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This paper sets out to portray how very ordinary people could be drawn into the struggle and play significant roles based on stances more rooted in common decency and morality than in the writings of Marx and Lenin. Ivan Schermbrucker was a member of the Central Committee of the SACP. It was he who recruited Walter Sisulu (among others) into membership of the Party. Detained under the 90 day legislation, he was tortured, and was the subject of an infamous appeal court decision. This established a precedent for limiting the rights of courts to call detainees to testify on the conditions under which they were being held. He was subsequently tried and imprisoned under the Suppression of Communism Act. To all intents and purposes, his wife, Lesley, was a ‘typical’ middle-class South African housewife. She loved entertaining, swimming, playing tennis and going to restaurants, movies and plays. What was less apparent was that she, too, was an ardent communist and served on the Central Committee. She would also be jailed for her refusal to testify against Bram Fischer and having assisted in hiding him during his ‘Red Pimpernel’ period. Neither Ivan nor Lesley was a theoretician. Neither had a university education. Both came from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Their commitment to communism, and to the SACP, grew directly out of the firm conviction that South African society was deeply dysfunctional and that the only fair solution lay in the achievement of a classless, non-racist, society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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In this article we take up Dorothy Hodgson's appeal for a stronger gender analysis of the process of missionisation by revisiting Adrian Hastings's 1993 essay in which he argued that 'again and again in a mission history ... the early significant baptisms were mostly of women'. A close reading of the reportage of the Lutheran missionaries of the Berlin Mission Society is undertaken to establish whether or not this trend is also applicable to the Bahananwa and the Vhavenda of the Soutpansberg region, former Transvaal, South Africa, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. According to our findings, Bahananwa and Vhavenda women were not, as has been concluded by Hastings with reference to many other African case studies, more eager to convert than men, and certainly not representative of the 'early significant baptisms' in these respective communities. Unlike Hodgson's claim for so many other societies in the early stages of the missionary encounter, women were also not predominant in the early Bahananwa or Vhavenda Christian congregations. While Hastings does make provision in his model for exceptional cases, our evidence for the Bahananwa and the Vhavenda contests his assumptions that women's resistance to conversion should be explained in terms of female religiosity and conservatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the unsuccessful efforts of missionaries in making a significant number of converts in the Northern Transvaal in South Africa in the late nineteenth century. It cites that the majority of early work of evangelisation was conducted by Africans. It mentions the failure of missionaries to meet their goals in introducing western medicine, education and literacy. Also mentioned is the role of missionaries in the spread of capitalism and the money economy and the emergence of local dependence on Western consumer goods.

The article presents a discussion of the meaning of honor in African history and customs. It states that there is a large volume of literature about honor in North Africa, which includes the work of John Iliffe. Honor cultures that are developed, were transformed and survived in many sub-Saharan African societies.

The article discusses various reports published with the issue, including one by Natasha Erlank on ecumenism in South Africa, one by Michael Godby on missionary photography and one by Deborah Gaitskell on women missionaries in South Africa.

Klaas Koen (1852-1883) was the first South African-born missionary of the Berlin Mission Society. From the perspective of the mission authorities, he was the perfect poster boy for their activities in this country. In the dominant thinking of the times, the fact that he was of Khoisan descent should have condemned him to a life of 'wicked foolishness...and all sorts of heathen sins and disgraces." Instead, in the interpretation of the mission, having been reborn in Christ, he worked diligently for the mission and remained faithful even unto death. His life was celebrated in a tract and other texts produced by the Society. Given the fact that the reports sent back to headquarters by missionaries in the field followed a rigid format, it is difficult to recover what Koen himself may have thought about his life and actions. This paper examines Koen's life history and explores why the Mission Society treated him, wrote about him, and remembered him as they did. It also suggests some reasons why he may have made the choices that he did. It concludes with an examination of some aspects of his posthumous identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]