Global Perspectives: South Africa

The Bible Institute of South Africa 

Darrell Bock:  
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, Executive Director for Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. Our topic today is part of our Global Perspective series, and we're focusing in today on the country of South Africa, and we have two guests, Michael van Andel, who is in Johannesburg area and is coming to us by Zoom from there. Then Neil Henry, who's in Cape Town, which is some distance away. So we've got two different locations that are involved here. Michael is a business person who also heads up a ministry called Truth Walk, which is a discipleship ministry designed to teach people Bible studies and to work in the faith and work area in South Africa. They also host a variety of conferences that have been held. Michael, thank you for being with us today.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Good to be with you. Well with you again, Darrell.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yep. Then Neil Henry is a pastor at a church in Lavender Hill, which is in the Cape area, and also teaches as a professor at the Bible Institute of South Africa. Neil works in an area that really makes for a challenging ministry. We'll be talking more about that down the road. Neil, thank you for being a part of our time today.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Thank you, Darrell. Great to be with you.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
So let's just dive in. Let's talk a little bit about South Africa as a country. People may or may not be very aware of it. Of course, it's at the very bottom of the continent of Africa. In fact, if you go there and you go into Neil's part of the country, it's not a very long drive until you get to the Cape of Good Hope where you can see where people come around the Horn of Africa. Beautiful part of the world for sure. Let's talk about the country of South Africa, a little bit about its origins. I don't know who to ask the history question to. Neil, the camera's on you so I guess I'll start with you. From where South Africa? Particularly given its current makeup, thinking about it probably in the last few centuries.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Oh, we go right back to remember that South Africa had always been here long before the first colonial explorers came. Just in case anybody wondered, we always were at the foot of Africa. Some of the indigenous people from Southern Africa were the Bantu-speaking people and then we had two groups that were in the Cape region, the Khoi and the San people and later known as the Khoisan. Those were the indigenous people. The early Portuguese explorers came around the 1400s. They were the first Europeans to land here. Then subsequently, there have been a number of visitors all the way through to 1650s when the Dutch decided that this would be a good place to set up a replenishing station. So they sent out a chap by the name of Jan van Riebeeck, who landed at the Cape in 1652 and then established the Cape as a replenishment station for ships wanting to travel around the Horn of Africa to get to the far east. This was on the spice route.  
  
Neil Henry:  
In later years, more Dutch finally came out. Eventually, the British discovered that this was a good place to colonize as well. The British had annexed the Cape a couple years later and in a number of brutal wars known as the Anglo-Boer Wars at the turn of the 19th century, the British had firmly entrenched themselves. Obviously, South Africa had two great resources, gold and diamonds, and this had drawn a huge amount of attention from the European countries. By the 1940s, the Africana Afrikaner nation had then begun to develop, and a government had been established under the AfricanaAfrikaner… I'm not sure if I need to clarify that expression, White Africana Afrikaner Nationalists?  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah. That'd probably be a good thing to do.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Yeah. The Dutch initially had begun to move further and further inland as the British had annexed the Cape. As they developed, they developed a language called Afrikaans. So they called themselves AfricanaAfrikaner. By the 1940s, the white Africana folks had established themselves as a political party. Under the early British rule, they'd established themselves as a government and had become then the dominant force in governance. In fact, they were the only force in governance. Through the Nationalist Party White government, apartheid laws had developed. The word apartheid was a term given to fairly draconian laws that insisted on the separation of people of color.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, there'd then been ongoing clashes with the government and local folks because there'd been a rising resistance against the oppression of this government. In 1994, we underwent a massive change. South Africa had its first democratic election and everybody in the country was, for the first time, allowed to then go to the polls and vote for a new government. And that then established the first democratic government in the country where everybody could then participate. So we've now gone nearly 23 years, around 26 years since that election.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Okay, well that was a wonderful, quick overview. So what we have is we have indigenous Africans, I'm thinking about the demographics now. We have indigenous Africans, we had a British presence, we had a Dutch presence, and there really was a struggle for control of South Africa by the British and the Dutch, as you said, into the turn out of the 19th and into the 20th centuries. And then we had the emergence of the African majority that is now very much in control of the politics in the country. Is that a fair summary, very quick summary?  
  
Neil Henry:  
That's very fair. So today, we have what we call a multi-party election system. We have multiple political parties and each of them are quite diverse in terms of the color makeup. So you no longer have the very strong black and white divides, but you do have a large number, and this is what the demographic of the country looks like. Nearly more than 85% of the country are black African and that would be made up of various indigenous groups known as HausaXhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, et cetera. Then you have a white population that will be made up of mostly folks who come out from Europe and had settled in the Cape back from the 1600s all the way through. That would be a mix of folks from a number of differing European countries.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Then you had another group of mixed people and that's known as what we call the color people and those were folks who had developed in the 1800s and beyond because of the mixed marriages and the grouping together of various color groups. There's another smaller group called Asians or Indians, and this really began because we had a number of indentured laborers being brought out from India to work in the sugar cane farms on the east coast of the country. We really have four groups within the bigger demographic: black Africans, which make up the larger percentage; white South Africans; colored South Africans; and Indian South Africans.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah. I'm glad you brought in the Indians. I was going to ask them about that. Most people are completely unaware of that who live outside the country. That's interesting and important to know. Well, one of the reasons we want to do this is to get a sense for the kind of the mix of the environment and population of South Africa. Michael, I'm going to ask you this question because I know you've been counting since the last time we did a podcast. Population of the country as a whole?  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Roughly 60 million. Is that close enough?  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah, that's very, very good. Which makes it, if you were to put that, for example, in European standards, would make it a very large European country as well. I think Germany has 80 million, so that's an interesting number. I'll do it in this order. Then how many different languages are you dealing with in the country? I guess I'm asking languages that would be dominant in the country and then also the level of how many dialects are we dealing with? I don't need specific numbers here, but more generally.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
11 official languages, which is a rather interesting number. I would say a lot of dialects, maybe Neil would be a better place to talk about that, but I'd say for most people, English or Afrikaans would be a second language for the most part. Well, second to fourth language. Most of the people would have English higher up the list than Afrikaans, although Neil's context, there are a lot of people who are first language Afrikaans.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Okay. One of the things that struck me, I remember when we took our tour of the Soweto area, I was there the last time, our guide, a young African woman, was walking through the variety of indigenous African languages that exist in the country. Once you get past the two that you mentioned, Afrikaans and English, you've got a variety of indigenous African languages that some of which has some really interesting sounds attached to them, Neil. She was teaching us some words with clicking sounds and that kind of thing. Very different kind of sounding language. The point being that South Africa is really a quite a mix of cultures, isn't it, Neil?  
  
Neil Henry:  
Absolutely. If you think just about the 11 languages, the 11 official languages, English and Afrikaans being two of them, you have a number of African languages, Zulu probably being the most dominant. The second most dominant would probably be Xhosa speaking and your Zulu speaking people would've been descendants of Dingang Dingaan and ShakaCharka and SitroyaCetshwayo. Then of course, you have your Xhosa speaking people that was likely from the south, from the southern east coast of the country, area called Transkei and Ciskei . The Xhosa speaking people, you'd find that the language has a lot more clicks. It's not a difficult language to learn, but you'd have to learn to get your tongue around the clicks. Then there's a number of smaller groups. There's Sotho, there's North and South Sotho, there's Papei, SaperiSepedi, there's… Oh yeah, I could lost in this. Tswana, but it actually goes onto a number of others. Then we have multiple dialects. Even if you took Afrikaans on its own, you'll probably find that you have various strains of Afrikaans, depending on which part of the country you're in.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
So the point being that there really is such a challenging cultural mix and most people think, "Well, South Africa. It's a singular country with a singular culture," but it's actually quite a mix of cultures that you're dealing with and that the church is having to cope with as well.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Right, right. Absolutely.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah.  
  
Neil Henry:  
So certainly, language is one way to differentiate between the various groups of folks that we have. Then of course, color has been one of the huge divides.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Right. So well, most people are aware of, I think, at least some of the history related to color and race, but I think most people are completely unaware of the cultural differences and even the sub-differences among the various groups that exist in the country, which as I said, produces challenges for the church. Let me quickly, Michael, you're our demographics man today. Talk about some of the large cities in South Africa. I'm going to challenge you with the question you may or may not know the answer to, and that is what are the five largest cities in the country, and I'll just how held you responsible for the population of Johannesburg and maybe the Cape Town areas?  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Well, let me say that you've possibly made the wrong choice of person who's your demographics expert, but the major cities amongst the major cities would be Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, and Durban. There are other cities like Port Elizabeth, East London. Neil, what would be the next biggest after?  
  
Neil Henry:  
Oh, Bloemfontein, KimberleyTimbri and Pietermaritzburg.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Okay. Then some people have heard of Stellenbosch, which is in the wine country area. So that's where the university resides, at least one of the prominent universities of South Africa. Then what's interesting about the Johannesburg area is it's a big area. I think you told me six or seven million or seven or eight million, right Michael, in terms of size?  
  
