THEWHITEINVADERS
worked briefly at Genadendal, forty miles east of Stellenbosch, between
1737 and 1743 and refounded that mission in 1792. The Moravians con-
centrated on improving the material conditions of their charges rather than
on trying to influence the structure of the colonial society. It was the
London Missionary Society (LMs)-a new,interdenominational organiza-
tion, predominantly Congregational-that
brought into the heart of the
Cape Colony a radical evangelicalism, which the historian Andrew Ross
defines as "the belief that social and political issues were central to the
concerns of a Christian." Doctor J.T.van der Kemp, a former lieutenant in
the Dutch dragoons, went to South Africaas an LMSmissionary in 1797,
mar~ied a young Khoikhoi woman with whom he had four children, and
founded a mission he called Bethelsdorp near Algoa Bay (modern Port
Elizabeth) in the disputed eastern frontier zone in ~803. Bethelsdorp was a
haven for Khoikhoi who left the white farms. There, van der Kemp dis-
covered and denounced the exploitation that they were suffering' at the
hands of white farmers and officials. Van der Kemp died in 181 I. His
colleague James Read survived him but was unable to sustain many of the