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Kobus Pumani returns from the initiation rites to find that his cattle are all dead. He is angry at his second wife and decides to punish her by becoming a Christian. In the meantime, the Farboroughs decide to go to the coast for Christmas, leaving Walter to look after the mission.

Unlike the Catholic missionaries who took a vow of chastity, the Anglicans were able to marry and have children. Their wives therefore tended to play an active role in the mission activity.

Although the children grew up in the religious atmosphere, there was not necessarily pressure on them to follow in their parents' footsteps by themselves taking the cloth.

The missionaries on the whole were not racists but they were certainly people of their time, and were therefore usually colonialist by nature. As such, they believed in the superiority not only of their religion and their church, but also of the British culture.

As a result, English was the language which their children and acolytes were expected to use. Their schools taught English, together with the classical subjects like Latin and Greek. Xhosa was forbidden as a language of instruction.

To become a convert into the Anglican Church therefore meant that the amaXhosa were forced to forgo their own traditions.

A convert who had more than one wife was expected to keep only the first one while the others were repudiated, often with shameful consequences. Consider, for example, how Kobus Pumani was allowed to put aside his second wife by becoming a Christian convert. (See Chapter 15)

Traditional Xhosa initiation rituals were taboo and circumcision initiates were not allowed to be seen in public.

The missionaries glorified hard work and despised laziness. Because of this, many of the mission stations established printing presses, as well as carpentry and metal industries.

Traditional subsistence farming, on the other hand, was frowned upon because the work tended to devolve upon the females while the males were seen as loafing.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?

Read the notes in the left column before answering the questions below:

Kobus Pumani converts to Christianity to punish his second wife.

• What had she done to deserve to be punished by him? (2)



• In what way does his conversion to Christianity punish her? (4)

[Need help?]

It was Kobus Pumani's second wife who had allowed the inspectors into his kraal to innoculate his cattle — which subsequently died. Christians were allowed to have only one wife which meant that, by converting to Christianity, he was given the opportunity of ridding himself of this troublesome second wife. By doing so, he would also condemn her to a life of poverty — a dire punishment for what she had done to him and his cattle.

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Why does Helmina wish to stay at the mission instead of going to the coast for Christmas? (2)

[Need help?]

Helmina wants the opportunity to be alone with Walter, does she not? A few weeks alone with Walter would surely seal her marriage to him!

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