CHAPTER ONE GENERAL INTRODUCTION
7. Sources
7.1. Oral Sources
7.1.3. Racial Considerations
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, Dierks and other missionaries interviewed saw the interview as a way to deal with their past. Referring to the value of telling one’s story Denis wrote, “In terms of this perspective, telling the story is more than simply producing knowledge about the past. It is—or at least has the potential to be—a life-changing experience.”33 Dierks was so committed to the interview that he ended up replying later to the remaining questions through a letter, as mentioned above. In the conclusion of the interview, Dierks apologetically mentioned that the information he gave during the interview might be biased because he looked at things on their bright side. Speaking in the Afrikaans language Dierks said that he was a sunflower, ‘n sonneblom.34
Sister Solveig Otte, a daughter of a missionary nurse of Untunjambili Mission Hospital near Kranskop, who herself worked in Hlabisa Mission Hospital as a medical technologist for the American Lutheran Mission society, lamented the fact that the contributions of her parents and other missionaries were not appreciated. She would have liked that the Black people for whose benefit the mission hospitals were established, had nothing but praises for the work of the missionaries:
And you know it is very touching to me because who were any better than anybody else? They were doing their duty as called people. They were doing their duty. And it heartens me to know that the Gospels was ... they were channels and now other people are channels, are continuing the channels of the good news.35
me the interviews. Dierks confessed that an interview of this nature by a black person from the Lutheran church was long overdue. Somehow he knew that Blacks would be interested in the oral histories and narratives of the missionaries. Of all the missionaries approached, none refused to grant an interview. I am inclined to believe that they felt that they owed it to Blacks to tell their stories since such stories are in fact collective stories with blacks. However, one cannot rule out the possibility that the interviewees told the stories as they thought they should have happened, rather than as they actually happened. Solveig Otte in particular found it challenging when, after the nationalization of the mission hospitals, her Black colleagues accused her and other missionaries of dishonesty36. The agreement to be interviewed in the new political dispensation on the leadership role of missionaries can be seen as an effort to defend the missionaries’ position. It was like an opportunity to make amends. James Scott would describe this as public action meant to minimize the “punishment” at all costs, even though the willingness to be interviewed by a representative of the historically-oppressed is a hidden transcript:
Once again, however, it is the show of compliance that is important and that is insisted on. Remorse, apologies, asking forgiveness, and generally, making symbolic amends are a more vital element in almost any process of domination than punishment itself. A criminal who expresses remorse at his crime typically earns, in exchange for his petty contribution to the repair of the symbolic order, a reduction in punishment.37
Denis wrote that interviewees who are public figures have a tendency to reconstruct their stories to make them more beautiful. The missionaries and their descendants are not immune to this tendency:
Consciously or not, informants often try to embellish the past. They distort their narratives in an effort to justify their past actions post facto. Public figures are particularly prone to such self-indulgence.
They are careful not to say anything that could tarnish their image.
They minimize or even deny the existence of conflicts in their constituencies. Oral testimonies tend to validate the social institutions
36Solveig Otte interviewed by Radikobo Ntsimane in her home in Mayers Walk, Pitermaritzburg. 8 May 2007.
37James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press:
London, 1990, p.58.
of the time. They reflect, to quote James Scott once again, the public transcript of the social actors.38
The fact that the leadership and management of the mission hospitals were White and that the general workers were Black is not a point that could be missed in the narratives. The boss/worker or even master/slave relationship is prevalent in the narratives in the hospitals setting. Interviewees like Ruth Bauseneick failed to acknowledge the cultural taboos of the Black men in Itshelejuba who had to participate in the burial of a pauper beyond the call of duty. She was shocked by the refusal of the local men employed in the hospital who had not yet overcome the taboo of burying strangers with no guarantee of subsequent ritual cleansing. By virtue of being on the Itshelejuba hospital staff, Bauseneick assumed that they had to honour the call of duty.
As a former lecturer and rector of the seminary which this author attended, Dr.
Wilhelm Weber could not extricate himself easily from the fact that at the time of the interview, he was in discussion with his co-lecturer at the seminary. He assumed a position of leadership as he spoke about his passion: the mission. While that is expected in an interview encounter where the interviewer assumes a position of ignorance, Weber clearly wanted to exonerate the mission society run by Whites from possible accusations of wrongdoing. The exclusion of Black church leaders from the hospitals’ committee and the appointment of junior White nurses over senior and experienced Black nurses39 do not feature in Weber’s narration. He willingly agreed to the interview as a way to help me towards my studies and narrated the story as if his mission society was incapable of wrong judgements. For instance, he found it justifiable that MELFC did not make major financial commitments to the buildings of the hospital and the hospital personnel from Germany.40
38 Philippe Denis, “The Use of oral Sources in African Church History” in Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Southern Africa and Africa, Volume Two, April 1995, pp.32-35.
39 In an interview with Radikobo Ntsimane, Lieselotte Gnauk mentioned that when she came from Germany as a junior and inexperienced nurse she was put in charge of Itshelejuba Mission Hospital in the absence of Sister Ruth Bauseneick while there were black experienced nurses. Liselotte Gnauk interviewed by Radikobo Ntsimane in Bleckmar, Germany on 6 June 2002.