DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70004#0169
167
White Fathers came later but the Catholic Church is today the second major
church in the Eastern Province after the Reformed Church, whereas the An-
glicans and Adventists with just one mission station each are minorities.
The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) is the church
to which the first Dutch settlers at the Cape in 1652 belonged. It is still clearly
the dominant church amongst the Boers (Afrikaaners) in South Africa. The
mother church in the Netherlands came into existence in the Dutch reforma-
tion of the 16th century, which was mainly Calvinist. Max Weber emphasized
that it was mainly in the Calvinist churches that emerged, due to the dogma
of predestination, the inner-wordly asceticism which provided the basis for the
development of the “capitalist spirit”. Towards the end of the 16th century
Calvinism became the state religion in the Netherlands and there are historians
who link this fact with the rise of the Netherlands as an economic and trading
world power in the 17th century (WEBER 1930, 179). The Reformed Church
in South Africa naturally maintained the predestination dogma and the ethical
implications derived from it which regarded work and industriousness as an
obligation before God and interpreted professional success as an indication of
divine determination. According to STOKES (1975), Calvinism in South Africa
is, on account of historical and social circumstances, much more conservative
and less dynamic than in Europe. In the 20th century the Dutch Reformed
Church moved in a particular direction because it supplied the ideological jus-
tification for the system of Apartheid. Its advocation of racial segregation also
had implications for mission work in Zambia, although these are irrelevant in
the present context (see above, p. 60).
The missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) were mostly Boers
from the Orange Free State since the DRC Synod there was responsible for
the Northern Rhodesian “mission field”. Most of the missionaries had grown
up in rural areas of South Africa and had received some agricultural training.
In their mission schools they therefore laid emphasis on agricultural educa-
tion. However, not only is the origin of the missionaries significant but there
was also a conscious objective: it was the intention of the missions to mould
the Africans into a “bible-loving, industrious and prosperous peasantry”, as
PRETORIUS (1957, 11), a DRC missionary in Nyasaland, once stated. The
object of the mission was to build a church which would be able to support
itself as soon as possible, both in finance and personnel. Thus education in
the schools, as well as in adult classes, stressed the use of natural resources.
This was something that the Boers had learnt in the centuries following their
arrival in South Africa (cf. BOLINK 1967, 89 - 91 and Pauw 1980, 151 - 184)8.
This approach meant that agriculture was being taught at Magwero, Mad-
zimoyo, Nsadzu and Nyanje mission stations as early as 1913 (BANDA 1981,
White Fathers came later but the Catholic Church is today the second major
church in the Eastern Province after the Reformed Church, whereas the An-
glicans and Adventists with just one mission station each are minorities.
The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk) is the church
to which the first Dutch settlers at the Cape in 1652 belonged. It is still clearly
the dominant church amongst the Boers (Afrikaaners) in South Africa. The
mother church in the Netherlands came into existence in the Dutch reforma-
tion of the 16th century, which was mainly Calvinist. Max Weber emphasized
that it was mainly in the Calvinist churches that emerged, due to the dogma
of predestination, the inner-wordly asceticism which provided the basis for the
development of the “capitalist spirit”. Towards the end of the 16th century
Calvinism became the state religion in the Netherlands and there are historians
who link this fact with the rise of the Netherlands as an economic and trading
world power in the 17th century (WEBER 1930, 179). The Reformed Church
in South Africa naturally maintained the predestination dogma and the ethical
implications derived from it which regarded work and industriousness as an
obligation before God and interpreted professional success as an indication of
divine determination. According to STOKES (1975), Calvinism in South Africa
is, on account of historical and social circumstances, much more conservative
and less dynamic than in Europe. In the 20th century the Dutch Reformed
Church moved in a particular direction because it supplied the ideological jus-
tification for the system of Apartheid. Its advocation of racial segregation also
had implications for mission work in Zambia, although these are irrelevant in
the present context (see above, p. 60).
The missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) were mostly Boers
from the Orange Free State since the DRC Synod there was responsible for
the Northern Rhodesian “mission field”. Most of the missionaries had grown
up in rural areas of South Africa and had received some agricultural training.
In their mission schools they therefore laid emphasis on agricultural educa-
tion. However, not only is the origin of the missionaries significant but there
was also a conscious objective: it was the intention of the missions to mould
the Africans into a “bible-loving, industrious and prosperous peasantry”, as
PRETORIUS (1957, 11), a DRC missionary in Nyasaland, once stated. The
object of the mission was to build a church which would be able to support
itself as soon as possible, both in finance and personnel. Thus education in
the schools, as well as in adult classes, stressed the use of natural resources.
This was something that the Boers had learnt in the centuries following their
arrival in South Africa (cf. BOLINK 1967, 89 - 91 and Pauw 1980, 151 - 184)8.
This approach meant that agriculture was being taught at Magwero, Mad-
zimoyo, Nsadzu and Nyanje mission stations as early as 1913 (BANDA 1981,