IN THE NEWS Varsity hosts lecture on NC mission station

THE SOL Plaatje University (SPU) will be hosting a public lecture tonight entitled: “Re-Collecting the Missionary Road: Fieldwork at the Kuruman Moffat Mission”.

Established in 1824, the London Missionary Society mission at Kuruman was a key node in the operation of what became known as ‘the Missionary Road’, a network of British missions that by the end of the nineteenth century extended from the Cape to Central Africa.

Now a protected heritage site, Kuruman exemplifies the engagement between the London Missionary Society (LMS) and South Africa which unfolded at a range of locations between 1797 and 1966.

By 1835, visitors to Kuruman described it as “the most perfect station” and more recently it has been suggested that it was “the model nonconformist station in the interior, the most celebrated token of its type”.

Kuruman, in short, represented what a missionary station could and should look like, a model that was applied and imitated at various locations across the region, with varying degrees of success.

One aim of this project is to interrogate the reality of this assumed exemplary status.

The lecture will be presented by Chris Wingfield (BA, MPhil, PhD), the senior curator of World Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, in conjunction with SPU’s School of Humanities and the Archaeological Society of South Africa – Trans-!Garib Branch.

Wingfield has particular interests in southern Africa but has also done field research in northern Australia, Jamaica and England.

His interests and instincts are global and broadly comparative, and he is currently working on the role of missionaries (and museums) in the making of the modern world.

The lecture will take place at C113, Central Campus, Sol Plaatje University at 6pm tonight.

– Norma Wildenboer