Erasing History: The Destruction of the Beersheba and Platberg African Christian Communities in the Eastern Orange Free State, 1858–1983

Abstract

The white settler Cape Colony and later Republic and Province of the Orange Free State in central South Africa imposed a harsh regime of suppression on the African communities found within their territory. Chieftaincy was largely abolished and independent Bantu, Khoisan, and ‘Coloured’ (mixed race) communities were progressively destroyed and their inhabitants made to work on white farms and in the towns. The only exceptions were the tiny Native Reserves that later became apartheid Bantustans. Such destruction was visited not only upon pre-colonial chieftaincies and villages but equally black Christian mission stations and settlements. This paper documents the systematic destruction of two such communities on the eastern side of the Caledon River Valley on the border with the independent African Kingdom of Lesotho: Beersheba mission station near Smithfield in 1858 and the Platberg location attached to Ladybrand over the period 1968–1983. The tragic drama of these communities’ disappearance illustrates poignantly not simply the pillaging of independent black communities, whether pre-colonial or Christian, but the effective attempt as well to erase them from history. How and why this was done forms the subject of the author's reflective commentary on race and place in rural white-ruled South Africa.