Rather than define their lives primarily in terms of their relations with Europeans, Africans were often more concerned with affairs within their own families and communities over which they felt that they had some measure of control and responsibility. This scholarly interest initially focused on instances of conflict and oppression, disclosing the violence and injustice that accompanied colonialism and apartheid, but more recent studies have given greater attention to different local and personal histories that do not necessarily share the same preoccupation with broader political issues. Given that colonial translations remained in circulation beyond the period of colonization, this paper also documents how native readers developed strategies of resistance by reading the Bible as a divining text to get in touch with Badimo, thereby subverting the colonial translations that equated the latter with evil powers.ĭuring the last twenty years, in conjunction with rapid political changes in southern Africa, scholars of the region's history have become increasingly interested in studying the experiences of people whose stories, like their livelihoods, were previously often restricted or ignored by those in power. The paper also examines how the subsequent versions of the Setswana Bible and dictionaries reflect the growing spirit of decolonization as colonized subjects became involved in writing their own languages. It focuses on the translation of Badimo (Ancestral Spirits) and other related words to show how the Setswana language was employed for imperial ends in colonial times.
The paper uses an example from the Setswana language of Botswana to investigate the colonial translations of the Bible and compilation of the first dictionaries and to show how they were informed by their time. This paper investigates how native languages were used by colonizers to subordi nate the colonized. This paper analyses the letters for the intrusion of colonial religion into the public space of Batswana the colonial agenda to translate key cultural beliefs and activities into the realm of evil and the various responses it initiated – thereby uncovering that perhaps the separation of religion from state has always been a mythological and ideological construction. While the Batswana worldview kneaded religion and all spheres of individual and collective public space, modern western colonial perspectives claimed otherwise. The article uses the attestations of the 19 th century letters to Mahoko a Becwana, a London Missionary Society public paper, printed from Kuruman. It investigates how drawing such boundaries became a central strategy in translating indigenous cultures into sin and creating guilt in communities that did not observe the sacred and secular boundaries.
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This article seeks to trace the fussy boundaries of religion and the public space in the modern colonial archive of southern Africa. This paper analyses the letters for the intrusion of colonial religion into the public space of Batswana the colonial agenda to translate key cultural beliefs and activities into the realm of evil and the various responses it initiated - thereby uncovering that perhaps the separation of religion from state has always been a mythological and ideological construction. The article uses the attestations of the 19th century letters to Mahoko a Becwana, a London Missionary Society public paper, printed from Kuruman.