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Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:01 pm

Witt doesn't seem to have been a howling success - he only arrived in Natal (for the Church of Sweden Mission) in 1876, timing wasn't good and before long he was in a certain 'hot spot' in 1879! Along with Rev George Smith, which is where I came in, I believe. Wink

R

Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:23 pm

Well, Witt may have been wasting his time, given his low standing with other SMS staff, although he did return to R/Drift after the AZW and the mission there continued.

Broadly speaking, the success rate - if measured in numbers of converts or general acceptance across the board by the Zulu population in Zululand (as opposed to the Zulu population in Natal once it became a colony) - was rather poor, to put it mildly, before the AZW. The missionaries were perfectly safe in Natal, Rich, during the AZW, because it was a British colony on the "safe" side of the river (or as safe as the rest of the civilian population felt in the event of any raids).

With a couple of exceptions, the missionaries poured out of Zululand into Natal in late '77 and early '78. After Isandlwana, those Norwegians who had slipped just over the Tugela to "safety" in '78 suddenly felt very exposed indeed and rushed down pell-mell for Stanger or even Durban by ox-cart, not daring to stop. It is true that a large number of Germans remained in the NW but that was more of a German settlement than a mere mission station (and still is).

It is very, very hard to generalise (at least, I find it difficult to do so). The missionaries did not loom large among those impossible ultimatum clauses for nothing. Some of them had been a thorn in Cetshwayo's side for years; many of them wanted him deposed, and quickly, and their complaints - especially those of the Anglican Bishop of Zululand (Wilkinson) & the Norwegians & Germans - certainly made it much easier for Frere to go to war. Indeed, a number of them were urging the British to attack long before they themselves left Zululand. Generally speaking, the King got on all right with the Norwegians and certainly with the comparatively few British inside Zululand before 1878, although local Zulus did threaten violence on some Norwegian missionary families in the '60s and '70s - for which the King usually got the blame. He certainly never ordered any harm on any missionary, any more than Mpande or Dingane had, but Mpande, who owed his throne to the Boers anyway, was in no position to do so - in fact it was Mpande (his hands tied) who had authorised the admission of the flood of missionaries and traders who swept in during the 1840s and '50s.

Cetshwayo never seems to have had any love for the Germans, whom he appears to have despised. However, he was perfectly happy with Oftebro, it seems, and the King and Robertson also got on well (on and off) for years, but they might not have done if the King had known what Robertson was saying about him in the Natal papers. (Perhaps he did). He didn't have the contact with the Americans which his uncles had had because they remained south of the Tugela in what was now Natal, but which had been Zululand when they first arrived in the 1830s. (Venable was a lucky man - I think it was he who strode boldly into Umgungundlovu while the bodies of Retief & his mates were still warm on that Feb morning in 1838 and (virtually!) asked "Now, what's goin' on 'ere then?" !!!

Of course, one or two British missionaries (Smith & Robertson for example) ironically found themselves in the invasion columns of 1879. Incidentally, I know of no reliable source for the so-called remark by Cetshwayo about the trader coming first, then the missionary, then the red soldier. I now believe this is a corruption of the tradition of Jacob's (Jakot's) well known prophecy of the 1820s, known by Shaka, Dingane, Mpande and Cetshwayo. (If anyone knows a decent source - earlier than Crealock - I'd be very interested).

Peter

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 6:00 am

I agree with Peter about it being impossible to generalise.

Edgar Brookes in his 'History of Natal' mentions that one of the complaints leading up to the AZW 'was that Cetshwayo was unfriendly to missionaries and to the Christian religion. There is no doubt that Cetshwayo was not enthusiastic about a religion which seemed to him to run counter to Zulu tradition and history, but there is no evidence of any general persecution. Sir Bartle Frere wrote to Sir Michael HIcks Beach on 13 Dec 1878
"With a single exception, the whole body (of missionaries) has been terrified out of the country". Colenso's comment on this is that the missionaries stated they they quitted Zululand on the advice of Sir Theophilus Shepstone in expectation of a "political crisis" (Frere-Colenso correspondence in Killie Campbell Library) ... It cannot be denied that Cetshwayo's defeat and deposition was a great relief to many missionaries, but was this a casus belli?'

