Inventing a 'select class of natives': Christianity, community and land access at the Farmerfield Mission, Eastern Cape, South Africa, c.1838--1999

This dissertation explores the history of the Methodist mission station Farmerfield from the settlement of its first inhabitants in 1838 and the expulsion of its residents in 1962 to the legal victory for land reclamation in 1999. Farmerfield differed from other pioneer Methodist missions from the outset. I argue that its origins in the initiative of African congregants, its idealized missionary blueprint, and its geographical location amidst of a European farming community all shaped its development as a novel turn in Methodist evangelical strategies and one of the earliest Christian peasantries in South Africa. This panoramic history of the rise, decline, reincarnation and eventual demise of Farmerfield provides a microcosmic view of the evangelical enterprise in the Cape Colony, the impact of mission Christianity on Africans, land access and dispossession at one of the longest running missions in South African history. The restoration of the mission lands of Farmerfield in 1999 sheds light on some of the problems of land reform in contemporary South Africa, and links the nineteenth century history of African dispossession with apartheid-era expropriations and current attempts to redress the legacy of land alienation.