Een Toer door Afrika by Professor Johannes du Plessis. 1917. R1,500

Een Toer door Afrika (1917), written by South African theologian and missiologist Professor Johannes du Plessis (1868–1935) and co-published in Cape Town by the Z.-A. Bijbelvereeniging and in Amsterdam by Swets & Zeitlinger, is the Dutch edition of his monumental travelogue better known in English as Thrice Through the Dark Continent.

This provenance connects the book directly to Schalk Willem Naudé (1879–1963), a prominent Transvaal politician, Boer War veteran, and long-serving Member of Parliament for Potgietersrus (now Mokopane).

Several historical threads make this specific 1917 publication a fascinating piece of South African and African colonial history:

Crossing a Continent Three Times During World War I: Between 1913 and 1916, Du Plessis resigned as editor of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) newspaper Die Kerkbode to embark on an extraordinary 27-month overland expedition across sub-Saharan Africa—largely on foot, by bicycle, and by riverboat—to survey Christian mission stations. He literally traversed the continent from coast to coast three times:

1 From the mouth of the Niger River in West Africa eastwards to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean.

2 From Mombasa back westwards across the Congo Basin to the mouth of the Congo River.

3 From the Atlantic coast back eastwards to the Zambezi River and down to South Africa.

Because the First World War broke out mid-journey in August 1914, Du Plessis navigated colonial borders in British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, and German territories while active military campaigns were erupting around East Africa and Cameroon.

A Pre-Afrikaans Linguistic Artifact: Published in 1917, the book sits right on the cusp of South Africa's language transition. Although Du Plessis was an Afrikaner writing primarily for a Cape Dutch Reformed readership, the text is written in formal High Dutch rather than Afrikaans—just eight years before Afrikaans officially replaced Dutch as a state language in 1925 and sixteen years before the first complete Afrikaans Bible translation appeared.

The Author's Famous Heresy Trial: By the time this title page was printed in 1917, Du Plessis had just been inaugurated (in May 1916) as a professor at the Stellenbosch Theological Seminary. A decade later, he became the central figure in the most famous heresy trial in South African church history (1928–1932). Influenced by his postgraduate studies in Edinburgh and Halle, Du Plessis introduced historical-critical biblical scholarship to South Africa and questioned strict literalist readings of Scripture, while also advocating more progressive racial attitudes (helping co-found the South African Institute of Race Relations in 1929). Conservative elements in the DRC brought heresy charges against him and stripped him of his chair; Du Plessis famously sued the Cape Synod in the Cape Supreme Court and won on procedural grounds, though the church refused to reinstate him to the classroom.

Differences Between the Dutch and English Editions: While Longmans, Green and Co. published the English version in London the same year with 60 photographic plates, this Cape Town/Amsterdam Dutch edition features 50 photographic plates and a folding map ("Met 50 afbeeldingen en een kaart"), tailored specifically for Dutch-speaking South African and European congregations.

The handwritten ownership inscription reads:

S.W. Naudè,

Piet Potgietersrust

26 Nov. 1918.

A Boer War Bittereinder: Before entering politics, S.W. Naudé fought on the Boer side throughout the Second Anglo-Boer War, serving as a bittereinder until the peace treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902. After the war, he settled in the Waterberg district of the northern Transvaal, where he became a successful farmer, businessman, and leading figure in local civic and Dutch Reformed Church life.

Member of Parliament for Potgietersrus: Naudé represented the Potgietersrus constituency in the Union House of Assembly for two decades (serving from 1924 to 1943, initially for the National Party under J.B.M. Hertzog and later as a United Party supporter following Fusion in 1934). He was a vocal advocate for northern Transvaal agricultural interests, railway expansion, and Waterberg infrastructure. (He is sometimes confused with his contemporary, Rev. Jozua François Naudé—father of Beyers Naudé—who was also active in the northern Transvaal church, though S.W. Naudé was the lay politician and resident of Potgietersrus.)

"Piet Potgietersrust" and the November 1918 Date: The town—originally named Pieter Potgietersrust after Voortrekker leader Piet Potgieter, who was killed at the nearby Siege of Makapansgat in 1854—was still commonly written as "Piet Potgietersrust" in 1918 before being officially shortened to Potgietersrus (and later renamed Mokopane in 2003). The date 26 November 1918 places Naudé's acquisition of this copy just fifteen days after the World War I Armistice (11 November 1918) and right in the aftermath of South Africa's devastating "Black October" Spanish Flu epidemic of October–November 1918, which swept fiercely through the northern Transvaal towns along the railway line.

170mm x 240mm x 25mm

Spine faded; boards soiled; end papers a little discoloured; cracking in the gutter - end papers; map slip torn, 312 pages.

R1,500

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