Page 239 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

114
1917
Father had given his farm to the Mission and the Lord our God had guided us so that each of us had his own farm, the one at ₤ 500 and the other at ₤ 300. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits!
In 1917 Moruti Karl Maboe died of diabetes and we all mourned. The congregation elected the teacher Josef Mogatsi as his successor. He was sent to the Berlin Pastors’ School
and after the examination he was ordained by myself and Missionary Gottschling upon instructions by Superintendent
H. Schlöeman in Bethanie and is still alive and is doing good work. So, until now three indigenous pastors have come from the congregation in Bethanie and all three of them are good men. Brother Ernst Penzhorn held the sermon on our mission feast in 1917.
We were stripped of our superintendency over our schools because we were Germans. All our protest helped nothing.
It was war after all and you had to comply, although I was
a citizen of the Z.A. Republiek since 1876 and had all my papers for citizenship rights. The Germans of the Reich were interned at Fort Napier near Maritzburg. We were not molested throughout the entire war, even the school inspectors came to us as before.