The history of the Basotho community now found in the Dewure Purchase Areas in Gutu District is intertwined with the history of evangelisation of the region. Most of the members of this community are descendants of the Basotho evangelists who migrated to present day Zimbabwe from South Africa in the late nineteenth century with missionaries who were carrying out evangelical work among the southern Shona. Upon their settlement in Southern Rhodesia the Basotho first purchased two farms in the Victoria area, Niekerk's Rust (in Harawe) and Erichsthal (in Chinhango). Having lived on these two farms for almost three decades they were evicted in the 1930s following the enactment of the Land Apportionment Act, after which they moved to the newly created Dewure Purchase Areas in Gutu. The history of these Basotho thus revolves around migration, evangelisation, ownership of freehold farms and struggles over belonging. The main objective of this chapter is to analyse the migration history of these Basotho, their relationships with missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society and the Berlin Missionary Society, and to examine how they used their position as owners of freehold land to negotiate belonging. It is argued that ownership of farms, and to some extent the presence of graves, have long been central to the Basotho's constructions of belonging and as a result they feature prominently in the Basotho memorialisation of their migration, displacement and settlement in their present farms. Religion, education and farm ownership were also central issues in the construction of the Basotho as progressive Africans.

MISSIONARIES AND AFRICAN INTERMEDIARIES

Although a number of African evangelists, among them Zulu, Venda and Xhosa, played a critical role in the evangelisation of the southern Shona to the north of the Limpopo River, the Basotho or Sotho speakers were arguably the ones who played the greatest role. The Basotho in particular had a longer history of participation in evangelisation work. As Weller and Linden argue:

The Basotho converts took the initiative to evangelise fellow Africans to Christianity.