Missionaries, as colonial agents camouflaged as disciples of the gospel of God, were ruthless than the physical occupation of the country by colonial powers.
These eclipsed forces of colonialism were haboured, taken care of and loved by
the local people who were unconscious about the colonization of their conscience. When these missionaries came into contact with the Africans they employed strategies to transform them into colonial subjects and through the establishment of “a mundane theater” of the industrial world of Britain. They advanced this politico-demagogic approach to establish class-consciousness among the Barolong. Their politico-economic trajectory was eclipsed within the Gospel of Jesus for the savage heathen natives and civilisation for the “barbaric”,
“animist”, “nativist” and “atavist” Africans in preparation for their eventual subordination in a class conscious society of the industrial world.
Methodism was itself a product of industrial revolution in Britain, having been directed, in particular, to the emerging working class of the northern river valleys (Commaroff et al., 1992:161). Drawing from the metaphors from the factor and foundry, it spoke of individual salvation through arduous self-reconstruction (Commaroff et al., 1992:161). The Missionaries wanted to prepare the Barolong for exploitation in the industries – something that would keep them poor and hungry to make them to become „slaves‟ of the industrial world. The capitalists on the other hand would be richer and richer in their brutal competition with one another. Obviously within these classes that the missionaries had created the superstructure was such that the colonial system impoverished the Barolong and they did not possess equal financial muscles to compete in the capitalist world.
And they would eventually be coerced into the working class to work in despicable conditions far from their homes. The mission stations served as caricature of the industrial world where the Barolong were converted into Christians, civilized people and working class under the imposture of Christianity.
Here they demonstrated the utility of the plow and the pump, preached the virtues of the sober discipline. The missionaries installed the clock and bell to mark out routines and ensure that time was well spend. Here too, as the other side of their spiritual coin, they were taught the value of the “varied treasures of commerce” and the supreme enabling power of money (Commaroff et al., 1992:161). The evangelists would foster the production and the sale of
agricultural surplus. They also cultivated a desire for “civilised” goods. For they instilled in Barolong “wants” that could only be satisfied through entry into the colonial economy, and made them thoroughly familiar with the signs and values of the industrial work-place. These development is similar to the renaissance and enlightenment where the European society went through a series of revolutions which brought a new modern religiosity that embraced secular interests such as science and capitalism. This development ended the period of the dark Ages.
Therefore, the Barolong were being transformed unconsciously into a modern society dominated by the cash economy and Christianity was used as vehicle.
Consequently when the “mineral revolution”, took place in South Africa the Barolong and many southern Tswana men (especially the Batlhaping) were prepared for employment and spontaneously sought employment in the diamond-fields.
The economic life of the Barolong depended on the sexual division of labour and men assumed managerial positions in the control of production. Africans were mostly raised in the commune or clans as a system of solidarity to help one another. Every man was responsible to work and manage the production of his household. In terms of the division of labour women cultivated crops in the broiling sun with their babies stripped at their backs. They produced for the homestead and they did not have control over production. Men managed production and livestock and were engaged also in political debate at the kgotla, rainmaking ceremonies, ancestral veneration, age regiment Mophato initiation.
The women were prevented from these activities, as it was declared to be a taboo for a woman to do so. Men fulfilled their manhood by working for themselves and their families but the industrial world tended to kill this manhood.
It reduced a man to a status of a woman within society whose production was controlled by another man and Brown assets that:
When a man‟s relatives notice that his whole nature is changed, that the light of the mind is darkened and character has deteriorated
so that it may be said that the real manhood is dead, though the body still lives; when they realize that to all intents and purposes the human is alienated from fellowship with his kith and kin, they apply to him a name (Sebibi or sehihi), which signifies that though the body lives and moves it is only a grave, a place where something has died or been killed. The essential manhood is death. It is not uncommon thing to hear a person spoken of as being dead when he stands before you visibly alive. When this takes place it always means that there has been an overshadowing of the true
relationships of life(Brown,1926: 137-138).
The introduction of cash economy ate the cattle that used to keep the Barolong fat and promoted the use of money which burns those who tried to hold onto it “it runs through your pockets, living you hungry” but “cattle always return to make you fat” (Commaroff et al., 1992:168). The Barolong men saw themselves as women, children “donkeys” or even “tinned fish” because they had been transformed by the missionaries to be the sources of wealth for the white capitalists instead of their families(Commaroff et al., 1992:168).