By Gustav Krös
20/03/2025
Wealth, Location & Influence
South Africa is a nation of rich diversity across multiple spectrums. God created it with diverse natural beauty ranging from deserts, grasslands, forests, mountains, and coastal regions. At the same time, God blessed it with rich underground wealth. There are currently 26 different minerals mined in the country, including gold, coal, iron ore, platinum, uranium, and rare earth metals. In addition, the country is home to a diverse population with various ethnic groups, as showcased in its 12 official languages, with South African Sign Language added to the list in 2023. The estimated population is 64 million, of whom 77% profess to be Christian.
South Africa is a significant player on the global stage, with its vast mineral wealth greatly contributing to this status. It is the number one producer of platinum in the world and the 10th-largest producer of gold, while also holding the third-biggest gold reserves. Globally, it ranks 40th in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but within Africa, it has the highest GDP. It is this economic position within Africa that makes it a global player and qualifies it as a member of the G20 and the BRICS nations.
In addition, it also holds a geographically strategic position that should not be underestimated. In 1652, the Dutch were the first Europeans to act on its strategic location by establishing a trading post at Table Bay, which later became known as Cape Town. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had a tremendous impact on the amount of sea trade bypassing the tip of Africa, but in recent years, many countries have been reminded of South Africa’s strategic location. Shipping companies using the Suez Canal have been greatly impacted by Somali pirates and attacks from the Houthis in Yemen. However, the blocking of the Suez Canal in March 2021, by the container ship Ever Given, was a timely reminder of how vulnerable the Suez Canal is and how strategic the southern tip of Africa remains.
With its strategic location, mineral wealth, and leadership position within Africa, South Africa offers enough reasons for countries to garner good relationships with it. These elements, however, also make the country strategic from a missions point of view.
Missions in South Africa
Dutch settlers brought the Gospel with them in 1652, but the first missionary who purposefully came to share the Gospel with the native inhabitants of the land was a German missionary, Georg Schmidt, who arrived in July 1737. Gradually, more missionaries from Europe arrived to carry the Gospel further into Africa. Some of the more well-known missionaries include Robert Moffat, who arrived in January 1817, and David Livingstone, who arrived in March 1841.
Today, nearly 50 million South Africans profess to be Christian, and together with its financial wealth, the nation has become a major missionary sending hub. The Church in South Africa not only sends and supports missionaries into the rest of Africa but also throughout the world. Moreover, the ethnic and cultural diversity of the nation has contributed to South African missionaries being highly adaptable, making it easier for them to settle into foreign cultures.
Yet, South Africa is only scratching the surface of its missions potential, as the majority of its missionaries are sent from the White community, which makes up approximately 7% of the population. Nonetheless, the vision to actively participate in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) has been growing within the Black and Coloured (referring to a distinct multiracial ethnic group in South Africa with a diverse heritage, primarily found in the Western and Northern Cape) communities over the past three decades, with more and more people answering the call to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. These are exciting developments as South Africa’s status as a strategic missionary-sending nation continues to grow. However, there are a few drawbacks, including a lack of teaching that informs missions, the continuation of ancestral worship, limited financial and material resources, and a missions model that does not fully align with the context of the Black community.
With the Black community making up 81% of the country’s population, much work still remains in breaking the strongholds and addressing challenges that hinder their involvement in taking the Gospel to the nations.
Unreached Nations Within South Africa
In this regard, God has used the economic wealth of South Africa to draw the nations to its shores. In many communities, especially Black communities, the nations are now just across the street. Poverty, unemployment, and conflict have led thousands of people from unreached nations in Africa and Asia to seek a better life in South Africa. Besides people from across the African continent, many communities include people from countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.
The Church in South Africa has thus been granted the privilege of reaching many unreached nations with the Gospel without the need to send and support missionaries abroad. The Church simply needs to equip its members to feel confident in being Jesus’s witnesses (Acts 1:8) within the communities where they live and work daily and to seize the opportunities that God sends across their path. Unfortunately, this is another area where the South African Church is still far from reaching its full potential, and this is not confined to a certain segment of the population but is an issue across the board.
The Church in South Africa can drastically grow its missional impact if it reaches the unreached nations within its own borders and disciples those converts to take the Gospel back to their unreached nations.
Foreign Relations
At the same time, South Africa’s popularity on the global stage, due to its location, wealth, and role in Africa, is also opening many unique doors from a missions perspective. The ANC (African National Congress)-led government, which has been in control of the country since 1994, has built strong relations with countries like Russia, China, and Iran, with Iran even financing South Africa’s case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Consequently, missionaries from the United States—which remains the biggest missionary-sending nation in the world—need to be especially cautious when visiting such countries due to the diplomatic relations their government fosters with those nations. Missionaries from South Africa, however, while still needing to exercise caution in those countries, generally have fewer concerns in gaining entry due to the relationships their government has fostered.
Many Christians in South Africa would certainly prefer that the government focused instead on fostering stronger relationships with countries like the United States and Israel, but as the saying goes, “You need to play the cards you’ve been dealt.” Thus, from a missions perspective, the Church in South Africa should examine the opportunities it has been given and see how it can best utilise them in spreading the Gospel to all the unreached nations in the world. In this way, the Church would certainly be implementing an element of Jesus’s instruction to “be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
Summary & Conclusion
The Church in South Africa has therefore been uniquely positioned to play a major role in the world in fulfilling the Great Commission and ushering in Christ’s return.
With 77% percent of the population professing to be Christian, there is plenty of labourers to be sent into the harvest field (Matthew 9:37-38). With its wealth, the nation has been blessed to support the labourers who are sent into the harvest field and has also drawn the unreached to its shores. Furthermore, the relationships that the government fosters give it access to some of the most unreached harvest fields in the world.
Certain aspects must be addressed for the Church to fully utilise its strategic position. Besides addressing ancestral worship and equipping every Christian to be a witness for Christ, the Church must continuously work on building unity in the Body of Christ across different racial communities. The devil continues to exploit the history of apartheid to distract the Church from remaining Kingdom-focused. The Church needs to recognise how the devil uses race relations to keep the country, and more specifically the Church, from moving forward and bearing more fruit in God’s Kingdom.
This has become the country’s weak spot, and the devil has made himself predictable in continuously targeting it. The Church, however, is responsible for bringing true healing to that weak spot and rendering the devil ineffective in his attempts to distract it from its highly strategic Kingdom purposes. Therefore, the Church in South Africa still has much more to offer in contributing towards the completion of the Great Commission and must embrace the attitude of Paul in Philippians 3:12-14 if it wants to attain it.
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Pray for the Church in South Africa:
- Pray for the breaking of strongholds and the resolution of challenges that hinder the Black community from greater involvement in missions.
- Pray for the Church to equip each member to be confident in being a witness for Jesus among the unreached nations within its borders.
- Pray for the Church to continuously work towards unity in the Body of Christ across all racial groups and to stand firm against the devil’s schemes in this area of society.
- Pray for the Church to be sensitive to its strategic position and to make use of the opportunities it is presented with to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Resources:
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-africa-population/
https://joshuaproject.net/countries/SF
https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-report-on-international-religious-freedom/south-africa/
https://investingnews.com/top-10-gold-reserves-country/
https://projectsiq.co.za/mines-in-south-africa.htm
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1120999/gdp-of-african-countries-by-country/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Africa_(1652%E2%80%931815)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction
