scholarly journals The Awkward Positioning of a Dutch Reformed Missionary in Apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Retief Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Town Area

The Rev. D. P. (David) Botha was a lifelong apartheid critic and minister in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and later the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). Early in his career, he served as a “missionary” in a DRMC congregation in Wynberg, and subsequently in other congregations in the Western Cape, South Africa. During his career, he wrote an important book and engaged in public discourse through contributions in newspapers and other mainstream publications. Focusing on these sources, most of which now form part of his private collection in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) Archive, this article traces Botha’s growing agitation regarding the implementation of apartheid policies, in the aftermath of the institution of the 1950 Group Areas Act. Among other things it illuminates the early apartheid-era white view of the other, as experienced and critiqued by this insider-outsider minister with respect to his assessment of general white perceptions of so-called “coloureds” in the Cape Town area. Through specific attention to Botha’s correspondences with A. P. Treurnicht and Beyers Naudé, this article also shows the problematic perspective of a white missionary seeking to alleviate the impact of policy decisions on his church members, while simultaneously buying into the predominant ideology of racial categorisation.

scholarly journals Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Church Unity between former DRMC and DRCA, 1994

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Selaelo Thias Kgatla
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Black People ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
Apartheid Regime

T Church unity between the former Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA) took place in 1994 under particularly difficult circumstances. South Africa was on the brink of civil war, as the oppressed majority of the country was pressurising the apartheid regime to surrender to their legitimate demands for a democratic dispensation. The regime was relentless and violently resisted any change that would franchise black people. The struggle involved political, social, economic and religious dimensions and many people lost their lives as a result. It was under these circumstances that the DRMC and the DRCA forged ahead with church unity. The most enabling means for survival in the struggle for unity of the two churches was their faith in God as expressed in the Belhar Confession. This article explores the circumstances under which church unification was forged between the two Reformed churches and their eventual unity in 1994, as well as the concrete steps they took in their ritual of unification.

scholarly journals Die Algemene Sinode van die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk van 1990 en die Gelofte van 1838

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Piet J. Strauss
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Biblical Perspective ◽  
Christian Society ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

The General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church of 1990 and the Covenant of 1838. The Dutch Reformed Church as a church consisting of mainly Afrikaners, was confronted by a new societal dispensation and a new government in South Africa in and after 1994. The trend of the new constitution of 1996, as well as a new public discourse laid the emphasis on the individual and his rights in a society open to all. This discourse implicitly communicated negative tones on actions, activating minority groups for their own separate ideas. As if the General Synod expected this coming challenge, the Synod of 1990 already had a report of its Commission on Doctrine and Actual Affairs on the Dutch Reformed Church, keeping the Day of the Covenant of the Voortrekkers in 1838. This article investigated the stance of this General Synod on this issue with two, seemingly main objectives: an acceptable, grounded reason for people to keep the Day of the Covenant, and a positive link between the Covenant of 1838 and reconciliation in a modern South Africa. The method used was a study of literature and primary sources on these issues. The General Synod of 1990 made two relevant statements in its new environment. In the first place, it decided that individuals should associate with the Covenant on moral grounds and not because they are forced to do so. The core of the Covenant of 1838 was the request that God enable people taking the vow, to win the battle foreseen – the Battle of Blood River – and to promote Christian values for establishing a new Christian society. An issue which is still relevant in South Africa today. That is why the Voortrekkers promised to build a church as the focus point of their forseen society. The second statement of this Synod was that reconciliation as a catchword in the 1990s in Christian South Africa, is part of the promotion of a Christian society. Reconciliation in a biblical perspective remains relevant in South Africa.Contribution: Seen from the approach of this article as a Christian approach, these statements of the General Synod of 1990 help the Dutch Reformed Church as church to fulfil its tasks in Soutern Africa today.

The Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sendingkerk and the Nama Experience in Namaqualand, South Africa

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 189-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Oakley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk ◽  
Northern Cape ◽  
Aboriginal Identity ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

In Steinkopf, a former coloured Reserve in the Northern Cape Province, the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sendingkerk (NGS; Dutch Reformed Mission Church), a former sub-branch of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK; Dutch Reformed Church) forged a legitimate public space for the expression of Nama identity in the 1960s. The legitimisation of aboriginal identity was not accidental, but very much an expression of apartheid policies of the day. I hope to demonstrate both the content and the consequences of this particular episode in Steinkopf, and thereby contribute to an understanding of the links between a crumbling capitalist infrastructure and the ideological efforts to reinforce that infrastructure through processes of ethnic strengthening. My claim is that the NGK played an ideological role supporting the capitalist interests as it strengthened the super-structural pillars of the segregation and apartheid eras.

