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This article discusses the relationship of missionaries and anthropologists in South Africa. Due to such important factors as ethnicity, linguistic group membership, denominationalism, and party political affiliation, it is essential to present historical perspectives on these and related matters. The vocation of missionary is almost exclusively a white enterprise as is that of professional anthropologist. Blacks have however had significant influences in both realms and are today entering these vocations.

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It seems that one of the major fallacies today is that of generalisation. We have all had our fill of the writer or speaker who refers to ‘the African and his animistic religion’, ‘the Zulu and his impi-membership’, or the ‘military syndrome’ in African politics. Every intelligent reader and student is conscious of the danger of generalisation and the tendency to lump under some uniform heading ‘the African’, ‘the Negro’, and ‘the Afrikaner’. While animism, the impi, or military coups may mark or may have marked particular groups of people at a particular time, it is as dangerous to use such generalisations as it is to use the sweeping term ‘the Afrikaner’.