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Tile and the Thembu Church: Politics and Independency on the Cape Eastern Frontier in the Late Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

C. C. Saunders
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Extract

This paper attempts to reassess the general significance of the Thembu church by setting it in its political context. It examines the early career of Nehemiah Tile and the origins of this earliest of independent churches in southern Africa. In the 1880s Tile was not only the leader of the church, but also the chief figure behind a movement of political protest which sought to free Thembuland from Cape magisterial control. After his death, the church continued, and whites saw it as a real threat to their interests. But in the late 1890s the history of the church became increasingly obscure. There is some evidence to suggest that the church was less completely ‘tribal’ than usually maintained. The paper concludes that the church should be seen both as an expression of African reaction to the imposition of white rule on the Cape eastern frontier and as an element in the development of African nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1970 , pp. 553 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

1 See, inter alia, Lea, A., The Native Separatist Church Movement in South Africa (Cape Town, n.d. (1926?), 24 ff.;Google ScholarThwaite, D., The Seething African Pot, A Study of Black Nationalism, 1882–1935 (London, 1936), 26;Google ScholarSundkler, B. G. M., Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London, 1961, 2nd edition), 38;Google ScholarBarrett, D., ‘Church Growth and Independency as Organic Phenomena’, in Baeta, C. (ed.), Christianity in Tropical Africa (London, 1968);Google ScholarHinchcliff, P., The Church in South Africa (London, 1968), 90–1.Google Scholar The establishment of the Thembu church is discussed below. A minor secession from the Paris Evangelical Mission at Mt. Hermon in Basutoland in 1872 was short-lived and did not lead to the establishment of a permanent independent church. The earliest secessions from mission churches south of the Sahara occurred in Sierra Leone in 1819 and after (Barrett, D., Schism and Renewal in Africa (Nairobi, 1968), 18).Google Scholar

2 This church, founded in the Maidi chiefdom of the Tlhaping, was the result of a secession from the London Missionary Society. On it see Pauw, B. A., Religion in a Tswana Chiefdom (London, 1960), 47.Google Scholar

3 Sundkler, , Bantu Prophets, 38–9;Google ScholarLanternari, V., The Religions of the Oppressed (New York, 1965), 40.Google Scholar This is on the ground that the African independent church movement does not really begin until 1892, when the Ethiopian church was founded. Note that Shepperson, on the other hand, regards the movement as being ‘in full flood’ by 1892 (Shepperson, G., ‘Ethiopianism Past and Present’, in Baeta, , Christianity, 251). Much that follows in this paper suggests that Sundkler's facts and interpretations are wrong. If his passages on Tile and the Thembu church are weak, his book remains, however, the most brilliant single contribution to the literature on religious independency in southern Africa.Google Scholar

4 Theal, G. Mc. C., History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884 (2 vols., London, 1919), which reproduces in part material also to be found in his earlier work.Google Scholar

5 There are conflicting statements on this. See, for example, Veldtman's statement in note 69 below and A. Stanford to chief magistrate, Thembuland (hereafter CMT), 23 July 1884. Cape Archives Native Affairs series (N.A.), 96, 210. Veldtman thought him a Thembu, Stanford a Mpondo. On the political structure of the Thembu chiefdom see Hammond-Tooke, W. D., The Tribes of Umtata District (Pretoria, 1956-1957), especially paras. 15–18. Tile's name was pronounced ‘Teelie’ (The Cape Mercury, 16 March 1893, in an article headed ‘Tembuland Troubles’).Google Scholar

6 Clarkebury was among the earliest mission stations established in the Transkeian territories, having been founded in 1830 as one of the chain of stations intended by William Shaw to stretch from the Cape to Natal (for the best discussion of the background to the founding of the Thembu mission at Clarkebury see Seton, B. E., ‘Wesleyan Missions and the Sixth Frontier War 1834 to 1835’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1962). Hargreaves had worked in the Clarkebury district since 1858.Google Scholar

7 Hargreaves Papers (Methodist Publishing House, Cape Town), MS diary, 26 August 1874. Norton, G. R., in ‘The Emergence of New Religious Organisations in South Africa. A Discussion of Causes’, Part II (Journal of the Royal African Society, XL, no. 158, 01 1941), 53, calls Tile ‘efficient and zealous’.Google Scholar

8 Hargreaves Papers, diary, 4 July, 9 September and 7 October 1874.

9 On Healdtown, see Hewsen, L. A., ‘Healdtown. A Study of a Methodist Experiment in African Education’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Rhodes University, 2 vols., 1959. On Kawa and Dwane see my unpublished seminar paper, ‘The New African Elite in the Eastern Cape and some late nineteenth century origins of African Nationalism’ (University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, SSA/69/4).Google Scholar