Regarding the Ultimatum, 'the re-admittance of the missionaries into Zululand' was one of the six clauses which had to be complied with within 30 days (4 of the clauses - i.e. the surrender of the Swazi chief Mbilini, surrender of sons and brother of Sirayo, a fine of 500 head of cattle for Cretshwayo's not complying with the above surrenders and a fine of 100 cattle imposed due to the Smith-Deighton case - were the priorities and had to be met within 20 days).

I don't know the answer to your question, Peter, on the trader/missionary/red soldier quote but will do some digging on that.

R

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:49 pm

Yes, some very valid points there Rosemary. It is certainly worth remembering that when he was "heir apparent" (and near enough "de facto" ruler) and later when he was King, Cetshwayo received all and sundry at his home and sat down to hammer out these problems with the missionaries.

Quite apart from a universal acknowledgement from these men (Bishop Colenso, Robertson, Jackson, Bishop Edward Wilkinson, Samuelson, Oftebro etc) of Cetshwayo's undoubted intelligence, humanity and diplomatic skills, they all admired the delicate way in which he walked this particular tightrope for years and how he explained to his guests that he would continue to allow missionaries to teach his people but that, ultimately - and this was as blunt as he ever got - that he had to believe that a converted Zulu was a "spoilt" (i.e. ruined) Zulu.

Robertson and others told him to his face that he could never stop the tide of Christianity and that one day most Zulu would be Christians. It is clear that Cetshwayo showed remarkable restraint towards his guests for many years - especially as he knew they were teaching in Natal (on behalf of Shepstone) the very brothers he'd failed to eliminate at Ndondakasuka and whom he feared would one day try to usurp his throne - and whom Sheptsone, Colenso and Baugh etc., hoped would one day become king in order to facilitate an entree for the Anglican church!

The hospitality, generosity, restraint and humanity shown by Mpande and Cetshwayo towards the British and Norwegians in Zululand for nearly 25 years was remarkable. When Colenso showed Mpande a little photo of Mkhungo taken at Ekukanyeni and then a letter written by the latter, he couldn't believe that his own son had learnt to write. The King was lost for words and broke down repeatedly. And yet he consented to his son being taken to England to be educated, provided his mother (in Natal since 1856) consented, even though he didn't think it a good idea. It was the King, too, who chose for Colenso in 1859 the actual site of the first British mission in Zululand at kwaMagwaza because of its ample supply of timber, water, good land and plenty of local people.

However, the way the missions were used up to 1878 was completely different to the system from 1880 under Mckenzie, Johnson & Carter etc., who were far more successful and did the Zulu people a lot more good when their whole way of life was in jeopardy from 6-monthly absences in the mines, breakdown of family life and traditions, drunkenness, poverty and the reduction in their condition from cattle owners to wage labourers and squatters on their own land.

Peter

P.S. Rosemary - haven't forgotten the questions in your emails & will be in touch properly in a day or so.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:36 pm

Thank you all for such informative posts on the topic. After reading them, I have to ask the question why did Cetshwayo take the position he did concerning the missionaries? What de HE hope to accomplish by having missionaries with an alien religion in his land? I can't believe he would be so na�ve to think that there wouldn't be any repercussions or potential effects on Zulu society. If we go back in history, Rome took a very very suspicious attitude to that new faith which made its appearance in the first century. Eventually, it didn't take along for the state to institutionalize persecution of those espousing that faith. In contrast, this did not appear to occur with Zulu society.

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:42 pm

Cetshwayo only took over the reins in 1872 when Mpande died, so in a sense he inherited missionaries who had established their stations during Mpande’s rule. I think a distinction should be made between Cetshwayo’s personal feelings of respect or even liking for certain individual missionaries like Schreuder, and a general distrust of missionaries’ attempts to convert his subjects to Christianity. He wasn't na�ve, but it would have been difficult for Cetshwayo to persecute men who came into his territory under official sanction of the colonial government. (He didn’t seem to feel squeamish about having certain converted Zulus killed at his orders, though.)

See E H Brookes: A Century of Missions in Natal and Zululand (1936) and the same author’s History of Natal for more.
For a broader sweep of all SA, Du Plessis - The History of the Christian Mission in SA.

