Platberg on the Caledon Bastaards: Raiders and Traders or Pious Converts of the Wesleyan Missionary Society?

Abstract

This article considers the ‘Platberg Bastaards’, under the leadership of Captain Carolus Baatje, during the time they resided at the Platberg on the Caledon Wesleyan mission station from 1833 to approximately 1864. They showed great skill in adapting to the volatile frontier world in the way that they negotiated the move from colonial farm workers, servants, slaves or dispossessed Bastaards in the colony to successful traders, raiders and farmers in Transorangia. As new inhabitants of a Wesleyan mission station, they also had to negotiate their way through the aspirations of the missionaries for Christian converts, balanced with their own traditional way of life and belief systems. The material traces left at Platberg on the Caledon mission provide a clear southern African example of the limitations of missionary power, and the selective use of the outward signs of Christianity by the putative converts.