‘Frontier
agitator’ (Part 2)
by Mike Oettle
IF James Read
had been called an agitator in his time at Bethelsdorp, in the Tswana country
and at Theopolis, in Lower Albany, he would be damned with that label after his
transfer to the Kat River district.
The question must then fairly be asked: what sort of a Christian was this man? The older history books are full of his misdeeds, but it must be remembered that they were written by men who believed that the supremacy of white men in Africa
was of the first importance, and that anyone who questioned or in any way
undermined it was a base villain.
The Kat River Settlement, an area where Khoikhoi (“Hottentot”) people could own
land, was set up in 1829 in the Kat valley on land taken from the amaXhosa. It
had, until the Fifth Frontier War in 1819, been the site of the kraal of the
Xhosa chief Maqoma. Landless Khoikhoi – there were some 9 000 of them in
the Cape – flocked there from many parts of the colony.
The London Missionary Society, invited by Graaff-Reinet landdrost Andries Stockenström, took the opportunity of settling some of its own people there at a mission station they called Philipton, after Dr John Philip. Despite the objections of Stockenström, Read was posted there too. His son James joined him in 1832, when the young man was 21.
The
existence of a settlement of free Khoikhoi was upsetting to farmers, both
British and Boer, who were always looking for ways of obtaining more labour.
The Boers could buy slaves (until slavery was abolished in 1834), but the 1820
Settlers were forbidden to own slaves and this community, especially, saw the
Reads and others like them as hindrances, as people who encouraged “lazy
Hottentots”.
In fact it was the LMS missionaries more than any other people who encouraged mission dwellers to go out and earn a living – so many did so from Bethelsdorp that hardly any of the able-bodied men belonging to the settlement actually lived there. Like many communities in the black reserves under apartheid (and, indeed, still today), it was a village of women, children and old men.
The Kat River Khoikhoi had every reason to be fearful of white colonists and the laws and other methods they employed to force brown men to be labourers on
unfavourable terms – especially after the emancipation of the slaves, which
coincided quite closely with the outbreak of the Sixth Frontier War in December
1834 – and one might expect them to be so rebellious that they would want to
ally themselves with the amaXhosa.
But
although they might have wanted to they did not, even though the elder Read
made their position under a threatened vagrancy law very clear: any official
could send a suspected vagrant to labour on public works until the suspect
gave assurance that he would either stop wandering or work on contract.
Missionaries in general were against the law: the Moravians felt it would undo all their work, the Methodists labelled the measure one that would lead to serfdom, and Dr Philip called for further grants of land to Khoikhoi on the Kat River (but said, rightly, that liquor should be outlawed there).
The
vagrancy law was passed by the Legislative Council but the Chief Justice found
it irregular and it was disallowed in London.
Despite Read’s advice against revolt, the Government exiled him from Philipton during that war on suspicion of sedition. In fact, he remained opposed to rebellion during the Seventh (1846-47) and Eighth (1850-53) Frontier Wars, and in this last conflict he formed the Kat River Loyal Burgher Association against “disloyalty and anarchy” – but when Philipton residents were among the leaders of the Kat River Rebellion in 1851 he was blamed for it, and after the war whites were settled in the valley on “Coloured” land. The Philipton congregation was reduced in numbers and could no longer afford a minister.
The Reads’ journey to London in 1836, accompanied by converts named Dyani Tshatshu[1] (also called Jan Tzatzoe) and Andries Stoffels, to give evidence before the parliamentary Select Committee on Aborigines, led to further accusations.
In balance, though, it would seem that Read (died 8 May 1852) was a sincere Christian, although perhaps too willing to listen to the complaints of the people in his care, and too easily a target for the enmity of his white neighbours. Dr Philip’s disapproval of certain of his actions shows that he certainly cannot be seen as a great saint. He appears to have continued Dr Van der Kemp’s error of teaching the gospel without endeavouring greatly to change the lives of his converts in other ways.
Yet had he been grievously wrong in his teaching of the gospel message he would surely have been dismissed.
James Read jnr, ordained in England in 1836, is felt to have been a more intelligent man than his father. Although half Khoikhoi, he married (1841) Anna, the daughter of English missionary the Rev George Barker. They had three sons and a daughter, of whom the third son, Walter Henry, became a magistrate in the Transkei.
