Moravian Encounters with Refugees in South Africa: A Contribution to the Debate on the Origins of the Fingos

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article endeavors to contribute to the debate on the origins of the Fingos. Special attention is given to the Moravian encounters with the Fingos in the 1820s and 1830s. The author argues that Moravian writings, although not objective, can be helpful to contemporary debates in South African historiography. Moravian evidence supports the proposition that the Fingos were not an ethnic unity before their influx into the Cape Colony. Yet on the other hand, it supports that they entered the colony as refugees, and not as forced labor. The Fingo origins were closely linked to the period of the Mfecane. Moravian evidence points to a middle position between the extremes of the current debate about Fingo origins. Their origins were not a monocausal European matter. The switch of allegiance of the Fingos from the Xhosas to the British was a conscious decision. Moravian writings explain that the Fingos consisted of a hodgepodge of refugees. Although no one is objective, in recent historiography the writings of missionaries have been discredited perhaps too easily, and especially the writings of non-English missionaries active in South Africa were scarcely used until present.