South Africa - Religion
The latest government census (2001) estimated 80 percent of the population is Christian. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and adherents of traditional African beliefs together constitute slightly less than 5 percent of the population. Approximately 15 percent of the population indicated it adhered to no particular religion or declined to indicate and affiliation. Many combine Christian and indigenous religious practices.
The bill of rights prohibits the government from unfairly discriminating directly or indirectly against any individual based on religion; it states that persons belonging to a religious community may not be denied the right to practice their religion nor to form, join, and maintain religious associations with other members of that community. Cases of discrimination against persons on the grounds of religious freedom may be taken to the Constitutional Court. The constitution does not favor any religion. Leading government officials and ruling party members adhere to a variety of religious beliefs.
African Independent Churches (AICs) constitute the largest grouping of Christian churches. Among the AICs are the Zion Christian Church (which accounts for approximately 11 percent of the population), the Apostolic church (approximately 10 percent of the population), and a number of pentecostal/charismatic groups founded as breakaways from various missionary churches. Other Christian groups include a variety of Protestant denominations (Methodist, Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Baptist, Congregational, Lutheran, and Presbyterian), the Roman Catholic Church, and Greek Orthodox, Scientology, and Seventh-day Adventist churches.
The final quarter of the nineteenth century was marked by the rise of new forms of political and religious organization as blacks struggled to attain some degree of autonomy in a world that was rapidly becoming colonized. Because the right to vote was based on ownership of property rather than on race in the Cape, blacks could participate in electoral politics, and this they did in increasing numbers in the 1870s and the 1880s, especially in the towns. In 1879 Africans in the eastern Cape formed the Native Educational Association (NEA), the purpose of which was to promote "the improvement and elevation of the native races." This was followed by the establishment of the more overtly political Imbumba Yama Nyama (literally, "hard, solid sinew"), formed in 1882 in Port Elizabeth, which sought to fight for "national rights" for Africans.
In 1884 John Tengo Jabavu, a mission-educated teacher and vice president of the NEA, founded his own newspaper, Imvo Zabantsundu (Native Opinion). Jabavu used the newspaper as a forum through which to express African grievances about the pass laws; "location" regulations; the unequal administration of justice; and what were considered "anti-native" laws, such as the one passed in 1887 by the Cape Parliament at Rhodes's behest that raised the property qualification for voters and struck 20,000 Africans off the rolls. Through these organizations and newspapers, and others like them established in the late nineteenth century, Africans protested their unequal treatment, pointing out in particular contradictions between the theory and practice of British colonialism. They called for the eradication of discrimination and for the incorporation of Africans into colonial society on an equal basis with Europeans. By the end of the nineteenth century, after property qualifications had again been raised in 1892, there were only about 8,000 Africans on the Cape's voting roll.
Africans sought to bypass what they considered the discriminatory practices of the established Christian churches (which often preached to segregated audiences and seldom promoted Africans within their ranks) by founding separate organizations of their own. Starting in 1884 with Nehemiah Tile, a Thembu (Tembu) Methodist preacher from the eastern Cape who left the Methodists and established the Tembu National Church, Africans built their own churches throughout South Africa. Many of these churches were termed "Ethiopian" by their founders, on the basis of the biblical prophecy "that Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God," and because for centuries an African-run independent Christian church had existed in Ethiopia. A strong influence on these churches in the 1890s and the early 1900s was the United States-based African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), which sent missionaries to South Africa and trained many blacks from South Africa at its own institutions in the United States. Members of these independent churches called not so much for the elimination of racial discrimination and inequality as for an "Africa for the Africans," that is, a country ruled by blacks.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AME Zion) and the National Baptist Convention (NBC) all deployed black missionaries in Africa throughout the colonial period. Early stations of the NBC were set up in Liberia in 1883. The AME Zion church established itself in Liberia in 1878 and in the Gold Coast in 1896. The AME church sponsored missions in Sierra Leone in 1886, Liberia in the 1890s and South Africa in 1896. Many American Blacks went to Southern Africa as missionaries and made a profound impact on our society. In spite of resistance by white South African political and church authorities, the AME connections sown by Turner produced large numbers of African students matriculating at American Schools.
Similarly, in British Central Africa, and in West Africa, African students were encouraged and often subsidised... These missionary activities set the stage for a major new phase in African and Afro-American interaction in the colonial period one of which had great consequences for subsequent African nationalist movements in the mid-twentieth century. On their return home, these students inspired thousands of their countrymen and women to enrol in American schools between 1880 and World War Two.
According to government estimates, there are approximately 1,275,000 ethnic Indian/Asian South Africans, accounting for 2.5% of the total population of the country. Roughly half of the ethnic Indian population practice Hinduism, and the majority of them reside in KwaZulu-Natal. The small Muslim community includes Cape Malays of Malayan-Indonesian descent and individuals of Indian or Pakistani origin.
There also is a significant population of Somali nationals and refugees. According to recent statistics from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the number of Somalis in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo provinces totals approximately 70,000. While Somalis have in the past been an at-risk population for xenophobic attacks, there was no indication of any anti-Muslim or religious component to these incidents.
The Jewish community is estimated at 75,000 to 80,000 people and concentrated in Johannesburg and Cape Town. There were no reports of serious attacks on Jewish persons or property, and in 2011 the Jewish Council of Deputies nongovernmental organization (NGO) reported a 40 percent drop in the number of anti-Semitic attacks as compared to 2010. There were, however, reports of verbal abuse, hate mail, and distribution of anti-Semitic literature in parts of the country. According to the 2001 census, followers of religions that are indigenous to the country constitute less than 0.5 percent of the population. It is likely, however, that some of the 15 percent of the population who claimed no religious affiliation in the 2001 census adhere to unaffiliated indigenous religions.
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