R

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:58 pm

Just want to mention that the discussion here is of the utmost interest to me and the Zulu Total War mod team. We've been somewhat at a loss as to what to do with the 'religious' structures (in this game we are modifying you can build 'religious' structures that will affect loyalty and other things - i.e.. Christian population won't be too happy with one who isn't) and I'd just like you guys to know that we are following the thread with great interest. The way we're handling it in game right now is if an 'African' (these will include Zulu, Mthethwa, Ndwandwe, Hlubi, Pedi, Gcaleka, Ngqika, etc.) faction builds 'mission stations' these can help him gain access to more profitable trade conditions and he can hire his warriors out for manual labor in exchange for guns. But I'm really interested to hear stories like these here as they refine our somewhat generalized/stereotyped images and ideas.

Many thanks,
Tom516

Posted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:42 pm

Rosemary (et al)

You may not believe this, but this is the first thread I can remember in five years of contributing to this forum which has even begun to discuss the missionary presence in Zululand before 1879! And yet it was such a vital "component" of the whole picture in the years leading up to the war. Now that the topic has raised its head, I'm almost at a loss as to how to approach some of the points raised, simply because the whole subject of the mission field in SE Africa (and Natal & Zululand in particular) is absolutely huge - every bit as wide-ranging (and vitally important) as the political and military angle, a fact which might surprise a few.

The reality is that virtually all the contact between Briton (or European) and Zulu in Zululand before 1879 involved traders and missionaries. Generally speaking, the traders left very few written accounts compared with the official and unofficial works of the missionaries and their societies. I'm not saying traders didn't leave their mark in written works, simply that the missionary sources are vast, and tell us so much about intimate contact between Zulu and European. As a single example of this, there are many primary sources describing, for example, Cetshwayo himself and life in Zululand in the 1870s which have not seen the light of day for a century and a quarter and are not cited in any book which I know - and these are eyewitness accounts by those who lived in Zululand for years and who met the King many times, each visit often lasting several days. They left many detailed accounts of their opinions of his character. I am familiar mostly with Anglican accounts but am aware that Mpande and Cetshwayo knew the Norwegians equally well, if not better.

To answer any of the above questions, one finds oneself generalising because the field of research is so huge, and yet every statement one makes can be gainsaid by a counter-argument - and backed up! (Not unlike every other topic on this forum, I suppose!) I don't think I've read a single statement on the missionary movement in Zululand which didn't have its strong counter argument. Primary sources which include letters from missionaries in the field are vital - missionary societies tended to publish these in their regular journals (for the sympathetic public and their supporters) only after considerable editing, even censorship.

Even so, I find it very difficult to reconcile the views of, say, the SPG or the CPSA on Robertson, with some of the vituperative stuff written by commentators outside the mission field. (This is before you get to people like Colenso and the really big internal fights!!!) And yet Prof Etherington makes it plain that there were those inside the church, too, who attacked Robertson and his methods - I've examined some but not all of the sources Etherington cites on this point, but some are certainly open to question & almost unworthy of quoting - Wolseley's journal, for example, and other second hand tittle-tattle. He gets a terrible press from Etherington and Ian Knight, for example, and yet he died in 1897 a towering and legendary figure in the Anglican mission field in Zululand, his shortcomings presumably unknown to the majority? (I should explain that Robertson was sent by Colenso into Zululand in 1860 as the first Anglican missionary of the Diocese and he laboured hard in that country for 37 years after already establishing a big station at Umlazi in Natal; he lost two wives to life in the mission field, specialised in starting new missions, often living alone in these remote places and usually building his own dwelling, schoolhouse and church with his bare hands, finally expiring - like so many - in broken health. The invasion force certainly had it easy, physically, compared with a few dozen Norwegians and British for around 50 years or so!

Briefly, Rich, and very generally speaking, the Zulu people were
not enamoured with the idea of Christianity before the AZW. They were, on the whole, of a very enquiring mind and asked perceptive questions of their teachers. I'd venture to suggest (and may be corrected) that their own religion was not a deep-seated one in the way that Christianity was for many 19th century Europeans or Islam was for those in, say, India. There was a supposedly divine being, a sort of original creator, but no two Zulu (and certainly no two Bantu groups) seem to have had the same idea on this. Ancestor worship - or reverence of ancestors - was paramount, as was the belief in and fear of the witchraft (or was it divining?) which so tested the patience of the missionaries. Add to this lobola and polygamy (neither of which most Zulus would even slightly countenance surrendering, and I can see why) and the missionaries never had a chance. Luminaries such as Colenso and, later, Charles Johnson, saw and understood this from the beginning and sympathised with the situation of the Zulu people. Few others did early on.

