Week #4 Reading Responses

Intro Words of Batswana is introducing a collection of writings that have a great importance of Africans, but of little or no importance to Europeans. Its a pretty good idea since it must have felt like the Europeans were really taking over in South Africa to the native Africans. I thought it was interesting how a London missionary society was editing the newspaper, I would have thought that native Africans in South Africa would edit a newspaper about issues that are important to people in South Africa. It seems like Christianity is really having an impact on the natives in South Africa and it seems like many of the writers were part of the London missionary society. Also pretty interesting how they translated the letters into English.

In Kgabo Tebele Motswasele Letter, the author was addressing the problem of everyone speaking a different language. There must have been a lot of different languages spoken and it must have been really hard to get languages translated, even writings. The author acknowledges that this is going to be a tough task for everyone to learn a new language, but it is important and will be worth it if people work at it. Also in this letter you can again see the impacts Christianity has had, the author quotes a Proverb.

Letter from March 1890 discussed some interesting Christian issues, that are even still argued today. One was talking about how children of believers should only marry children of believers. They want to make sure they religion will stay in the family. Another letter is arguing that the adults should be trying to spread Christianity more often, especially to the children. Ther also argues how children should be wearing certain clothes. I thought it was cool how the new Christians are already discussing important issues.

Bogadi are a series of letters writing about a concept known as brides-wealth. Apparently when newlyweds were married, they received money. And this became pretty controversial with the introduction of Christianity in the culture. There are a lot of different viewpoints in these series of letters and its cool to see all the different viewpoints and what the Africans thought about this. Some saw it very bad and even evil, others said people weren't married until they recieved it, and some people also thought there was no problem with it. I personally don't really see a problem with it.

Lastly, Pass Laws was about the passes that were introduced to the natives of South Africa when the British began to colonize South Africa. It seemed like these passes were used for keeping track of the workers and used when the natives wanted to travel. And the natives found out about these passes by being punished. The natives probably hated this, especially in their own land. It doesn't sound like this was the right way to treat the natives. It just seems like this is another way of slavery, without the slavery. And the punishments seemed pretty harsh.