"Clerk to Basel"

Describing difficulties in the community. The family of one Odee had moved back into the town and totally given themselves back to heathenism (bought a sheep to sacrifice to the fetish, worked on their farms on Sundays, put amulets on a sick child). The cause was at first unclear to Clerk: The occasion however (after which the husband had absolutely and unchangeably decided to lapse) was an elder's rebuke to him - Clerk says because he would not help to carry the sick Christian Apewu (who had since died) from Nkwakubew to the station. Odee's only spoken reason was that people on the station hated him. Clerk discovered later that in the Tafiewe war Odee had stolen a woman's cloth. Arraigned before the presbyters he had been excluded from Communion, and out of fear of being branded a thief he had not left the community on that occasion, but taken the first opportunity to do so afterwards. Clerk also mentions another case of unwillingness to send children to school - the chief Kafana promised 2 children to the school, but brought only one because the elders refused more than one.

25.08.1889

25.08.1889

Text