The Saints in South Africa

By Marjorie E. Woods

In 1984, Sipho Moses Khomo began a full-time mission in London, England. Of course, there’s nothing unusual about a young Latter-day Saint serving a mission. But Elder Khomo was the first missionary to be called from among his people, the Zulus of South Africa.

His mission completed, he now has returned to kwaZulu, the homeland established by the South African government for about 500,000 Zulus, where there is a growing population of Latter-day Saints. Weekly attendance at a branch in kwaMashu, a large township in kwaZulu, is “in the hundreds” according to Durban South Africa Stake president Chappie Winstanley. He says missionaries working among the Zulus find that many are searching for knowledge of God.

Malcolm Bowes-Taylor, ward mission leader in Durban First Ward, Durban Stake, recalls his mission among the Zulus, whose language he speaks. “Most of our teaching was done in humble homes by the light of a single candle. The gospel is readily accepted by these teachable people of simple, powerful faith.”

The increase in the number of Zulu Latter-day Saints reflects the overall growth of the Church in South Africa in recent years. Currently, there are some 12,000 members organized in four stakes and two missions; geographically, they are spread over an area measuring some 2,400 kilometers across (from Durban, South Africa, to Windhoek, Namibia) and 2,600 kilometers from north to south (from Hararo, Zimbabwe, to Capetown, South Africa).

“Defenders of the Faith”

Being spread among millions of fellow South Africans makes the comparatively small number of Saints appreciate the gospel and motivates them to be “defenders of the faith,” observes Johann P. Brummer, Sandton Stake President. “My overriding impression of the Church in South Africa today is that it is changing the lives of members, most of whom are converts.”

But in addition to the new members coming into the Church, South Africa can also claim many second and third-generation Latter-day Saint families.

Frank Fourie, first counselor in the Capetown South Africa Stake presidency, belongs to one of several such families who have been members for more than fifty years. Recalling his late mother Johanna’s conversion, he says: “Mother had several gospel queries which our minister could not explain. She warned him: ‘If I find a church that does have the answers, I will have to join it!’

“In 1934, Latter-day Saint missionaries knocked at our door, were invited in, and answered every question. Mother and we children were baptized in the Old Hall at Mowbray, now demolished. Looking up at a picture of the Salt Lake Temple on the wall, she vowed she would go there one day. It was during the Depression, so her dream seemed unlikely, but it came true in later years.” Johanna served as a Primary president for many years. “I have a copy of Cumorah’s Southern Messenger [a Latter-day Saint publication of an earlier era] describing her eightieth birthday party while still serving in this calling,” President Fourie says.

An Ethnic Mix

Another faithful family is that of Edwina Swartzberg, first counselor in the Sandton South Africa Stake Relief Society, a third-generation Latter-day Saint. Her explanations about Church temples to her future husband, Isaac, who was reared in an Orthodox Jewish home, assisted in his conversion. He had puzzled why the Lord, who, scripturally, always spoke to his people in temples, no longer had one on Earth. He recognized, too, prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament, especially in Psalm 22, and things fell into place for him. The Swartzbergs were later sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. They live in Pretoria where Brother Swartzberg is Church legal advisor and area director of Church public communications.

The Swartzbergs reflect just two of the many ethnic traditions that South Africa can lay claim to. Whites make up less than 20 percent of the population; Blacks, being members of many ethnic races, account for 70 percent. There are also large groups designated “colored people”—those of mixed racial heritage—and “Asians,” largely descendants of people brought from India to work sugar plantations in Natal a little over a century ago. Latter-day Saint missionaries have success among all these groups. In addition, there are many Jews, Greeks, and Portuguese, while the Cape Malays, a separate group, are Muslims.

Old social patterns and attitudes set by history over nearly three and a half centuries are changing. Sandton Stake president Johann Brummer says: “We are undergoing a realignment of cultures, and drastic change is happening quickly. It is hard to accommodate it at such a pace, and it amounts to ‘culture shock.’”

