Robert Moffat The Missionary Hero of Kuruman

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

PIONEER MISSIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

The history of missions in South Africa abounds in interesting facts and incidents. Stories of heroism, strange adventures, and descriptions of journeyings among savage tribes and through countries frequented by beasts of prey, form part of its details. Its theme is love to God and love to man, and its facts have been called into existence through the efforts of noble-minded and true-hearted men and women to bring their coloured brethren and sisters to the knowledge of the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Many names are held in veneration in connection with these missions, names of those who, having laboured faithfully upon earth, have been called to their reward; among these none stands forward with greater prominence than that of Robert Moffat.

A brief glance at the development of the colony at the Cape of Good Hope, and at the early efforts made to evangelise the native races, may enable the reader better to understand the work carried on by Robert Moffat, and the success achieved; also to realise something of the position of affairs when he first landed in South Africa.

Discovered by the Portuguese in 1486, it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that much was done in the way of European colonisation. In 1652 the bold and mountainous promontory of the Cape was taken possession of by the Dutch, and a settlement was founded on the site of the present Cape Town. The earliest colonists were chiefly Dutch and German farmers; who were joined a little later on by numbers of French and Piedmontese Huguenots, driven from their native lands for conscience' sake.

At this early period the whole of what is now designated the Colony, was inhabited by Hottentots, a people lighter in colour than the Kafirs and Bechwanas, having pale yellow-brown skins, symmetrical in form when young, hardy, and having small hands and feet. They have nomadic tendencies; and, in their uncivilised state, scarcely practise agriculture. Their system of government is somewhat patriarchal; and they live in "kraals," or villages, consisting of bee-hive shaped huts, arranged in circular form. Their ideas of a Deity are extremely faint, they possess little in the nature of religious ceremonies, but the power of sorcerers among them is great. According to the locality occupied, they are known as Hottentots, Namaquas, or Corannas.

As the European colonists increased in numbers, they gradually advanced northward and eastward, either driving back the natives or subjugating them as slaves to their service. In 1806 the colony passed into the hands of the English, and, after a season of conflict, the Hottentots within the British territory were emancipated. This act of justice took place on 17th July, 1828.

In the early years of the present century, the natives of South Africa comprised—besides the Hottentots, who occupied the southern portion of the country, and were thinly scattered, to the north-west, in Great Namaqualand—the Kafirs, who dwelt in the south-east, beyond the Fish River; the Basutos, whose kraals were south of the Orange River; the Bechwanas and kindred tribes to the north of that river; and far away to the north-west, beyond Namaqualand, the Damara tribes, of whom but little was known at that time. Besides these, there were the Bushmen, a roving people, small in stature, and sunk to the lowest depths of barbarism, hunted down by the Dutch farmers like wild beasts, who had their hands turned against every man, and every man's hand turned against them.

To the Moravians belongs the honour of first seeking to bring the natives of South Africa under the influences of Christianity. In 1737 George Schmidt, who had been sent forth by the small Moravian church of Herrnhut, arrived in Cape Colony, and at Genadendal (the Vale of Grace), then known as Bavian's Kloof (the Glen of Baboons), established a mission station, where he laboured among the despised and oppressed Hottentots with much success for seven years....