- John Smith Moffat
Reverend John Smith Moffat (1835 — 1918) was a British
missionary and imperial agent insouthern Africa , the son of missionaryRobert Moffat and brother-in-law of missionary explorerDavid Livingstone .Like his more famous father, John Moffat was a
Congregationalist minister affiliated with theLondon Missionary Society but he became involved in British colonial expansion particularly inMatabeleland , later part ofSouthern Rhodesia , nowZimbabwe . [http://www.dacb.org/stories/southafrica/moffat_johnsmith.html Dictionary of Christian Biography: "Moffat, John Smith"] . Website accessed 9 April 2007.]His missionary work included helping to start the first mission in Matabeleland in 1859, and in 1865 he took over the running of his father's mission in
Kuruman . In 1879 he resigned from the missionary society and joined the BritishBechuanaland colonial service. In 1888 at the instigation ofCecil Rhodes he was sent toMatabeleland to use his father's reputation to persuade its kingLobengula to sign a treaty of friendship with Britain and to look favorably on Rhodes' later approach for the Rudd Concession mining rights.Having succeeded, Moffat discovered later the extent of Rhodes' deception of Lobengula and the deceit behind numerous concessions negotiated by Rhodes'
British South Africa Company , BSAC. He fell out with Rhodes when the latter provoked Lobengula into theFirst Matabele War so he could take that country. In 1893 Moffat exposed the trickery behind the BSAC Bosman Concession in Ngamiland, which was abandoned as a result. In 1894 when the BSAC police clashed with warriors of theBamangwato KingKhama III in Bechuanaland, he warned that Rhodes' next victim was Khama, a British ally. But Moffat's boss, Shippard, was Rhodes's agent, and he dismissed Moffat. [Neil Parsons: "A New History of Southern Africa." Second Edition. Macmillan Press, London, 1993. Pages 178 & 181-183.]References
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