A RELIGIOUS REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA.

 An element of grave moment in the  complicated African problem is forcibly stated by Mr B. M. Green in the "Nineteenth Century." His subject is  "Native Unrest in South Africa." It is not, however, the familiar dread of native savagery of which he writes. The menace is from the side of religion. South Africa may not be without its Mad Mullah. Mr Green tells of a fanatic who "goes round the country, addressing the red Kaffirs, and stating that he has been to heaven, and found that all their ways and customs of dress are practised there, and are quite right." He quotes the letter of an educated native, who says :— " This individual is regarded by some of the natives in the Location and adjoining districts as no less a personage than the "Son of God." Last Sunday the Location was alive with red Kaffirs from the surrounding districts and farms who had come here to see this extraordinary man. He tells these people that to know him is to know God. Nay, he is the very gate of heaven ; having been once dead for six days he had an interview with "The Supreme Being," and was by Him initiated into all the mysteries of the spiritual world, and was hence forth divinely commissioned to tell his countrymen that all the customs of their forefathers, such as Kaffir beer drinking, red clay, etc., are much indulged in and admired by the hosts of heaven, and to pour out denunciations of divine indignation against the whites who had, by their conduct towards the blacks, brought upon themselves and their children His displeasure."

This heathen fanaticism is not the only religious peril. A much more difficult matter has appeared within the Christian pale. "White men are quarrelling about the secular franchise, black men are setting about the assertion of their religious franchise. They will have an Ethiopian Church, staffed by native clergy. The founder of this Black Church is a Methodist minister of the name of Dwane:— " He was born in the Queenstown district, and belongs to Khama's tribe. He was educated by the Wesleyans at Hilltown, near Port Beaufort, studied for the ministry, and became a Wesleyan minister. But in 1896 he left the Wesleyans and went to America ; there he joined the American Methodist Episcopal Church."

Mr Green quotes from the "South African Congregational Magazine" as follows :— "We seem to have arrived at a critical stage in the history of our native churches in South Africa. The evidence of an inflowing tide wave of revolutionary tendency sweeping over them is everywhere apparent. It is not confined to the congregations of one denomination, but is more or less affecting all of them. It probably began with the revolt of certain native ministers among the Wesleyans from the authority of their Conference. The ground of their revolt appears to have been a sense of resentment against the social barriers in the way of their advancement to the chief seats of official authority in their ecclesiastical system. Conceiving that they had a grievance on the ground of such suppression of their self importance, the dream of a formation of a native church, dissociated from all European influence and control, began to impress itself on their imagination."

How to get the financial aid necessary to such a church was a difficulty, until a bright idea occurred to the Rev. Mr Dwane: " Why not get tho negroes of America to take up the movement ? The very thing! So off he set with a grand scheme of Church Extension to unfold to their astonished gaze. And being a lad of parts — an accomplished linguist—speaking English as to the manner born, as well as Dutch and his own native tongue, and being moreover a born orator, and free from any shadow of a questionable character, having a record of unsullied reputation and honorable Christian service behind him, he succeeded in raising a sensation among his colored brethren in the States. He was enthusiastically received into the fellowship of the Methodist Episcopal Church, blessed by its bishops, and sent back with the assurance that the new cause would be taken up and backed by the avail able resources of the denomination in America."

A Moravian missionary even went so far as to say:—" I think in time that it will lead to a native rising. The Ethiopians say now that we ought to have no white missionaries. "When they have got rid of them, the next step will be to get rid of the magistrates, and there will be a war of races."

Mr Green himself saw Dwane in Queenstown. " He was dressed as a clergyman, and his English was excellent." Speaking of his work, he said to the writer that " the white missionaries did not understand the native customs, and the natives thought that when they became Christians they must give up all their old ways, even in such matters as wearing bangles." "My people," said Dwane, "believe that the missionaries call all these things sin.

The missionaries cannot understand how we feel about old customs, and we think that if all the ministers for natives, were natives themselves it would be better. You tell us that we are all the same in God's sight, but your people will not worship in the same church as our people."

"You tell us that we are all the same in God's sight." So we sow the seeds of revolution; and when the harvest is ripe, there will be a day of humbling for our racial pride, if nothing worse. Mr Green proceeds:— " So far Dwane's followers have been drawn almost entirely from the Wesleyans ; but it is the national side of his movement that is worthy of attention. Do the Europeans sufficiently realise that after these years or education and civilisation, the educated Kaffir of to-day is on a very different footing from the Kaffir in his original state ? . . . The Kaffirs of South Africa are probably the most loyal of all the subjects in the British Empire." Unfortunately we make them feel too painfully our sense of their inferiority. The natives say "The land of our birth, is oftentimes to us a land of tears."

Mr Green raises the question of franchise for natives. He says: "The Uitlanders' demand for franchise is now occupying tho attention of the whole world. It may be reasonably asked why should not the natives of the colony have representatives in the Lower House of Assembly, who should brings these questions to the notice of the Government?

There are men among the natives sufficiently educated not only to see all these points, but to put them intelligently before others." This remarkable paper ends with the warning:—"If honor, justice and integrity be placed before personal gain, or selfish ends, then for the colored race as for the British Empire a bright future lies before South Africa; but if private ends and the desire of wealth be allowed to dominate, then it may be that a racial struggle of grave dimensions lies before the colony, for the Kaffirs are no longer untutored savages; they have begun to realise their grievances, and to desire their rights, which unless we give them they may take for themselves in a manner that can be little anticipated."

Geelong Advertiser (Vic. ) 1899 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article150448251