Afrikaner Calvinism - Settlement Period

Settlement Period

The Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope was the first colonial success in South Africa. The key to this success was the establishment of strict rules of trade between the settlement and the native population. No trade or Christian missionary ventures among the Africans were permitted without the permission of the company administrator. Stealing or shooting cattle was especially forbidden as a cause of inevitable conflict with the natives. The early Europeans were appalled by the appearance and the customs of the Africans, and the completely false report that the natives were cannibals reinforced their motive to avoid unnecessary contact. The Cape was a walled garden, with Africa on the outside and Europe within. This strict order minimized conflicts with the Africans during the early settlement period.

Yet, many of the settlers had arrived with a missionary motive. The synthesis of these attitudes of strict avoidance and a missionary conscience resulted in the widespread practice of indenturing the native Khoisan population, and within that master/servant relationship, to teach the Bible to them in hope that the message would filter back through the servant's family (along with reports of the superiority of European life) and thus bring about conversion.

The farmers who lived outside of the physical walls of the towns had a different arrangement than the townspeople. To them, occupation meant ownership, and ownership implied the right to protect their property. As they settled into the seemingly unoccupied territories surrounding the Cape, they enforced these assumptions of ownership and its rights when the wandering hunters or herding tribes would cross the Fish River into farm territories in search of grazing land or game. Thus, the farms represented an extension beyond the towns of the wall of separation between the white and the black occupants of the land. As in the towns, plantation slavery was sometimes seen as a means of evangelism.

Separation and rules of exchange were opposed very early in the Afrikaner mind to invasion and conquest. And, this anti-imperialism extended also to the theory of missionary obligation that developed within the Dutch Reformed Church: the kingdom of God will grow within the sphere of influence assigned to the church by divine providence, as children are taught the Gospel by their parents and family. If God deems it fitting for the Gospel to be received by the natives, and taught to their children, then this is his glory. Toward that end, Christians have a defining role given them from God, a calling, or covenantal responsibility as God's people, to keep themselves pure in the faith and just in their dealings with the heathen, and to be absolutely unyielding in their protection of what has been legitimately claimed in the name of the Triune God.