Despite the fact that the missionaries insisted that they had no wish to turn the people away from their loyalty to their King, Cetshwayo was not convinced and saw each convert as a Zulu lost to the nation. (They left their homesteads and lived on a mission, among other misfits and rejects - disparagingly referred to as Kaffirs, believe it or not, by the majority of Zulu). The system was changed when the British returned in 1880, thanks to Johnson & Bp Mckenzie. The Zulus were to continue to live in their homesteads and the church created little out-stations in many outlying communities.

As Rosemary has said, Cetshwayo inherited the situation from his father & tried to keep the lid on things as best he could - he also used the missionaries as diplomats, envoys and contacts with officialdom in Natal.

All this is very, very generalised - and this post is far too long!

Peter

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:15 am

Peter

While my admiration for your AZW scholarship grows with each of your posts, with respect, on this occasion, I'm not sure that I can concur with the retrospective halo you seem to be awarding Robertson; and nor am I convinced that we can discount Etherington's research on this point. You are absolutely right that one of his sources for the pejorative view on Robertson's missionary endeavours is Wolseley's journal, but (a) the problem with that particular document is although its author was undoubtedly a biased, self-opinionated, insufferable snob and a vicious calumniator of many of those around him, neither can we automatically assume that absolutely everything he says and reports is necessarily wrong; and (b) the ongoing concerns about Robertson weren't only the result of Wolseley's musings or even 'second hand tittle-tattle'. After all, It wasn't Wolseley's privately expressed character assassination but the report of a fellow missionary who in 1876 found Robertson totally blotto, and in flagrante with a Zulu girl, which led the ecclesiastical authorities to put this experienced, long-serving missionary on probation - a serious punishment, not usually handed down as the result of a one-off, unconfirmed rumour. There are sources which suggest that he only escaped recall in disgrace by the skin of his teeth. Robertson obviously felt himself obliged to write not in self-defence but mitigation:

When you pass judgement upon me in that comfortable room at Whately try and fancy yourself in the King's kraal in the heart of the Umfolozi bush with thousands of wild Zulus around you who ... call themselves 'the boys of Satan' [...].

(to Moore, 2 July 1877)

and there is no suggestion in this letter that he considered himself falsely accused. Moreover, his more than intemperate language indicates that all was not well with the man. I personally have grave doubts as to whether the average Zulu had ever heard the word 'Satan', let alone used it by way of group identification! And how should we judge a man whose increasingly lurid letters and articles in the Natal Mercury castigating Cetshwayo as responsible, among many other things, for the deaths of Christians, were being despatched at precisely the same time as he was telling missionary colleagues that:

... the King is not so bad as he is painted [...] He wished to save the life of Ungambaza but could not.

(to Shildrick, 15 October 1877); and:

... Regarding the King you have nothing to fear if you do not interfere with him ... the mission of 61 was an utter failure and the coronation a farce. Lately the King said to me, 'I love the English ... I am the child of Queen Victoria. But I am also a King in my own country and must be treated as such'.

(to Macrorie, 23 October 1877).

By November of that same year, however, Robertson was happily telling Bulwer that Cetshwayo was 'ready for war'; and Macrorie, that 'the state of things in Zululand is as bad as it is possible to imagine'. You have to ask what had changed in the intervening month to provoke such an about-face. Regarding the charge that Robertson 'procured' girls, both Colenso and Bulwer independently refer to this; so Wolseley's claim that Robertson was a 'byword' in the colony for such things should perhaps not be dismissed out of hand.

You are right when you say that Robertson died '... a towering and legendary figure in the Anglican mission field', but we mustn't forget that after 1879 he was assiduous in his lectures and articles in justifying both the stance he took and the war itself. At the very least, from the evidence of his own correspondence he is seen to be a compromised figure, and for me he does not wholly escape the charge of rank hypocrisy, to say nothing more. As to whether his missionary activities (not entirely divorced from his own ambitions, it has to be said) justified the 'towering' stature his adoring Anglican audience back home in England accorded him, I think the jury is very much out on this one.

