Pioneers in the preaching work.

[Colin Browne]

Brother Barry English and his wife at Bethel, Krugersdorp South Africa volunteered to travel to the northern part of South Africa to learn the Venda language, before setting up congregations among them.  See Watchtower, 1st April 1999 pp 26-27. Below is the first part of his story:

For the past ten years, my wife and I have worked as full-time evangelizers among the Venda. The Venda dwell south of the Limpopo River in the north of South Africa, and their nation is made up of a number of tribes that crossed the Limpopo during past centuries. Some Venda claim that their forebears settled here over 1,000 years ago. Indeed, this region was once part of an old civilization called the Mapungubwe Kingdom. It was South Africa’s first large urban settlement, and it controlled the vast Limpopo River valley, from Botswana in the west to Mozambique in the east. From about 900 C.E. to 1100 C.E., Mapungubwe provided Arab traders with ivory, rhino horn, animal skins, copper, and even gold. Skilfully sculptured objects plated with gold have been unearthed on a royal burial hill called Mapungubwe. These are among “the earliest indications of gold mining in southern Africa,” suggests one encyclopaedia.