Peace and Goodwill

But, he says, despite these difficulties, “The Church simply promotes among its members, both black and white, the concept of peace and goodwill.” Brother Swartzberg comments: “Traditional barriers are melting away.”

“The extension of the priesthood to all worthy males has opened up great vistas of missionary work among Blacks,” says Louis P. Hefer, regional representative in the Johannesburg South Africa Region and temple recorder in Johannesburg. Blacks meet mostly among themselves. Soweto Branch is totally run by Blacks, and there are three other Black congregations in local townships still temporarily under white supervision while Black leadership develops. There are also Black and Indian branches in Durban, and several small units in Ciskei.

“We were part of the pioneering of Soweto branch,” recalls James van Zyl of Johannesburg, whose wife Maureen served with him in a missionary role. “This was the most rewarding experience in our twenty-four years of Church membership. First to be baptized was Sipho Khomo, who had formed his own Book of Mormon group, to whom he preached its principles while awaiting baptism and priesthood.”

Fluent in seven languages, Soweto Branch Relief Society president Julia Mavimbela accompanies missionaries, translating lessons. People are her life, and where she sees a need, she fills it—supplying and planting trees in otherwise shadeless school playgrounds and public places, for example.

A former school principal with special kindergarten training, this grandmother owns a restaurant, bakery, butchery, and herb shop. She testifies humbly: “I do not doubt that the Lord has been preparing me for his gospel, and I cannot express the joy I feel from it. I have a very strong testimony that the gospel and Church are true and that they teach people to be happy.” A widow, she took the opportunity to be sealed to her husband in the Johannesburg Temple after its dedication.

Sister Mavimbela serves on the multiracial executive board of Women for Peace and is a member or founder of many women’s organizations. “Sometimes when I knock on a door, I am afraid, but I tell myself that the Lord has guided me to that particular house and will therefore protect me.”

Helps Testimony Grow

Gospel principles are central to family life for South African Saints. Barbara and Wilfred (Bill) Wrench of Sandton First Ward, members for thirty-five years, comment that they can begin to understand “the joy our Heavenly Father feels when we see our children and grandchildren participating in Church activities. Their testimony helps ours grow.” Their sons Ian and Michael are first and second counselor, respectively, in the Sandton South Africa Stake presidency.

In South Africa, all Church auxiliary programs are in operation and well-attended. Donald E. Harper, area director for the Church Educational System, comments: “Seminary and Institute, started in 1974, involves 70 percent of our young people. The youth are really dedicated, rising at 5 A.M. to attend class between 6 and 7 A.M., then going straight to school starting at about 8 A.M., five days a week.” There are also evening classes.

The First Missionaries

The growth of the gospel message in South Africa was forecast more than 130 years ago by the first mission president assigned there, Jesse Haven. With his companions, William Holmes Walker and Leonard I. Smith, he organized the Church in the Cape of Good Hope and dedicated the land to missionary work. Standing on the slopes of Lion’s Head, a hill overlooking Capetown, 23rd day of May, 1853, he said, “Many of the honest in heart will rejoice in the everlasting gospel.”

His words have held true during the ensuing years although harsh conditions and opposition resulted in slow progress in the early days. Emigration of converts to larger Church-oriented communities kept the Latter-day Saint population of southern Africa small for most of a century. But the faithful upheld gospel teachings even in difficult times, as when the missionaries were withdrawn during the Frontier and South African Wars (1856–61, 1865–1904), and both World Wars.

“Because of the distance involved, we have often felt isolated from Church headquarters and have looked forward eagerly to visits of its representatives,” says Debbie Vial, Relief Society teacher in the Pinetown Ward, Durban South Africa Stake.

Indeed, Durban is as far from Salt Lake City as any other spot on earth where the Church is organized.

