Browsing by Author "Fast, Hildegarde Helene"
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- ItemOpen AccessAfrican perceptions of the missionaries and their message : Wesleyans at Mount Coke and Butterworth, 1825-35(1991) Fast, Hildegarde Helene; Le Cordeur, B AMissionary endeavours in the Eastern Cape were characterized by African resistance to the Christian Gospel during the first half of the nineteenth century. Current explanations for this rejection point to the opposition of the chiefs, the association that the listeners made between the missionaries and their white oppressors, and the threat to communal solidarity. This thesis aims to see if these explanations fully reveal the reasons for Xhosa resistance to Christianity by examining African perceptions of the missionaries and their message at the Wesleyan mission stations of Mount Coke and Butterworth for the period 1825-35. The research is based upon the Wesleyan Missionary Society correspondence and missionary journals and is corroborated and supplemented by travellers' records and later studies in African religion and social anthropology. The economic, social, and religious background of the Wesleyans is described to show how the Christian message was limited to their culture and system of thought. Concepts of divinity, morality, and the afterlife are compared to demonstrate the vast differences between Wesleyan and African worldviews and the inability of the missionaries to overcome these obstacles and to show the relevance of Christianity to African material and spiritual needs. Various types of perceptions are surveyed to show that, though the missionaries were respected for their spiritual role, their character and lifestyle presented an unappealing model of the Christian life. The threat that the missionary message posed to the structure and functioning of African communities is examined as well as African perceptions of these implications. A theory of conversion is advanced which reveals a consistent pattern of association with the missionaries for reasons of self-interest, exposure to the Gospel over a lengthy period of time, and finally conversion. The missionary-African contact of this period is thus characterized as the encounter between two systems of thought which did not engage.
- ItemOpen AccessPondoks, houses, and hostels : a history of Nyanga 1946-1970, with a special focus on housing(1996) Fast, Hildegarde Helene; Bradford, HelenIn this thesis I outline the history of Nyanga up to 1970. Diverse aspects are covered, including location politics, women's protests, rent arrears and boycotts, and gangsterism. There is a special focus on housing issues, for they were related to most facets of location life and demonstrated the contradictions within apartheid policy. Four themes are followed throughout the thesis. First, the extent to which the state achieved control of the African urban population is assessed, particularly in terms of its housing and influx control policies. I argue that the formulation and implementation of policies were influenced minimally by pressures "from below", and that central and local authorities achieved extensive control over the lives of urban Africans. Nevertheless, government officials did not succeed in curbing African urbanisation or controlling the residential movement of urban Africans, as witnessed by the high number of "illegal" Africans and consistently high tenancy turnover. A second topic that threads its way through the thesis is the role of African constables and clerks in Nyanga. I show that residents working with the location administration were attracted particularly to the material benefits of collaboration. Utilising their linguistic skills and knowledge of location inhabitants, they extracted money and sexual favours from Nyanga residents and were given first priority in the allocation of Old Location houses. They did not, however, form an identifiable social group as they came from diverse occupational and educational backgrounds and did not associate closely with one another. A third theme is the differential impact of apartheid laws on African women. I outline the laws that applied to urban African women and describe the actual process by which they were expelled from the Cape Peninsula. Arising from this, the changing nature and scope of women's demonstrations in Nyanga is described. My research shows that the protests of the early 1950s, which were small, infrequent, and centred on local issues, broadened in the late 1950s to include the application of pass laws to African women. The reasons for the change are shown to be both political and material in nature, with their origin in the forced removals from Peninsula shack settlements. Fourthly, I have concentrated on spatial dynamics at various points. There were significant differences in physical space between Mau-Mau and the Old Location, which contributed to the social distance between the two neighbourhoods. During the massive "black spot" clearance campaign of the 1950s, the authorities succeeded in gaining spatial control over Africans by forcing them into segregated, fenced locations where entry and exit was monitored. To counteract this, residents asserted their control over the transit camp by constructing shacks in such a way as to impede raiding pass officials and make administrative surveillance of their lives difficult. The contradictory effects of placing contract workers in accommodation next to families are also examined: on the one hand, there was considerable socialising and cooperation between the two groups; on the other, much friction developed over the relationships between women in the married quarters and men in the hostels.