By Maidei Jenny Magirosa

QUITE often, when we think of missionaries we have images of Europeans with Bibles coming to save the natives from sin.
A number of European missionaries had preconceived and negative attitude about the Africa, the people and the culture.
One early European missionary, J.R. Mackay of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland described encounters with the Africans during his early period in South Africa.
He said, “I was met with a specimen of almost pure heathenism, and I had the feeling . . . that one was there to fight Satan on his own ground.” 
Such a racist paternalistic attitude was very common among European missionaries to Africa.
African-American missionaries to Southern Africa helped to change such perceptions.
They presented a promotion in racial pride when they arrived in Africa to preach the gospel to fellow Africans.
Some of the Africans who had converted to Christianity abandoned the European missionaries and joined the National Baptist Convention.
As far back as 1894, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and the Church of God and Saints of Christ arrived in Cape Town.
They worked alongside the Jubilee Singers who moved around South Africa.
Many other Africans left South Africa to study in America, sponsored by the AME.
They entered black colleges such as Wilberforce, Tuskegee, Fisk, Hampton and Lincoln.
These South Africans became well educated.
Among the students who went to America were Livingstone Mzimba and Harry Mantenga from the Eastern Cape.
They attended Lincoln College in 1907.
After graduating, both returned to South Africa and became Presbyterian ministers.
Back in South Africa, in 1916, the South African government founded Fort Hare College exclusively for black students in order to keep the South African students at home.
One prominent African-American missionary was Herbert Payne, a Baptist who lived at Middledrift in the Eastern Cape from 1917 to 1922. He had a strong influence on black education.
American influence in education could also be seen in John Dube’s Ohlange Institute at Inanda and the AME Wilberforce Institute in Evat. African-Americans brought new ideas to South Africa.
African-Americans were naturally a strong and a potent political symbol for Africans.
For instance, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois influenced many followers in South Africa.
In addition, Booker T. Washington’s programme of self-help and his industrial education ideas had a major impact on black education in South Africa.
This ideology was also part of Washington’s Tuskegee model of self-reliance in agriculture.
There could have been many more African-American missionaries in South Africa.
But the South African government put in place tight controls on the number of African-Americans coming into South Africa.
Janet Jackson was one African-American teacher who came to Cape Town.
Sometimes African-American scholars were able to secure visas and travelled around South Africa for field study.
The most outstanding were Eslanda Robeson, who visited South Africa for three weeks in mid-1936, and Ralph Bunche, who travelled around South Africa for three months in late 1937.
Meanwhile, many other Africans also travelled around the United States to study American education.
But they did not focus on education only.
Solomon Plaatje had strong explicit political agendas.
These South African visitors sent back letters and wrote essays about the differences and similarities they witnessed between race relations and segregation in South Africa and the United States.
However, the most influential African-American to influence South African racial pride thinking was Marcus Garvey.
He spoke about the ideology of racial equality and economic development.
His movement called Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)’s main objective was to promote racial self-help and the unity of the Africans.
The UNIA was the largest mass political movement in black history. Garvey’s publication, The Negro World was circulated and read by thousands of followers in South Africa.
Garvey preached the message of black pride, unity and self-determination. After the First World War Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association set up branches around South Africa.
Garvey was concerned by the state of American race relations and the lack of black economic and political power in the international arena.
He believed in black self-reliance, racial solidarity and independence. Garvey could only visualise separate development between black and white people.
He was a major pivotal figure responsible for an awakening of nationalist movements opposed to European colonial oppression.
In the 1920s, Wellington Buthelezi formed a Garvey offshoot in the Transkei.
He identified very strongly with Marcus Garvey’s ideology of black empowerment.
Overall, African-Americans represented images of progress and success. Africans could see the African-Americans as role models.
Among them were African-American professionals, doctors, politicians, and businessmen.
Africans also admired and idolised African-American male musicians such as Paul Robeson, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington and sportsman like Jesse Owens, Joe Louis and Henry Armstrong.
Over years, the African-Americans played a strong role in advocating political change in South Africa.
In the late 1930s, the Council on African Affairs was founded in New York to educate the American public about segregation and apartheid in South Africa.
The most outspoken African-Americans were Paul Robeson and Max Yergan.
In 1921 the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), sent Max Yergan to Alice, the home of Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape. For 14 years, Yergan worked as a missionary, becoming increasingly radicalised by his experiences with conditions in South Africa.
He played a significant role in influencing Govan Mbeki to become more politically conscious of the black man and woman’s oppression in South Africa.
When Yergan returned to the United States, he helped to establish the Council on African Affairs.
The Council became an important forerunner of the American Anti-apartheid Movement.
But it was later attacked by the American government and its power declined.
In 1952, the American Committee on Africa was founded to support the ANC’s Defiance Campaign.
Support for South African freedom increased with the formation of the American Negro Leadership Council and the Organisation of Afro-American Unity.
The relationship with South Africans resulted in several hundred Africans from South Africa going to the United States for higher education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They created strong lasting ties with African-Americans.
The early solidarity of African-American missionaries, teachers, singers and other professionals played a significant role to fighting apartheid in South Africa.