Franco Frescura’s research while affiliated with University of KwaZulu-Natal and other places

During the 19th century the Dutch Reformed Church became a major agent in promoting the spread of Dutch settlement into the southern African interior. After 1841 it began to set out its villages according to a standard plan, known as the kerkplaats, which made use of a central nachtmaal plein, surrounded by residential stands. Key plots were allocated for the village church, a residence for the pastor and a Drostdy for the Resident Magistrate. The remaining stands were then auctioned off to parishioners to fund the construction of the church, and for over a century these settlements remained at the heart of Dutch, later Afrikaner, cultural, political and social life. The design of the first kerkplaats was probably owed to Willem Hertzog, Deputy Surveyor General of the Cape, who was also prominent in the Craft of Freemasonry, and there are strong indications that his plan was based upon an idealized reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon, also used by Freemasons in their planning of Masonic lodges. It appears likely, therefore, that throughout the 19th century the Masonic movement exerted a powerful influence in the affairs of the Dutch Reformed Church that was only broken off for political reasons in 1962. This paper examines the historical origins of Dutch colonial settlement in southern Africa during the 19th century, and posits that its roots lie in Masonic ideals commonly circulating in colonial society of that time.

It is a truism that change and the inevitability of change is one of the givens of human society, yet it remains one of the most difficult and most painful processes known to us. Whether it is brought about by the introduction of new ideas, new practices, or new technologies, the need to meet changing social or environmental conditions is constantly with us and, as the cliché suggests, is as inescapable as death and taxes.

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.