A Case of Hopeless Failure: The Role of Missionaries in the Transformation of Southern Africa’s Indigenous Architecture

Abstract

Missionary efforts in Southern Africa during the 19th and early 20th centuries focused primarily upon its indigenous people, seeking to bring changes to their patterns of living. Faced with such issues as polygamy, initiation, child price (lobola), ancestral worship, beer drinking, and teenage sexual morality, most did not attempt to understand the nature of these social institutions, and chose to confront them in what they believed to be an uncompromising and moral Christian manner. Linked to this was an attempt to bring about changes to the indigenous built environment. This paper seeks to show that although a number of changes to local architecture are indeed present, these are largely cosmetic and the result of a pragmatic transfer of technology, leaving the cosmological core of indigenous settlement largely untouched.

Keywords: Missionaries, architecture, indigenous knowledge systems, culture, colonialism