Scathing criticism of the missionary enterprise in Africa is sometimes expressed in the following way (even in school text books):
Africans say about missionaries and colonizers, that they came together with the Bible and the Gun, “We were given the Bible and asked to close our eyes in prayer; when we opened them again our land was gone”.
In this context it should be noted that Jesuit missionaries in Southern Africa from the start were a very mixed group from different nationalities, not connected with anyone colonial power.
3000 Jesuits were driven from mission lands when the Society was suppressed in 1773. The French Revolution destroyed the Catholic Church to a large extent. It needed to be rebuilt entirely. A great new missionary effort was being made as part of the restoration of the Society in 1814. But in comparison with Protestant missionaries the Jesuits came very late.
This was a time of tremendous developments in communication. The steam engine brought about enormous mobility nationally and internationally between cotinents. It also made the fast production and distribution of the newspaper possible. Europe reached out to new continents, especially Africa.
New missionary congregations were founded within the Catholic Church. First were the restored Jesuits, then the Holy Ghost Fathers and Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) and many more. But they were lagging behind the other churches.
The Bishop of Grahamstown in the Cape Province, South Africa, asked for Jesuits. He offered them a school in Grahamstown , in the hope this would serve as a springboard for the missionary enterprise. “Go north , young man,” was the slogan. And it worked. In 1879 an international team of Jesuits, led by the Belgian Fr Henri Depelchin SJ, with missionary experience in India, left Grahamstown for the 1000 mile long trek by oxcart to the Zambezi, covering no more than 15 km on a good day.
The priests in the group came from parishes and schools. They were not fit enough for the hardships they had to suffer. Only the tough Brothers survived.
King Lobengula at Gubuluwayo, Matabeleland, whom they approached to get permission to settle in his land, proved more upright than some of the white thugs moving around in the area. “You can settle here, but you cannot evangelize,” was his firm instruction. Depelchin sent his twelve men in three different directions. He was supposed to put into one group two priests, one brother cook and another brother for general work. But Depelchin spread them more thinly. “When they arrived all that most could do was die”. Their greatest enemy was Malaria. They had no Quinine, though Livingstone has advised very strongly never to be without it, and the Jesuits of the “old Society” before 1773 had in fact discovered the “Jesuit bark” in Latin America, as effective remedy for Malaria, but the Jesuits of the 19th century tragically no longer knew about it.
When the Trappists , later Mariannhill Missionaries, abandoned Dunbrody Monastery near Grahamstown and moved north to Natal, Fr Weld, who had directed the enterprise from Rome and was now the superior in succession to Fr Depelchin, bought it and made it a house of studies for missionaries to go north to the Zambezi, mostly for philosophy. The letters of the first missionaries published in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany) had tremendous success (as had Francis Xavier’s in the 16th century), and the many who volunteered to join the mission were to be trained in the field.
Dunbrody offered a common formation for a common end. Life was very tough. Furniture was made of clay since there was no timber. But the men did not complain, they took the hard (community) life for granted for which they had volunteered. Great emphasis was laid on the study of languages. Torrend learnt Tonga from some Tonga men long before he set foot in Tongaland ( today Zambia).
There is this poem by Frederick Philip Mennell, Bulawayo, asking why missionaries should not rather leave in peace those “who sit around in unenlightened ease”; but he concludes with a striking historical parallel,”Where might we be, if first Augustine’s band / had not redeemed another savage land?” (The reference is to St Augustine of Canterbury, the monk sent by Pope Gregory to evangelize Britain).
Fr Daignault closed Dunbrody after only six years. But it had fulfilled its purpose. The mission could not support 40 men merely on donations. Donors would be more inclined to give for direct missionary work and the alleviation of hunger and suffering than for the upkeep of a house of studies. So men fully trained in Europe were sent out.
Here three examples of missionary work in those days:
Fr Joseph Moreau, first minister in Chishawasha, found suitable land in Monze among the Tonga. He believed that a “hungry stomach has no ears”, so he first taught agricultural methods so that afterwards the people, no longer so hungry, would listen to the Word. The Polish Jesuits promoted primary education, the Irish introduced secondary education.
Fr Torrend was a superb linguist. His superior, Fr Sykes, the best the mission had in the early days, summed him up as a “clever madman”. He really touched the heart of the Tonga nation.
Fr Charles Bick, at one time French, then again German, as the fortunes changed of his homeland Alsace, was also a superb linguist working at Empandeni and Embakwe. For weeks he would go away on missionary travels with no more food than a loaf of bread, a few hard-boiled eggs and some coffee. Fr Hartmann quotes his nickname “Mtandabantu” – lover of the people, and this given to a white man after the Maxim guns of the British army had mowed down the Matabele in their thousands in the uprisings – no mean achievement at that time.
For us Jesuits these are our ancestors, our “living dead”.

Source: “IN TOUCH WITH CHURCH AND FAITH, NUMBER 69, 27 APRIL 2006”