Kolobeng Plundered

“God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.” — Psalm 46:1 (ASV)

East of Kolobeng, Afrikaner settlers known as the Boers had set up their own republics on land taken from African peoples, and they demanded African labour. Missionaries accused them of taking African children as so-called apprentices who were little different from slaves. The Boers, for their part, accused missionaries of arming Africans against them. In Livingstone’s case it was partly true: he had repaired guns for Sechele, believing a people who could defend themselves would not be enslaved. In 1852 Britain signed a treaty recognising the Boer republics, and the Bakwena were left on their own.

In August 1852, while Livingstone was still travelling north from the Cape, a Boer commando attacked Sechele’s people at their hill stronghold of Dimawe. Livingstone reported that about sixty Bakwena were killed and more than two hundred women and children carried off. The Bakwena fought hard, and afterwards counted the battle a victory, because they had not been destroyed. But their town was burned. At Kolobeng, Livingstone’s house was plundered, his books torn up, his medicines smashed.

The house mattered less than the people. In 1853 Sechele set out to ask Queen Victoria in person for protection. He reached Cape Town and made sworn statements about the attack, but his money ran out and nobody would pay his passage. He went home, rebuilt his town in a new place, made his own peace with the Boers, and became one of the most powerful chiefs in the region. His help didn’t come from London. It came from his own skill and his people’s resilience.

Meanwhile Mary and the four children had landed in Britain with almost no money and nowhere to live. Mary had grown up in Africa and had few friends there. Staying with Livingstone’s family didn’t work out, and she moved out. For four years she drifted between rented rooms in different towns, living on a small allowance from the mission, often ill, often lonely. Her husband’s letters were few, because there was no way to send them from the interior. Some of her friends and relatives believed she began drinking heavily in those years. That can’t be proved, and it shouldn’t be said as fact. What is clear is that she was deeply unhappy and felt abandoned, and there are hints that her faith was shaken. Robert, the eldest, grew up angry. All the children grew up without a father.

The Victorian biographies hurried past this. We shouldn’t. Livingstone didn’t mean to neglect them. He sent them to safety, but without the means to live safely, and without himself, for a journey he could have postponed. Paul is blunt about people who don’t provide for their own household. A Christian story can’t call this courage without also calling it failure.

In 1853 Livingstone reached the Makololo town of Linyanti, and Sekeletu welcomed him. He looked for a healthy place for a mission and found only low, wet, fever country. He preached; people listened politely. Sekeletu told him frankly that he didn’t want to learn to read the Bible in case it changed his heart and left him with only one wife, like Sechele. The story had travelled north.

Around this time Livingstone wrote in his journal a resolution to place no value on anything he had, except as it related to the kingdom of Christ. It is a noble resolution, and he mostly lived it. But it raises a question. Did his wife and children count, in his mind, among the things he could give away for the kingdom? He would have been horrified at the idea. His choices suggest they did.

The psalm says God is a very present help in trouble. It doesn’t promise the city won’t be attacked. Sechele’s people knew that. So did a lonely woman in a rented room.

Some of the hardest suffering happens out of sight, in kitchens and rented rooms, not on battlefields. God sees it.

One thing to do this week: think of someone in your life who is carrying a hidden load, maybe a parent, a sibling or a friend. Do one practical thing this week to make it lighter.