Abstract
This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual
violence within the South African post-colony. For this purpose, a historical event is analysed: two
presbytery hearings of 1843 and 1845, both involving Xhosa convert John Beck Balfour, at the
Scottish mission station of Burnshill based in Xhosaland (later called British Caffraria). The
hearings involve (extra-)marital and sexual behaviour. Walter Mignolo’s notions of border thinking
and colonial difference, further complicated with the idea of colonial-sexual differentiation, are
employed to show aspects of what is at stake in a decolonising reading of Xhosa convert sexual
behaviour.