10 Minutes of the First Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of South Africa April 1883 (Cape Town, 1883), 84.Google Scholar Tile's entering the ministry, therefore, cannot have had anything to do with the deputational visit to South Africa in 1880 of John Kilner, as Sundkler (Bantu Prophets, 38) suggests. Kilner's advocacy of hastening the creation of a ‘native ministry’ in South Africa (Kilner, cf. J., A Summary Report (London, 1881)) was much criticized in South Africa, and when Wesleyan Africans began to secede, his critics claimed this as proof that he had sought to rush the process unduly (cf. the comments of C. Cowen in one of his newspaper articles written in 1892, to be found in his volume of cuttings in the South African Library, Cape Town, 55).Google Scholar

11 Information drawn from the Reports of the Wesleyan-Methodist Missionary Society, 1872−1883.

12 Stanford Papers (University of Cape Town Library), diary, D. 8, 31 July 1883, where Chubb takes Tile to task for his political activity and for refusing to reveal ‘state secrets’. Walter Stanford was then magistrate at Engcobo in Thembuland. On Chubb, see a biography in Methodist Missionaries, 3 (pamphlet, Rondebosch, n.d.).

13 Minutes of the First Conference…, 3. Sundkler (Bantu Prophets, 38), in speaking of Tile having been ‘ordained’, gives the incorrect impression that he was a full minister.Google Scholar

14 Minutes of the Third General Meeting of Chairmen and Representatives of the Five South African Districts (Grahamstown, 1880), 30 (p. 21 in another copy of the same with different pagination). When Mokone broke away from the Wesleyan church in 1892 (for which see below), he gave as one of his reasons for doing so the discrimination that existed within the church.Google Scholar

15 The charges are listed in Skota, T. M., The African Yearly Register (1st edition, Johannesburg, n.d.), 96. Skota is a valuable source, though one that has to be used with great caution. Lea (Separatist Church Movement, 26–7) claims that Tile was offered the choice of moving into the colony or resigning.Google Scholar

16 Suggestions that he left the church as early as 1882 (Lea, Separatist Church Movement, 27) or as late as 1885 (Cingo, W. D., Ibali Laba Tembu (Palmerton, n.d.), 134) are clearly incorrect; it was almost certainly in the second half of 1883.Google Scholar

17 Stanford Papers, D. 8, 18 August 1883. For the petition of 22 August 1883, see Under Secretary for Native Affairs (hereafter USNA) to CMT, 28 November 1883. Cape Archives Transkei and Tembuland series (CMT) 1/7.

18 USNA to CMT, 3 September 1883. CMT 1/7.

19 Petition of 26 December 1883, enclosed in USNA to CMT, 25 January 1884. CMT 1/8.

20 See the comments of a correspondent in The Journal (Grahamstown), 28 February 1884.

21 The legal status of the Cape's administration in Thembuland was the subject of much correspondence between the chief magistrate and the Native Affairs Department from early 1881 onwards. See especially the opinion by J. Leonard, 23 April 1881 (Cape Archives, Colonial Secretary's Office series, C.O. 1156), in which he maintained the Thembuland magistrates derived ‘their authority to exercise judicial functions from the chiefs, who are de jure still independent rulers’.

22 Stanford Papers, D. 8, 26 March 1884.

23 CMT to USNA, 16 April 1884. N.A. 94, 141.

24 Arthur Stanford to CMT, conf., 23 July 1884. N.A. 96, 207−8. Similar appeals were made by other African religious leaders; 25 years later, for example, the Tonga, Elliot Kamwana, was to preach that after the imminent coming of the millennium in Central Africa, hut tax would no longer be paid.

25 See, for example, The Cape Argus, 23 June 1884. Tile was almost certainly the author of a letter which appeared in The Cape Mercury, 6 March 1884, signed by ‘A Native in Tembuland’. The editor said the author's name had been supplied, but withheld because it would ‘probably be better for him that it should not appear’.

26 Statement of demands as in The Cape Argus, 23 June 1884, and account of the meeting as given by Walter Stanford in Stanford Papers, D. 8, 15 September 1884.

