In this article I want to examine some of the obstacles which stand in the way of mutual understanding between white priests and black people in Southern Africa today. Initially I had intended to discuss the African and the Gospel preached to him in a more impersonal way, in terms of contrasted cultural backgrounds. As will appear, this has not proved possible, for, at least in the Republic of South Africa, the giving and receiving of Christian truth is complicated at every turn less by the cultural inheritance of the giver or the receiver than by the colour of his skin.

Perhaps the chief obstacle to the missionary’s fulfilling his task is his own ignorance. This ignorance may be of the customs and languages of his people: a deficiency which missionaries throughout the world learn to contend with by imaginative hard work. At the same time Southern Africa does present particular difficulties in this matter because the African people themselves, unlike, say, the Chinese in the time of Fr Ricci, do not have a clear cut idea of what their culture is. Under the influence of European civilization the old tribal customs are dissolving or else mixing uneasily with what Europe has brought to Africa, some of it good, some of it very bad. With the best will in the world the missionary will often be perplexed.