Abbot Pfanner, the Glen Grey Act and the Native Question

Abstract

In November 1893 Franz Pfanner, a Catholic missionary born in Austria, founder of the Trappist monastery of Mariannhill near Pinetown, sent to two Natal newspapers an article on the Native Question which attracted a fair amount of attention. A more elaborate version of his proposals was published the following year in the form of a pamphlet. Pfanner recommended the establishment of villages in Natal for African people where each of them would receive a plot to build a house and do agricultural work. In May and again in July 1894, The Natal Witness compared Pfanner's article on the Native Question to the Cape Labour Commission's report and to the Glen Grey Act, two attempts at dealing with the issues of land and labour in the Cape Colony. The paper shows that, while affirming the equality of all races and resisting the idea, expressed in the Glen Grey Act, that Africans should be sent far from home to respond to the labour needs of the colony, Pfanner believed that, once trained in the monastery's industrial and agricultural schools, the African converts of his mission station would adapt to colonial life and contribute to the economic development of the colony.