Appropriating and Exploiting Dreams as Technology in Kgašane’s Narrative of Conversion

Abstract

The study of mission history is seldom reported through imaginative literature, drama in particular, and dreams as a technique to justify conversion into Christianity. This article is based on a literary work, Kgašane, named after a Molobedu kinsman who is credited with sowing the seeds of Christianity in Bolobedu and the establishment of the Medingen Mission station of the Berlin Missionary Society. The article examines how the writer, Makwala, uses dreams as a divine revelation; an agency used to convert Kgashane. Though fictional, the narrative concerns itself with a factual tale that has dominated the Lutheran Church in the Northern Transvaal. The dreams represent various instances of multivocality and heteroglossia that this article hopes to unravel. The article uses an Afrocentric approach to the study of dreams, with touches of Jung as part of the theoretical framework. The design of the article is qualitative, using purposively selected literary works as secondary data. The choice of the work, Kgašane, is informed by the topical nature of its content within the Berlin Missionary Society and its application as the first written narrative to explain the story of a local martyr within the Medingen Mission.