The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Africa

As of 1 January 2011, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 59,807 members in 11 stakes, 152 congregations (72 wards and 75 branches), three missions, and one temple in South Africa.

History

The first Latter-day Saint missionaries to what is now South Africa, Jesse Haven, Leonard I. Smith and William H. Walker, arrived in Cape Colony at Cape Town on 19 April 1853. The first LDS branch was organized at Mowbray in August 1853. The mission closed in 1865 with most of the converts having emigrated to Utah.

The mission was reopened in 1906 under the direction of William H. Lyon. The first LDS meetinghouse was built in 1916 also in Mowbray. Most early converts were of British descent, and often people born in Britain. In 1905 Lyon baptized a man with the last name of Dunn who was the son of a Scottish father and a Zulu mother.

Another early convert of African descent was William Paul Daniels, who joined the LDS Church in 1915 while visiting relatives in Utah. He met on multiple occasions with Joseph F. Smith before returning to South Africa.

Starting in 1927 until 1970 the mission published a monthly periodical originally known as the Cumorah Monthly Cross. The South African Government put very low restrictions on LDS missionaries coming in after World War I, not allowing any until 1921.

The Church did not translate any literature into Afrikaans until 1951, and it was not until 1972 the Book of Mormon was published in Afrikaans. No general authority visited South Africa until David O. McKay visited in 1954. As of 1953 the LDS Church owned only two buildings in South Africa, but the new mission president that year, Leroy H. Duncan, brought about 3 more Church owned buildings under his tenure including one in Durban. During the 1950s the Church began to send many Canadians as missionaries to South Africa, since as fellow citizens of the Commonwealth they did not fall under visa restrictions.

Evan P. Wright served as mission president over the South Africa Mission in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Wright repeatedly expressed to the First Presidency the difficulty in establishing the church in the region caused by the church-wide ban on ordaining men of African descent to the priesthood. Six missionaries had been given the duty to work on genealogy research for the purposes of establishing which people were eligible for the priesthood. During McKay's visit to the mission, he changed the policy to allow men to be ordained without any genealogical research in cases where "there is no evidence of his having Negro blood in his veins."

A stake was organized in South Africa in 1970. With the advent of Apartheid, the Church stopped baptizing people of indigenous African origin because without being granted the priesthood they could not hold their own meetings and the government would not allow them to meet with whites. There were people such as Moses Mahlangu who were closely affiliated with the Church but not baptized. Mahlangu held regular worship meetings teaching from the Book of Mormon and spent large amounts of time teaching of the Book of Mormon to people in the African townships starting in the late 1960s. He was also in regular contact with the mission presidents. Shortly after the 1978 revelations on the priesthood Mahlangu, his family, and many other people who he had taught were baptized.

In 1984 the South Africa mission was divided with a new mission formed in Cape Town. Zimbabwe, which had been under the South Africa Mission since the start of LDS meetings there in the 1950s, was made its own mission in 1987 and in 1990 Durban was made its own mission. When missionary work began in Madagascar in 1991 it was under the auspices of the Durban Mission, but Madagascar was made its own mission in 1998. Mozambique was under the Johannesburg Mission from the arrival of missionaries there in 1999 until 2005. Botswana was under the Johannesburg Mission from the arrival of missionaries in 1990 until 2013. In fact Botswana was part of the Roodeport South Africa Stake from 1995, when that stake was organized with Christoffel Golden as president, until 2012 when a separate stake was organized in Botswana.

The Book of Mormon has also been translated into Zulu and Xhosa.

Membership History

Year	Membership
1930	682
1940	1,571
1950	1,372
1960	2,901
1970	5,637
1975	6,091a
1979	6,831a
1985	13,100b
1989	17,000b
1995	24,000b
1999	29,220c
2004	40,482c
2009	48,112a
2012	57,546a

• ^a Actual Membership for January 1 of the respective year
• ^b Estimated membership for Dec 31 of the respective year
• ^c Actual Membership for Dec 31 of the respective year

Missions

• South Africa Cape Town Mission
• South Africa Durban Mission
• South Africa Johannesburg Mission

Temples

	36. Johannesburg South Africa
	Location: Announcement: Dedication: Coordinates:  Size: Style:	Johannesburg, South Africa 1 April 1981 24 August 1985 by Gordon B. Hinckley 19,184 sq ft (1,782 m2) and 112 ft (34 m) high on a 1 acre (0.4 ha) site Modern adaptation of six-spire design - designed by Church A&E Services and Hartford & Hartford
	166. Durban South Africa (Under Construction)
	Location: Announcement: Groundbreaking:  Size:  Notes:	Durban, South Africa 1 October 2011 9 April 2016 by Carl B. Cook TBD Announced by Thomas S. Monson on 1 October 2011

See also

• Religion in South Africa

External links

• LDS Newsroom (South Africa)
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - Official Site
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - Visitors Site
• Personal Histories of Mormon Women in South Africa. Provo, Utah: L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University.