scholarly journals Where have all the Prophets Gone? URCSA 25 years Later: Re-Acquainting with Prophetic Theology in Post-apartheid South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Andre Fortein
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
State Capture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
The Church

The Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) was formed in 1994 as a merger between the former Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA). URCSA, as the bearer of the Belhar Confession, has always stood within the tradition of Prophetic Theology. This article upholds the presuppositions that the prophetic nature of Black Liberation Theology impacted on the reasoning of the authors of various anti-apartheid documents like the theological declarations of the Belydendekring and Alliance of Black Reformed Christians in Southern Africa (ABRECSA), the Kairos Document and Belhar Confession; and with the advent of our democracy, URCSA not only lost her Kairos conscience but parted with Prophetic Theology—hence the title of this paper. Issues like state capture, corruption, the expropriation of land without compensation, poverty, racism, and so forth are all issues plaguing our young democracy and require a clear theological response. This article argues for renewed acquaintance from the church, URCSA, with Prophetic Theology, which will enable the church to not only speak prophetically but to challenge the status quo. Prophetic Theology is much better prepared to engage with the challenges posed in post-apartheid South Africa because it is grounded in a hope that is unprepared to accept the world as it is.

The Spectre of a Second Chilembwe: Government, Missions, and Social Control in Wartime Northern Rhodesia, 1914–18

1990 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Yorke
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

The 1915 Chilembwe Rising in Nyasaland had important political repercussions in the neighbouring colonial territory of Northern Rhodesia, where fears were raised among the Administration about the activities of African school teachers attached to the thirteen mission denominations then operating in the territory. These anxieties were heightened for the understaffed and poorly-financed British South Africa Company administration by the impact of the war-time conscription of Africans and the additional demands made by war-time conditions upon the resources of the Company. Reports of anti-war activities by African teachers attached to the Dutch Reformed Church in the East Luangwa District convinced both the Northern Rhodesian and the imperial authorities of the imperative need to strictly regulate the activities of its black mission-educated elite. Suspected dissident teachers were arrested, while others were diverted into military service where their activities could be more closely supervised. With the 1918 Native Schools Proclamation, the Administration laid down strict regulations for the appointment and employment of African mission teachers. The proclamation aroused the vehement opposition of the mission societies who, confronted by war-time European staff shortages, had come to rely heavily upon their African teachers to maintain their educational work. The emergence in late 1918 of the patently anti-colonial Watch Tower movement, which incorporated many African mission employees within its leadership, weakened the opposition of the missions, and served to consolidate the administration's perception of the African teachers as a dangerous subversive force. Strong measures were implemented by the administration soon after the end of the war, with large numbers of Watch Tower adherents being arrested and detained.

scholarly journals Whose Land Is it anyway? A historical Reflection on the Challenges URCSA Encountered with Land and Property Rights

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Historical Reflection ◽  
The Way ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

The proposal to amend the Constitution of South Africa 1996 regarding the expropriation of land without compensation has invigorated a robust discourse with regard to the land issue in South Africa. Cognisance should be taken of how the land issue was handled during the apartheid dispensation and the way it has played out in the constitutional democracy dispensation since 1994 in South Africa. This article will attend to issues relating to land in the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA). URCSA was constituted in 1994 due to a merger of two racially segregated churches, the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) and the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA). The DRMC was constituted through mission endeavours of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) during 1881 to serve so-called coloured members of the DRC. The DRCA was constituted in or about 1910 to serve African members. In order to understand the controversy in URCSA from 1994–2012 with regard to property rights, one has to understand how the colonists and missionaries (and later the apartheid regime) utilised “divide and rule” and supremacy strategies to secure property rights for churches of people from mixed descent and Indian people (the DRMC) and the Reformed Church in Africa [RCA]); while at the same time restricting property rights for churches of members from African descent (the DRCA). This is evident in the way the constitutions of the above-mentioned mission churches were drafted. This article will attend to the following subthemes: property rights of the DRMC challenged by apartheid laws; property rights of the DRCA challenged by apartheid laws; a court case regarding the expropriation of land without compensation; controversy regarding property rights (1998–2012); from litigation to out-of-court settlement on property rights (1998–2012); and lastly out-of-court settlement between the DRC, the DRCA and URCSA.