From the time President Haven arrived as South Africa’s first mission president, a full century passed before a General Authority, President David O. McKay, came to South Africa in 1954. He was followed by other leaders: Elder Ezra Taft Benson in 1972, when he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and President Spencer W. Kimball in 1973, when he was President of that quorum. President Kimball rededicated the land while he was in Johannesburg, which by then had become South African headquarters for the Church.

Strengthening the Church

These visits gave encouragement to members and helped speed Church growth, resulting in the first South African area conference in 1978 at Johannesburg. President Kimball, by then Church President, attended, along with several other Church leaders; it was the first time more than one General Authority had stood on South African soil at the same time. Families throughout the country prepared months ahead to share in the pilgrimage to this special meeting.

“As the Church has grown,” says Brother Hefer, “we have seen our own missionaries being called in greater numbers, and returned missionaries are now serving in stake and Relief Society presidencies, as bishops and counselors, and generally strengthening the Church.”

A special milestone for the Saints was the August 1985 dedication of the Johannesburg South Africa Temple. For many Saints, the temple has become a part of their lives—they attend regularly and are very serious about their commitment. Others are learning more about the value of the temple as they serve there.

Sister Sylvia J. Milne, a convert of twenty-nine years and now clerical supervisor in the temple, shares thoughts that represent the feelings of many who serve with her: “It is a great privilege to be a servant in the Lord’s house. A lovely spirit of helpful comradeship is evident among those concerned with the work for the dead.”

With the new temple in their midst as tangible witness of the Lord’s love for them, South African Saints may look to the future with quiet hearts, remembering Jesse Haven’s assessment of his mission in December 1855 as he left South Africa: “I feel that the Lord has blessed us. The foundation of a good work has been laid in this land and a seed has been sown.” It is a seed well-rooted now, matured, and bearing precious fruit.

A Cosmopolitan Nation

South Africa has a certain feeling of space, grandeur, and majesty about it. The Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet at its southern tip, while inland, on the Great Karoo plateau, one may see a nearly unbroken horizon in any direction. In the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in the northwest, or in the Kruger National Park in the northeast, one finds the kind of wildlife for which Africa is famous. Historic Capetown, the nation’s mother city and legislative capital, and vibrant Johannesburg, “city of gold,” rank with the great cities of the world.

A cosmopolitan nation with its roots deep in Black history, South Africa developed its European influence as early as the fifteenth century. Portuguese navigator Bartholomew Diaz made landfall at Mossel Bay, some 400 kilometers east of present-day Capetown, in 1488. Two hundred years later, the Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station at the Cape for its trading fleet. Successive waves of colonists, chiefly from France, Germany, and Britain, helped develop the land.

Operations of the Dutch East India Company brought many Dutch to South Africa. Their descendants, along with the descendants of German and French immigrants, are the majority of today’s Afrikaners, speaking their own language—Afrikaans. They make up about 60 percent of South Africa’s white population. The other 40 percent are mainly English-speaking descendants of people who emigrated from Great Britain before and during the period of British rule that followed Dutch control together with more recent immigrants.

• Marjorie E. Woods, a freelance writer, is a stake assistant librarian for the Branch Genealogical Library, Johannesburg. She is a member of the Sandton First Ward, Sandton South Africa Stake.

Members of the Sandton South Africa Stake attend a stake conference

A view of Capetown

Malcolm and Pauline Bassett and their children, members of the Capetown First Ward

Librarian Sylvia J. Milne at a microfilm reader in the Johannesburg Branch genealogical library which was organized in 1976. Sister Milne headed the first Name Extraction Program in South Africa. She is now clerical supervisor in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple.

The Johannesburg South Africa Temple, dedicated in August 1985

Church members in Pretoria, from left: Una Verabuthroo, Paravathy Hira, and Bobby Hira.

Members of the Barbara and Bill Wrench family celebrate a birthday; Farmland in a valley of the Drakensberg mountain range, near the southeastern coast of South Africa (photo courtesy of the South African Tourism Board); The Sandton South Africa Stake Center; The Elias Vis family, Church members from Bloemfontein.