27 Stanford Papers, ibid.

28 De Wet to Ngangeliswe, 28 November 1884, encl, in USNA to CMT, 25 April 1885. CMT 1/9.

29 De Wet to CMT, 30 September 1884. CMT 1/8.

30 Elliot's report in Cape Blue Book on Native Affairs, 1885 (G. 2−85), 121−2; USNA to CMT 4 December 1884. CMT 1/8.

31 USNA to Blakeway, 30 January 1885. CMT 1/9; Blakeway to USNA, 5 February 1885. N.A. 102.

32 USNA to Blakeway, 30 January 1885. CMT 1/9.

33 Stanford Papers, D. 10, 24 March 1885.

34 Hinchliff, P., Church in South Africa, 91.Google Scholar

35 Elliot to Secretary to the Native Affairs Department, conf., 24 February 1902. N.A. 498, folder 96. On this custom see, inter alia, Hammond-Tooke, W. D., Bhaca Society (Cape Town, 1962), 138–9,Google Scholar and van Tromp, J., Xhosa Law of Persons (Cape Town, n.d.), 170–1.Google Scholar

36 Report of Elliot's meeting with Thembu, 3 December 1885. N.A. 433.

37 Elliot, as in note 35 above.

38 CMT to USNA, 17 December 1890. N.A. 115, 143.

39 Ibid.,144. Dalindyebo was probably encouraged in this by the fact that the Qwati chief, Dalasile, was not recognized by the colonial administration following the 1880−1881 rebellion, in which he had participated.

40 For the administrative changes see N.A. 465 passim.

41 The Reminiscences of Sir Walter Stanford, ed. Macquarrie, J. W., II (Cape Town, 1962), 10.Google Scholar

42 Negro influences on the Cape African elite await detailed investigation. For later influences see Walshe, A. P., ‘The Origins of African Political Consciousness in South Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 7 4 (1969), 595 ff., but as early as the 1870s some news of Negro activity was reaching the eastern Cape, for example in the Lovedale monthly The Christian Express and its Xhosa counterpart, Isigidimi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 The Wesleyan Missionary Notices, 4th Series, IX (London, 1877), 68. Letter of 20 November 1876.Google Scholar

44 CMT to USNA, 17 December 1890. N.A. 115, 143. Perhaps the Anglicans were influenced by this proposal in appointing John Xaba, an African, as missionary in Thembuland shortly afterwards (The Cowley Evangelist, 07 1891, p. 103).Google Scholar

45 The deputation included African Wesleyan ministers and Tengo Jabavu, the editor of Imvo, the first non-missionary newspaper to be edited by an African, which had appeared from King William's Town from 1884. On the deputation, see especially The Cape Mercury, 16 03 1893Google Scholar and Xaba to Father Superior, 21 February 1893, The Cowley Evangelist, 05 1893, 75. It may have arrived in Thembuland after Tile's death (see next paragraph).Google Scholar

46 John, Xaba to Father, Osborne, 30 03 1892,Google ScholarThe Cowley Evangelist, 06 1892, 188.Google Scholar

47 The three were Kula, Gqamani and Mkize; for Xaba's comments on them (‘poor and illiterate, but…VERY PIG-HEADED’) see his letter cited in note 46 above.

48 On Goduka and the African Native Church, see Constitution, Isi-Miselo of the African Native Church (pamphlet, King William's Town, n.d. (1898?)), 3. The Constitution makes no mention of Goduka's relationship with the Thembu church and dates the establishment of the African Native Church from Goduka's secession from the Wesleyans. That Tile on his deathbed had said that he would be succeeded by a Ngqika (as in Sundkler, , Bantu Prophets, 47)Google Scholar was probably a story fabricated to help establish Goduka's legitimacy. No exact figures for the membership of the Thembu church in the early 1890s exist, but general statements that membership increased between mid-1892 and mid-1893 are common (e.g. editorials in The Cape Times, 31 07 1893,Google Scholar and The Eastern Province Herald, 4 08 1893).Google Scholar The church spread in time even to Matatiele in Griqualand East (see Green, T. to Matatiele, R. M., 25 02 1907. N.A. 497).Google Scholar

49 CMT to USNA, 13 December 1892. CMT 3/273, 209; USNA to CMT,5 January 1893. CMT 3/2; Xaba to Father Superior, 21 February 1893. The Cowley Evangelist, 05 1893, p. 74.Google Scholar

50 Some years later it was alleged that this ruling had given the Thembu church ‘a severe check’ (see Veldtman's statement in note 69 below). The African Methodist Episcopal Church ministers were to be allowed marriage registration forms in the late 1890s.

