during the different empires.
From the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Barbarians, Normans, Spanish and British Empire, to name a few, countries were ruled by different tribes and races countless times according to the exploration drive, knowledge and technical ability of the colonisers.
Many tribes of central African settlers moved down into Natal and the northern part of South Africa and, in the late 1700s, the stronger tribes like the Zulus under Shaka invented new types of warfare and colonised Natal, causing the amaMfengu (Fingoes – a mixture of tribes) to flee to the Eastern Cape.
On the opposite side of the country, the British colonised the Cape and a number of “Afrikaners” (Cape Dutch and others) trekked east and then north in the 1830s to escape British rule.
When one considers previous empires, the British were probably the kindest and most progressive.
The primary motivation for the Great Trek was because British policy treated all races as equals before the law, and induced restrictive laws on slavery which did not adequately compensate slave owners and caused ruthless owners of servants and slaves to be arrested and convicted.
Under British-inspired rule in the 19th and 20th century, people of colour were allowed to vote in the Cape.
Jan Smuts was set on dealing with personal inequalities but unfortunately was defeated in the 1948 parliamentary elections.
Incidentally, the United Party under Smuts got 100000 more votes than the apartheid Nationalist Party under DF Malan, but the unfortunate delineation of constituencies gave the National Party more seats in parliament and therefore the reins of government.
South Africa’s colonisation would have possibly been one of the fairest and most enlightened colonisations to date had the National Party not got into power.
Seeing that colonisation was inevitable, why is it widely believed that it was a bad thing?
Many of the colonists were missionaries, teachers and doctors, who had a profound effect on the positive history of the country and were driven by a strong desire to genuinely serve humanity and bring about material and social changes.
Rural society generally accepted the missionaries’ involvement in agriculture, irrigation, education, medicine and technology, and successful mission/trade schools were built, for example the one at Lovedale in 1857, which many African leaders attended, such as Sir Seretse Khama of Botswana, Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, ZK Mathews, Govan Mbeki, Tiyo Soga, Charles Nqakula, King Sobhuza II, Sir Mwanawina Lewanika III, Ellen Kuzwayo, Sam Nolutshungu, Sir Walter Stanford and William Wellington Gqoba.
A total of 15 such institutions had been built by 1902 in South Africa, which were completely “colour-blind” and trained students of all races. Healdtown, where Nelson Mandela was schooled, was one of these.
Missionaries often fought against the authorities for issues such as requesting that parliament drop “tax hut payments”, which it did.
The founding member and first president of the South African Native National Congress (which became the ANC in 1923) was John Langalibalele Dube, schooled at the Inanda Mission Station in Natal.
Dube’s grandmother was a convert of the Lindley Mission Station and his father became a minister and leading figure of the AmaQadi tribe. In 1946, W Vilakazi, a poet and author, wrote that Dube was “a great, if not the greatest, black man of the missionary epoch in South Africa”.
Izibongo is a praise poem written by the Thembu poet DLP Yali-Manisi. Below is a verse in Xhosa:
“Siyabulela thina basemaXhoseni
Ngokufika kweento zooRose nezooBheni
Ukuz’ amaXhos’ avulek’ ingqondo
Kulo mhla yaqal’ ukubhalwa le ntetho
Intethw’ engqongqotho yasemaXhoseni”
The English translation being:
We Xhosa are ever grateful/ That men like the Ross’ and the Bennies (missionaries)/ Came to open the minds of the Xhosa people/ By putting into writing/ The peerless language of the Xhosa
Geoff Embling is a freelance writer based in Cape Town
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