Michael van Andel:  
So on your last podcast, I said multiple millions. The challenge is just where you measure and how you count them. So in my most recent count, which you referred to, let's say seven-and-a-half million, but it really depends who's included in the greater Johannesburg area because you have like Soweto, which can be measured with Johannesburg and a number of other townships and adjoining areas. So I'd say seven to eight million is probably a safe figure to use for the greater Johannesburg area.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Then another interesting feature of Johannesburg is, of course, Johannesburg was the capital and very much the economic center of the country for a very long time. The last time we were with you all there in South Africa, we spent some time in Sandton, which is almost, it strikes me as a city that just emerged in the country in a very new major secondary economic center, or maybe it is the economic center now of the country that exists within Johannesburg, but is almost its own separate community.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Yeah. So I think if you… Let's take a step back. If you excluded Soweto and those kind of places, you would probably end up with a couple of million people in Johannesburg, if you number them separately. Sandton has become the banking and business, let's say financial services types of businesses, head offices of multinationals. A lot of those businesses are now headquartered in Sandton, although some would still be in the historical town area of Johannesburg, the central business district, but generally, Sandton is where a lot of the tertiary educated professional services types of companies would be based.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
A lot of investment companies are based in the Cape because it is beautiful, near to the Winelands, fantastic topography in terms of mountain and ocean and that, whereas Johannesburg is not necessarily the most beautiful city in the world. Then some of these other major, Durban would be fairly major in terms of commerce as well. But a lot of people also from the rest of Africa tend to find their way to South Africa, looking for job opportunities and so forth. So that's another factor to take into account in terms of understanding demographics, that we have a lot of Zimbabwean people and a lot of people from elsewhere in the continent who have come to South Africa and often to Johannesburg to pursue opportunity.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Now, Neil, I think I'm right about this, that South Africa is the second largest country and population in Africa. Am I right about that or is it the largest?  
  
Neil Henry:  
No, we're not the largest.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Nigeria.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Nigeria is much bigger than us. I'm not sure what the numbers are, but Nigeria would have a higher population.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
That's what I thought. So I can say it's an interesting country with an interesting mix and an interesting culture. So let's step back. Let's talk about the church a little bit in this mix that we've talked about, because that's part of why we call this A Global Perspectives focus, and we're really trying to understand both the country and the function of the church in the country. Christian makeup to begin with and the leading denominational presence in the country. I don't know who to ask this to. Who knows those statistics? Neil, maybe you're aware of this.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Well, let me take you to the history of the church in Southern Africa. When the Dutch arrived in the 1600s, they obviously needed to bring missionaries with them to help take care of the families that began to resettle in the Cape, and the first church was actually not the Dutch Reformed church. There were some Lutherans who had come out. There were some Germans who had come out during that period, and they'd settled in the Cape colony as well. Before the first Dutch Reformed church was actually established, the Lutherans were allowed to worship in a church that was in the colony. So the first evangelical or the first Christian community that was established was actually the Lutheran community. Now, the Germans came with a number of skills. They brought the leather, the tanning industry with them.  
  
Neil Henry:  
They brought farming skills with them. They brought some meat drying skills for them, which is probably why today we enjoy biltong, but they were the first Christian community that worshiped. But they were not recognized by the Dutch leaders at the time. The first church, which then became the official church of the colony was in then the Dutch Reformed Church. They were established several years later and they bought the first church in Cape Town. So their missionaries were the first to establish and whenever their folks had traveled during the time of the Great Trek out of the Cape to find other parts of the land where they could settle, missionaries would've gone with these families and wherever they landed, they established mission stations. So when you traveled around the Cape, many of the towns around the Cape would have started off as little mission stations.  
  
Neil Henry:  
You'll still find a Dutch Reformed Church in the center of these towns with all of the major buildings clustered around them. So you'd have a Dutch Reformed Church with a tall steeple and the post office and the general store were all situated very close by. But of course, with the Lutherans, their missions enterprises had spread. And very soon, there were Swiss missionaries who had come out as well. The French Huguenots brought some missionaries with them too. So by the 1820s, there were a number of foreign mission leaders that were then working at stations all over Southern Africa.  
  
Neil Henry:  
There'd also been a keen interest in reaching out to the indigenous people in the Eastern Cape on the Eastern Frontier, particularly. And so if you go to the Eastern Cape today, you'll still find a great number of mission stations that were established by either the Dutch Reformed Churches or the Lutheran churches or the Moravians, because then Zinzendorf had started sending people out as well. So those would've been the early roots of the church. By the turn of the century, there'd been a number of denominations that had been dominant, but the Dutch Reformed Church would've been dominant up until that time.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
So how has that changed now and what is the estimated evangelical… Well, total Christian population and evangelical population in South Africa?  
  
