Missions, Respectability and Civil Rights: the Cape Colony, 1828–1854

Dutring the first half of the nineteenth century, some missionaries in the Cape Colony suggested to those Khoikhoi and, later, ex-slaves who were associated with them that conversion would not only have spiritual benefits but would also provide temporal advantages, both in terms of material progress and through the granting of civil rights. This entailed the Khoi not merely acceptinig the faith, but also obeying a code of behaviour, which can be sunmmarised as respectability. Respectability, I argue—should be seen as one of the key principles by which the Colony in this period – and by extension through much of South African history, can be understood. In this paper I discuss both how the mission Khoi reacted to the first delivery on this promise, the removal of civil disabilities for Free People of Colour under Ordinance 50, seen correctly or otherwise as the work of the missions, and then how the project went sour, as the missionaries were unable to deliver on their promises, at least in the short term. This failure was one of the main contributory causes of the rebellion of the Eastern Cape in 1851–1853, known to contemporaries and historianis as the Kat River Rebellion.