Richard Miles (Tswana catechist)

Richard Miles was a Motswana (Tswana) catechist and preacher "to the native tribes beyond the border" in South Africa.

Nothing definite is known of Richard Miles's origins, except that he was born a Motswana (Tswana), and as a youth was in the employ of the apothecary John Harfield Tredgold in Cape Town.

Tredgold was Secretary of the Cape of Good Hope Philanthropic Society "for aiding deserving slaves and slave children to purchase their freedom", and maintained regular association with mission activities. He would have been well acquainted with the London Missionary Society Superintendent, the Revd Richard Miles (who was also on the committee of the Philanthropic Society). The Revd Miles occupied the position as Superintendent at the Cape temporarily in the late 1820s, while Dr John Philip was in England.

It is presumed that Richard Miles, the Motswana, had been one of the many individuals displaced by turbulence in the frontier in the 1820s - when, indeed, through the so-called inboekseling system, many women and children in particular were "apprenticed" into a life of virtual slavery on colonial farms. It seems possible that the Philanthropic Society had rescued one such Motswana youth from that fate, who then took on a name in honour of the temporary Superintendent. Evidently he lived for a time in the Tredgold household in Cape Town and benefited by an education, before returning to beyond the frontier to teach and to preach.

An important source in support of some of the above is the diary of one John Thomas Pocock, Tredgold’s assistant, who described a party given by the Tredgolds on 1 September 1836, adding: "Much enjoyed the evening during which Mr T. amused the company by reading aloud Richard Miles's letters. While the quaint expression elicited continual laughter, the spirit of the whole pleased us all." Miles was "a Bechuana boy formerly in the employ of Mr T. but now an itinerant preacher to the native tribes beyond the border".

In 1834, Richard Miles travelled, as interpreter, with the Berlin Missionaries to establish a station amongst the Tswana in the interior (they joined Andrew Smith's "Expedition into Central Africa" at Graaff-Reinet).

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