A Reluctant Rebel: John Msikinya and Secession at Aliwal North

ABSTRACT This article traces the course of the secession of John Msikinya from the Primitive Methodist Church in 1908. Msikinya was feted by the church as one of its first African ministers and toured the UK in 1899 to raise funds for the development of the church in Aliwal North. Denied further advancement, in particular leadership of his congregation unsupervised by English ministers, Msikinya’s relationship with European ministers and lay church leaders deteriorated. He was expelled, taking with him a significant part of his congregation. Msikinya established his own church, the Native Presbyterian Church of South Africa, and was still active in Aliwal North in the 1920s. The secession had a dispiriting effect on the Primitive Methodists’ missionary work in South Africa. Msikinya’s experience is familiar from the careers of other African ministers in the period 1880–1910. Msikinya’s case is distinguished by the tenacity with which he sought to remain a Primitive Methodist and his efforts to use the church’s procedures to bolster his case. Against a background of growing constraints on the Europeanised African elite to which Msikinya belonged, his secession demonstrated the inability of the missionary church to devolve leadership to the local community.