Francis Owen (missionary)

He and his household were the only white witnesses to the massacre of Piet Retief and his approximate 80 followers in February 1838 in the Zulu capital of Umgungundlovu.

In 1836 was a vicar in Normanton, West Yorkshire when he attended a lecture given by a retired naval captain, Allen Francis Gardiner, who was seeking a missionary to convert the Zulu people to Christianity.

Owen found many local practices strange and brutal compared to life in Yorkshire and viewed the Zulu King as a barbarian and a tyrant.

The description of the massacre provided by Owen is largely aligned with that of Woods who wrote his account several years later and the oral record passed down by Zulu witnesses.

In his journal,[1] Owen records that when asked by Dingane's representative whether he approved of the killing of Retief's men, he replied that he could not condone such an action.

[1] In March and April 1838 approximately fifteen hundred rebel Zulu warriors and seventeen British settlers from Port Natal joined the Boers in attacking the forces of Dingane.

The Dutch Reformed mission station on Hlomo amabutho, the site of Owen's camp at Umgungundlovu . The concrete cross is a bell tower, all that remains of a 1969 church building that was torched during political unrest in the 1980s.