51 Stanford Papers, F(r)24: Rose, Innes to Stanford, , conf., 14 06 1893.Google Scholar

52 The Cape Times, 29 07 1893, reporting debate in the House of Assembly, 28 07, on the Minister of Agriculture Bill.Google Scholar

53 The Cape Mercury, 16 03 1893.Google Scholar

54 See Liefeldt (magistrate at Willowvale) to Elliot, 20 02 1902 and enclosures. N.A. 498, folder 96. The Gcaleka were much less receptive to Christianity than the Thembu (Hammond-Tooke, W. D., The Tribes of Willowvale District Pretoria, 1956–1957),Google Scholar paras. 31 and 134; Pauw, , ‘Patterns of Christianisation among the Tswana and the Xhosa-speaking Peoples’, in African Systems of Thought (London, (1963), preface by Fortes and Dieterlen, passim).Google Scholar

55 Imvo, editorial 3, 9 08 1893. Jabavu claimed the movement was dying, but this was clearly wishful thinking.Google Scholar

56 The Cape Mercury, 16 03 1893.Google Scholar

57 Xaba, to Father, Puller, 28 01 1896.Google ScholarThe Cowley Evangelist, 03 1896, 65.Google Scholar

58 Ibid..

59 Ibid.

60 Sundkler, , Bantu Prophets, 47.Google Scholar He represents this as a Thembu revolt against Ngqika leadership. Léenhardt, Cf., Le Mouvement Ethiopien (Dijon, 1902), who claims that by 1897 many Tilites were in the A.M.E. Church (18).Google Scholar

61 Elliot, as in note 35 above.

62 For Goduka's later history and some twentieth century offshoots of the church, including the African Castor-oil Dead Church, see Sundkler, , Bantu Prophets, 47 and 341, note 20.Google Scholar

63 Cameron, W. M., ‘The Ethiopian Movement and the Order of Ethiopia’, The East and the West, II (1904), 376.Google Scholar On Mokone, see the full biography in Skota, , Yearly Register(1st edition), 208–11.Google Scholar

64 Skota, ibid., 209.

65 Jacobus Xaba described his mission to John Xaba, a distant relative, who reported what he had been told to Father Puller in a letter of 28 January 1896. The Cowley Evangelist, 03 1896, 65–7.Google Scholar

66 Léenhardt, , Mouvement, 18. His remark is based on perusal of the A.M.E. Church handbook.Google Scholar

67 See Mzimba's, letters from Johannesburg, from 08 1896, to Dr Stewart of Lovedale in the Stewart Papers (University of Cape Town library), bundle 30.Google Scholar

68 For example, Lea, , Separatist Church Movement, 24.Google Scholar

69 Statement of Veldtman Bikitsha, encl, in Liefeldt, to Elliot, , 20 02 1902, N.A. 498, folder 96.Google Scholar

70 See, e.g. The Cape Times, 31 07 1893, edit. I. Mfengu were invited to the opening of the Thembu church building in 03 1893. One of the chief Tilite missions in Fingoland was at Xilinxa (statement of Joseph Bikitsha, encl. as in note 69).Google Scholar

71 Statements enclosed as in note 69.

72 The N.E.A. had been founded in 1879, the S.A.N.P.A. in early 1883; both were essentially elite organizations, though officials of the latter were active in addressing public meetings and canvassing wide support for resolutions and petitions on political matters.

73 Stanford Papers, F(r)24: Rose Innes to Stanford, conf., 14 June 1893. The idea of an ‘Africander Native Bond’ went back at least as far as the South African Aborigines Association, which claimed it was the true Afrikander Bond, the one of that name being merely the ‘Boeren Bond’ (The Christian Express, 09 1883, reporting the founding meeting of the S.A.A.A.). The Cape Times (31 July 1893, edit. I) expressed the fear that the Thembu church might pose a political threat to whites, and as an example of what might happen at the Cape, pointed to the role of the black vot in electing Cleveland in the American presidential election of 1892.Google Scholar

74 John Xaba thought he detected a movement towards the adoption of some more typically Anglican practices by the Thembu church (Xaba, to Osborne, , 30 03 1892.Google ScholarThe Cowley Evangelist, 06 1892, 88).Google Scholar

75 For details see Lea, , Separatist Church Movement, 25.Google Scholar See also The Eastern Province Herald, 8 03 1893, edit. and references cited in notes 51 and 53 above.Google Scholar

76 Ranger, T., ‘The “Ethiopian” episode in Barotseland, 1900–1905’, The RhodesLivingstone Journal, 37, 06 1965, 26–;41,Google Scholar and, more generally, ‘Nationality and Nationalism, The Case of Barotseland’, Journal of the Historial Society of Nigeria, IV, 2, 06 1968.Google Scholar

77 See, e.g. my paper cited in note 9 above, especially p. 9 and note 54. But cf. Walshe, ‘African Political Consciousness’, 592, for a different view.

78 Of the active African National Congress leadership at the time the organization was banned in 1960, most were of Thembu origin (Carter, cf. G., Karis, T. and Stultz, N., South Africa's Transkei: The Politics of Domestic Colonialism (London, 1967), 133, note 6). The leadership in the ruling party in the Transkei in the 1960s, the Transkeian National Independence Party, was Thembu.Google Scholar