The impact of climate temperature on counts, recovery, and death rates due to SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa. (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neven Chetty ◽  
Bamise Adeleye ◽  
Abiola Olawale Ilori
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Death Rate ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Warm Climate ◽  
The South ◽  
Recovery Rates ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
Online Resource ◽  
The Impact

BACKGROUND The impact of climate temperature on the counts (number of positive COVID-19 cases reported), recovery, and death rates of COVID-19 cases in South Africa's nine provinces was investigated. The data for confirmed cases of COVID-19 were collected for March 25 and June 30, 2020 (14 weeks) from South Africa's Government COVID-19 online resource, while the daily provincial climate temperatures were collected from the website of the South African Weather Service. Our result indicates that a higher or lower climate temperature does not prevent or delay the spread and death rates but shows significant positive impacts on the recovery rates of COVID-19 patients. Thus, it indicates that the climate temperature is unlikely to impose a strict limit on the spread of COVID-19. There is no correlation between the cases and death rates, an indicator that no particular temperature range is closely associated with a faster or slower death rate of COVID-19 patients. As evidence from our study, a warm climate temperature can only increase the recovery rate of COVID-19 patients, ultimately impacting the death and active case rates and freeing up resources quicker to enable health facilities to deal with those patients' climbing rates who need treatment. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the impact of climate temperature variation on the counts, recovery, and death rates of COVID-19 cases in all South Africa's provinces. The findings were compared with those of countries with comparable climate temperature values. METHODS The data for confirmed cases of COVID-19 were collected for March 25 and June 30 (14 weeks) for South African provinces, including daily counts, death, and recovery rates. The dates were grouped into two, wherein weeks 1-5 represent the periods of total lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 in South Africa. Weeks 6-14 are periods where the lockdown was eased to various levels 4 and 3. The daily information of COVID-19 count, death, and recovery was obtained from South Africa's Government COVID-19 online resource (https://sacoronavirus.co.za). Daily provincial climate temperatures were collected from the website of the South African Weather Service (https://www.weathersa.co.za). The provinces of South Africa are Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape, Limpopo, Northwest, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, and Gauteng. Weekly consideration was given to the daily climate temperature (average minimum and maximum). The recorded values were considered, respectively, to be in the ratio of death-to-count (D/C) and recovery-to-count (R/C). Descriptive statistics were performed for all the data collected for this study. The analyses were performed using the Person’s bivariate correlation to analyze the association between climate temperature, death-to-count, and recovery-to-count ratios of COVID-19. RESULTS The results showed that higher climate temperatures aren't essential to avoid the COVID-19 from being spread. The present results conform to the reports that suggested that COVID-19 is unlike the seasonal flu, which does dissipate as the climate temperature rises [17]. Accordingly, the ratio of counts and death-to-count cannot be concluded to be influenced by variations in the climate temperatures within the study areas. CONCLUSIONS The study investigates the impact of climate temperature on the counts, recovery, and death rates of COVID-19 cases in all South Africa's provinces. The findings were compared with those of countries with comparable climate temperatures as South Africa. Our result indicates that a higher or lower climate temperature does not prevent or delay the spread and death rates but shows significant positive impacts on the recovery rates of COVID-19 patients. Warm climate temperatures seem not to restrict the spread of the COVID-19 as the count rate was substantial at every climate temperatures. Thus, it indicates that the climate temperature is unlikely to impose a strict limit on the spread of COVID-19. There is no correlation between the cases and death rates, an indicator that there is no particular temperature range of the climatic conditions closely associated with a faster or slower death rate of COVID-19 patients. However, other shortcomings in this study's process should not be ignored. Some other factors may have contributed to recovery rates, such as the South African government's timely intervention to announce a national lockout at the early stage of the outbreak, the availability of intensive medical care, and social distancing effects. Nevertheless, this study shows that a warm climate temperature can only help COVID-19 patients recover more quickly, thereby having huge impacts on the death and active case rates.

scholarly journals Traversing a Tightrope between Ecumenism and Exclusivism: The Intertwined History of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Nyasaland (Malawi)

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Retief Müller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Church History ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Christian Nationalism ◽  
The Church ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.

scholarly journals Die stryd om die aard en omvang van die tugreg by die Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sendingkerk (1881−1994)

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Anne Plaatjies Van Huffel
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Inaugural Meeting ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Church Polity ◽  
Mission Church ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church ◽  
Mission Churches

The struggle of the Dutch Reformed Mission Churches (1881–1994) with reference to the character and extend of discipline. In this article the struggle concerning the nature and extent of the disciplinary power in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC) (1881–1994) is discussed. Since the establishment of the DRMC in 1881 until 1982 the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) retained the right to censure and discipline the missionaries in the DRMC. The article argues that the struggle for disciplinary power under the Constitution of the DRMC, the Statute of the DRMC as well as under the memorandum of agreement between the DRMC and the DRC, was nothing less than an attempt by the DRMC to entrench the principles of Voetius in the disciplinary power of the church polity and church government of the DRMC. In 1982 the DRMC accepted a new church order in which these principles were entrenched. The acceptance of this church order provision concluded the DRMC’s struggle for disciplinary power of all its officers, missionaries included, which already began in 1908. At the inaugural meeting of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa a Church Order was adopted in which provisions with regards to the disciplinary power based on above principles was hedged.

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