Neil Henry:  
Yeah. I'll have to think about that very carefully because it's very difficult to separate those demographics. Generally, folks think of themselves… South Africa still thinks of itself as a Christian country, but in fact, we're not. The reality is that the Dutch Reformed Church has lost a lot of momentum because it had also been the church that was driven by the government, the apartheid government. So they'd lost credibility over the years. They'd probably still be amongst the wealthiest of the churches in the country at the moment, but their numbers would be greatly reduced. There had been a breakaway group from the Dutch Reformed Churches that made up the black church, that reached out to the black church and even into the colored communities, and names like Allan Boesak might be familiar. He'd been the moderator of one of the groups that had led the colored section of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church.  
  
Neil Henry:  
They were very instrumental in the anti-apartheid struggle. The other churches that have grown, if I were to draw a distinction between evangelical churches and other mainline churches, then your Pentecostal church and Charismatic churches have probably grown to the point where they may even have overtaken the numbers of your more conservative churches.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Interesting. What kind of percentage of the population is actively attending church?  
  
Neil Henry:  
I saw some stats put out by the Operation World a couple of years ago, and it actually places South Africa with a 35% evangelical focus.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
That's actually pretty large in relationship to most countries.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Evangelical, that would include… Sorry, Darrell, that would include Pentecostals, Charismatics. It would all fall under the banner pan of evangelicalism.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Sure. Michael, I know since you've been our bean counter today, I know that you looked up some statistics about the growth of the church. I think in Africa, in general, and in South Africa in particular, what are those statistics…  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Well, let me…  
  
Darrell Bock:  
… over time?  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Oh, let me fill in a couple of other statistics. So the population of Nigeria is roughly 200 billion people. So South Africa is just under 60. It was a few years ago that the gross domestic product, GDP, of Nigeria surpassed South Africa. But for quite some time, South Africa had the highest amongst Africa and obviously per capita. That means that South Africa was the wealthiest, probably still is the wealthiest, although there's substantial inequalities. In terms of professing Christians in South Africa, I think it would be about three quarters of the population, basically what Neil said, somewhere 70 to 80%, but that would include everyone who [crosstalk].  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Who self-professes and simply says, "I'm a Christian."  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Yeah. There would also be certain, I would almost say syncretistic African forms of church, various denominations. So mainline Pentecostal Christians have grown dramatically throughout Africa. I think that the stat I mentioned to you, that you were asking about is something that came from the International Bulletin of Missionary Researcher around 2017, and my friend Bob Yarbrough first drew attention to it, that around the year 1900, African Protestant Christians made up about 1.7% of global Protestants. By 2000, it was over 33%, 33.5%. The projection at the time of this report was that by 2017, over 40% of global Protestants would be on the African continent and by 2050, over 50%. Now, that doesn't include all of Africans who are dispersed elsewhere in the world for work and other reasons. Often, that's where you have church growth in western countries. But the vast majority of those Christians, I guess you would say would be some sort of charismatic Pentecostal. A lot of those people are influenced by American exports like TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
I think in the South African context, and maybe Neil wants to say something about this, a lot of the Christianity is inch deep. So it often isn't very tied to the Bible and solid theology, and it often isn't very transformational when it comes to people's ethics, particularly in the area of sexual relationships, but also in terms of business dealings. South Africa has one of the highest violent crime stats, highest crime proportions in the world. We're plagued by corruption. So that number of three quarters of the population being Christian is far more notional than it is real.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Okay. That's a wonderful overview, which allows me to ask, what'll probably be the time for our final set of questions and it has to do with: what are the greatest challenges for the Church today in South Africa? I realize this is a very broad question, and what are some of the successes that the church is experiencing and how is the growth of the church coming in? I'm hearing, in what Michael was raising, the influence of a heavily charismatic environment that also moves into areas like prosperity, theology, and that kind of thing, which I know is one of the challenges of the country. I get much more… When I'm in South Africa, I get more and more questions that deal with those areas than I would ever get, generally speaking, here in the States. Neil, talk about what the state of the church, as you see it, and then the challenges for the church.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Something that I didn't mention and Mike picked up by talking about the stats, is that you can't ignore the fact that a large portion of that Christian community are what we call the Zionist Churches or the independent African churches and your Zionist Churches probably number close to nine million people out of the total, they speak about adherence. That makes up a huge percentage of what we call this Christian community, Zionism.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
By the way, these are not Zionists who believe that God has a plan for Israel [crosstalk 00:29:17] like that.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Right. It's a completely different use of the term. So that's helpful. Neil, help us understand what is meant by Zionism in South Africa.  
  
Neil Henry:  
I should have made that clear from the beginning.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah.  
  