Pax tibi

Paul

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:00 am

Paul

You prove the point I make in para 3 - very eloquently I have to say!

My difficulty in accepting the completely one-sided view on Robertson perhaps stems from the fact that he was not dismissed or punished and doesn't even seem to have been publicly criticised by the Diocese or the SPG, whether in order to avoid the washing of dirty linen in public (a PR disaster!) or because they considered his strivings were still likely to produce results and/or that he deserved better. However, in pointing out that that some of the sources Etherington cites are a little surprising, I do acknowledge that there isn't much room for manoeuvre in some of the others and also, as I said, that I have yet to examine some of them. You'll know from some of our own discussions that I have held back from saying that Etherington was unduly harsh in case I eventually come round completely to his views and also because it is not for me to doubt the research of an acknowledged scholar - at least until I've examined all the sources he cites! However, I do consider that both sides of the argument should be aired, even if the strong backing for Robertson's efforts emanated almost entirely from those involved in the SPG and CPSA - which brings us back to the fact that there were violently conflicting points in every argument on the Zulu mission field. (Incidentally, I presume the ABS were aware of his "shortcomings" - how early was this? Do you know?)

What can't be denied is that Robertson, perhaps more than any other missionary, helped to create the atmosphere in Natal which led eventually to war, through his ravings in the press in the late '70s, and that he handed a good deal of Frere's ammunition to him on a plate. A number of Scandinavians and Germans were also as strident in denouncing Cetshwayo, but Robertson had better access to Natal opinion, perhaps? It is also true that when Bishop Wilkinson took up his post at kwaMagwaza in 1870 he was very strongly (naturally) influenced by the man who'd been on the ground for years - Robertson. I also detect a very negative approach in Jackson's and Shildrick's earliest correspondence, in which they placed the blame for their poor returns squarely on the King, and there are no prizes for guessing who controlled their activities at first, especially Jackson before he moved up to Swaziland. As for Wilkinson, well he admired Cetshwayo at first but soon put the boot in every bit as hard as had Robertson, and after his resignation in 1875 he continued to do so in public diatribes in this country.

As I think you know, Robertson also fell out with Colenso in correspondence with him and strongly told him "where to go" - not on doctrinal issues but the split had obviously had its roots in that matter.

I suppose it hardly needs adding that - rightly or wrongly - the missionaries identified their own aims as being linked with what was best for the Zulu people, and the King was seen as the obstacle, certainly by the mid-'70s. From our viewpoint over a century later, we would not necessarily see the link as quite as close!

Peter

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:08 pm

Peter

Your points are well made, but from my reading even of the secondary sources I'm not convinced that there is a 'completely one-sided view' on Robertson (I confess I haven't read Ian Knight on the subject, but I suspect that 19th century missionaries may not be his primary area of research): both Etherington and Guy are careful to acknowledge positive elements of Robertson's mainly early work - such as his medical efforts and opposition to Shepstone's punitive fines against a man of Sidoi's tribe. What they do do, however, is to point up the anomalies and discrepancies in his less than reputable later years.

Now, I am happy to yield to your greater wisdom on just about everything else, but I do know a thing or two about the machinations and methods of the Victorian evangelical mission. You are right when you say that Robertson was not actually dismissed (I suspect that Etherington's guess as to the reasons for this is not far off the mark), but as for not being punished? For a man of Robertson's stature and experience to be put on probation was about as humiliating a censure, short of recall, that a Church anxious to save its colonial face could impose. In the context of the 19th century Anglican missionary field, you had to do a whole lot more than live a life of drunkenness, abuse, lack of charity, untrustworthiness and hypocrisy to get yourself seriously punished. Recall was a last option, and certainly a move from which ecclesiastical authorities engaged on such a face-saving exercise would have flinched - particularly in the case of one of their most famous missionaries to the mighty Zulu. And how much did the SPG and CPSA actually know about what Robertson was getting up to? (I'll get back to you on the APS later.)

