The Evangelists

PJ Jonas

Petrus Jacobus Jonas was born in Tulbagh district in 1932 and grew up in Malmesbury, where he matriculated in 1949. After school he worked for three years as a clerk in an insurance company in Cape Town. In 1953 he resigned and proceeded to Wellington, where during the next six years he studied at the Huguenot College, the University of South Africa, the Mission Institute and the University of Stellenbosch. During this time he obtained the BA degree with distinctions in both majors, Anthropology and Sociology, completed the four year study in Theology at the Mission institute with distinction and completed his study for the Hons. BA degree in Anthropology at Stellenbosch University. During the next 20 years from 1959 he worked as missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Eastern Cape at East London, Alexandria and Port Elizabeth. During this period he also obtained the MA degree in Anthropology at the University of South Africa. In 1978 he resigned from the mission and accepted an appointment as Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of South Africa, completing his doctoral studies shortly afterwards and was promoted as Professor in Anthropology. In 1993 he retired and relocated to Wellington, where for the next seven years he lectured on Missiology at the Huguenot College, also presenting a correspondence course in Missiology at the Huguenot Bible Institute for 17 years. Since 2014 he did archival research about the evangelists employed in die DRC Mission in the Cape Province during the twentieth century, the subject of this book.
He presently lives at Kidd’s Beach in the Eastern Cape.