Neil Henry:  
I often forget that when people say Zion, you think of the connection with Israel. No, it is really just a name given to the African Independent Churches, but largely the practice is syncretristic. And so syncretistim would one of the biggest problems that you have to deal with within this larger group. So when we're talking about some of the challenges that you're facing, it's not just the stuff that we've inherited through the prosperity gospel and the health gospel, the health and prosperity movements, but it's also been the syncretrism within the church where there's been the worship of ancestors as well, and the two being brought together, the worship of God through an ancestor. The numbers there are phenomenal. When you look at… I mean, there's one of the largest group that ever gets together, normally happens over the Easter weekend every year.  
  
Neil Henry:  
They meet at a place called Moriah up in the northern part of the country. More than a million people gather at that gathering every year. New show of strength, they're governed by a bishop, but the practices are syncretistic.   
  
Neil Henry:  
So when you talk about the challenges, they'll be massive challenges in terms of how people understand evangelical Christianity, what they understand by that, and then you have the challenge of the influences of some of these other movements that have infiltrated the Church over the years. When you look at some of the more traditional churches, your Anglican, your Methodist churches over the years, while they had a lot of stability for a number of years, the influences of these movements have seeped into these churches. And so the standards of what they believe have been flitteredckered away. You'll probably find that there's not a lot of clarity in terms of the understanding of the Scriptures.  
  
Neil Henry:  
There's been a lack of training where there's been a focus on sound Biblical training. I'm part of a Bible school where student numbers are just very low. It's always been fairly conservative. I don't know of any Bible school that has excessive numbers that are making massive impacts when it comes to the teaching and training of leaders, of Biblical leaders. So that's probably the one area that has mostly eroded over the years. If you look at just the number of denominations that we have across the country, it sounds very different from what you have in the United States.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Yeah.  
  
Neil Henry:  
But if you started with your biggest numbers being amongst your African traditional churches, and then some of your mainlineland churches, your Dutch, your Catholic church would be fairly large amongst us. Then coming down from there, the Anglican church, the Methodist church, and then a whole host of others. Presbyterians are very few in numbers, probably less than [inaudible] something percent of that total body. Then all the independent churches that flow out from there would not even make up that huge number, but the huge bulk of it would be about 25% Zionists.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Wow. Okay. Well, that helps us. Let me ask one final question. This is for Michael. I know we talked about this statistic earlier, and by the way, you used a phrase earlier that I should clarify. Tertiary education, I'm assuming is college and graduate degrees. I don't know if we use that term here.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
[crosstalk].  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Sometimes we have to translate the English. But you said that the number of people who've had formal ministry training versus the number of pastors in the country, just compare those two numbers briefly for us. I mean, just hearing those numbers, I think, points out an issue.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
So the number was roughly nine million… Sorry, roughly 9,000 trained pastors, meaning trained through university, which would include more liberal institutions. So let's just make it easy and half that. So let's say 4,500 might be more solidly trained and more conservative, and that may be a generous number, but there are roughly 200,000 pastors in the country. Many of those would be in rural areas or township type of areas. I think to contextualize what I said about Protestants in Africa, let's assume that trends continue and it is 50% of world Protestants. The real issue: is what kind of Christianity will we have on the continent? In terms of biggest issues, I guess to simplify, it's always to do with the Bible and Christ. So do we link following the Christ who is revealed in the Scriptures with being students of God's word, rightly handling the Word, and is Christ sufficient?  
  
Michael van Andel:  
In other words, is a Christ plus all kinds of mystical add-ons, syncretism, as Neil was saying, is it sort of some vague notion of Jesus that's removed from what the Bible says about him, who he is, what he's done, and what he requires of his people? So there is a huge need as there is everywhere in the world for discipleship and specifically for training of those in leadership positions. There is very, very little funding or emphasis that goes into those areas. I'd say very little awareness of African Christianity from elsewhere in the world, unless there are people who have a personal connection like yourself.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
Hmm. Well, this has been fascinating to give us a quick, and it is very, very quick, tour of South Africa. I find it one of the most fascinating places in the world to visit, and I'm in a lot of countries on a regular basis. Of course, it's been a real joy to pop into visit you all in South Africa on an every-other-year basis, which we've missed this time because of COVID. But I look forward to seeing you all again, and I thank you for taking the time with us to discuss South Africa. Neil, Michael, thank you very, very much for helping us get a little bit of a grasp on what the nature of South Africa as a country and the challenges for the church in that country.  
  
Michael van Andel:  
Thanks for having us.  
  
Neil Henry:  
Thank you, Darrell.  
  
Darrell Bock:  
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