An unlikely association: James Allison and Langalibalele ka Mthimkhulu

James Allison was a controversial Wesleyan minister who established a number of Mission stations in the colony of Natal in the mid-nineteenth century. He is noted for his expulsion from the Wesleyan Ministry and was ultimately ejected from the Edendale Mission at Georgetown. A milliner by trade, he had crossed the subcontinent, dragging converts with him as he went. Part of his journey to ultimately settle in Natal Colony took him through the upper Mzinyathi region, around the present day town of Utrecht. Here he stayed for a while with Langalibalele, later to achieve notoriety in the Colony for his uprising in 1873 as a result of gun laws. These men, it would seem, formed a link which perpetuated, connecting the Hlubi chief with the missionary and ultimately informing indirectly, a heritage of resistance moving into the twentieth century. This paper will discuss the relationship between Langalibalele and Allison, and comment on the fragments of the past which can construct new, alternative dialogues in a contemporary South Africa obsessed with race and oppression rather than the practise of humanity and the everyday.