I think that you are absolutely right when you say that 'Robertson, perhaps more than any other missionary, helped to create the atmosphere in Natal which led eventually to war'. Some might think that this in itself would be a pretty damning indictment on decades of the missionary endeavours of a representative of the Established Church, even if we discount the drinking, sexual abuse, lies, slander and dodgy non-sacerdotal dealings with the British Army which Robertson himself never refuted. You are also right when you point out the negative attitudes of other missionaries besides Robertson towards Cetshwayo. But then, they would say that, wouldn't they?? What hacked them off big time was the idea that a 'native' potentate could be allowed actively to impede what they considered to be their God-given work of evangelisation. In the context of the 19th century Christian world view, 'natives' were supposed to fall gratefully into the arms of Holy Mother Church and renounce their 'pagan' ways - not have the galling temerity to say No to the proclamation of the Gospel. And that's precisely why a number of them held the view that Imperial military 'input' into the Zulu situation would greatly enhance their prospects.

If we widen the discussion for a moment, remember how indignant the SPG was when Wolseley's settlement appeared to withhold the protective support of Imperial (military) backup from the work of the missionaries. And even Wolseley himself, for all his faults, was shocked when Bp Jones of Cape Town complained that the Church was being denied a chance at acquiring serious land rights in the post-war environment of Zululand:

... [Your Lordship] may possibly think that when an army has beaten a native people in battle the opportunity should be seized for altering the land laws of that subdued people so as to allow missionaries to become landed proprietors at the expense of the conquered. I don't take this view of Christ's teaching or the practice of his disciples ...' (19 December 1879)

I'd have to say that for me, all things considered, Robertson's missionary career with the Zulu does seem to have fallen just a tad short of the ideal. And from what I can make out, he wasn't the only one.

Sorry about the lengthy ramble (and for straying off-topic)!

Best wishes,

Paul

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 1:18 pm

Paul

I agree with much of what you say, as you already know, but - hang on a minute - it was much worse than that!

Have a look at the clerical career of the Rev George Hales, ordained deacon at Isandlwana in 1882 just a couple of years before St Vincent's was completed. He never did manage the dizzy heights of being ordained priest, because Mcrorie disapproved of his activities up at Enhlozana. His close colleague up there, the Rev Joel Jackson (who, like Shildrick and Smith, was trained here in C'bury) spent many years involved in the very murky waters of Swazi land deals during the period of the granting of concessions. Not to mention Smith himself, of course, who not only "dug the dirt" on Colenso as soon as he landed, but interrupted his mission work throughout Weenen to follow Durnford up to the BRP & also joined Chelmsford's invasion column, spending a certain evening imploring the men of the 24th to keep shooting the poor blighters he'd gone out there to convert and then broke his vows and abandoned the mission field altogether.

But they weren't all bad ...

Apropos your 2nd para, now come on - you're surely not yielding to my greater wisdom about a certain (struggling) East Anglian outfit?

Peter Laughing

P.S. Are you going to do any work today? Very Happy

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 8:04 pm

Peter

Yes, and wasn't Robertson himself seen happily blasting away at the objects of his erstwhile missionary endeavours? For all his later reputation, for my money the good Rev'd appears to have been a confection entirely of his own making, and as a self-publicist he would have put modern spin doctors in the shade.

There's a very interesting line of Christian thought that can be traced in its modern form through both sides of the Reformation divide, and which essentially states that error (which by definition included unbelief) has no rights. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists all traditionally subscribed to the medieval theory which held that conversion by force was totally justifiable. Even Colenso thought that there were good reasons for mounting an invasion of Zululand, except that in his naivety he imagined it could be done without anyone getting hurt.

As to your other point, jest not about my beloved Canaries, or I may be tempted to draw your attention to the less than glorious performances of a certain post-ashes cricket team ...
Wink

Paul

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:42 pm

Rosemary noted earlier that currently almost 7 out of 10 South Africans are of the Christian faith. And of the Zulu? How have the missionaries fared with their "flock" in their historical mission through the present day?

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:18 pm

Rich, at present I'm unable to find conclusive statistics on the current percentage of Christian Zulus. In any case, statistics only tell a partial truth. How was the figure of 68% Christian population in SA arrived at? Are these people who profess Christianity, or those who actually go to church or have been baptised and confirmed, etc? In my own experience, many Zulus who would describe themselves as Christians, are still rooted in animist beliefs and practise traditional rituals. The Zulu woman who was my 2nd 'mother' (in the 1960s) read her Bible at every available opportunity yet sacrificed a goat in our back garden (it was tethered to the washing line for a couple of days before she herself did the deed) and afterwards she wore the skin around her wrist.

R