The áʼíBaháʼí Faith in South Africa began with the holding of Baháʼí meetings in the country in 1911. A small population of Baháʼís remained until 1950 when large numbers of international Baháʼí pioneers settled in South Africa. In 1956, after members of various tribes in South Africa became Baháʼís, a regional Baháʼí Assembly which included South Africa was elected. Later each of the constituent countries successively formed their own independent Baháʼí National Spiritual Assembly. Then in 1995, after a prolonged period of growth and oppression during Apartheid and the homelands reuniting with South Africa, the Baháʼí National Spiritual Assembly of South Africa was formed. In 2005 Baháʼís were estimated at about 240,100 adherents.
Early history
1911 marks the beginning of a presence of the Baháʼí Faith in South Africa at the home of Agnes Cook in Sea Point, Cape Town. Mr. and Mrs. William Fraetas from Muizenberg who had met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, Baháʼu'lláh, in New York, in 1912 came back to South Africa.
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote a series of letters, or tablets, to the followers of the religion in the United States in 1916–1917; these letters were compiled together in the book Tablets of the Divine Plan. The eighth and twelfth of the tablets mentioned Africa and were written on 19 April 1916 and 15 February 1917, respectively. Publication however was delayed in the United States until 1919—after the end of the First World War and the Spanish flu. The tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on 4 April 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá mentions Baháʼís traveling "…especially from America to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, and travel through Japan and China. Likewise, from Germany teachers and believers may travel to the continents of America, Africa, Japan and China; in brief, they may travel through all the continents and islands of the globe" and " …the anthem of the oneness of the world of humanity may confer a new life upon all the children of men, and the tabernacle of universal peace be pitched on the apex of America; thus Europe and Africa may become vivified with the breaths of the Holy Spirit, this world may become another world, the body politic may attain to a new exhilaration…."
After the death of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá Baháʼís began to move to South Africa. By 1929 there were 6 small groups of Baháʼís mainly due to pioneers and travelling Baháʼís, notably Martha Root, in the Western Cape and near Johannesburg. The very first local Baháʼí Assembly formed in Pretoria in 1925 but was dissolved in 1931, and by about 1937 only one Baháʼí remained from that period, Mrs. Agnes Carey. Carey was a social worker for women prisoners who had been released from the Pretoria prison, and because of her staunchness in the religion she was later honoured with the title of "The Mother of the Baháʼís of South Africa" by Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed the leader of the religion after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death. Shoghi Effendi had travelled through South Africa in 1929 and 1940. In 1949 the painter Reginald Turvey returned to South Africa from England as a Baháʼí since 1936 through his association with the well-known painter Mark Tobey and lifelong friend Bernard Leach. Turvey was unaware of the existence of other Baháʼís in South Africa including Agnes Carey. As a result, Turvey spent thirteen years believing he was the sole Baháʼí in South Africa. For his patience, devotion and subsequent services to the African Baháʼís in his latter years, he was given the title of "The Father of the Baháʼís of South Africa".
Ten-Year Crusade
In 1953 Shoghi Effendi planned an international teaching plan termed the Ten Year Crusade. During the plan 65 pioneers from the United States, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and England settled in South Africa. Many of the pioneers settled permanently in the country; William Sears and his family, Harry and Margaret Ford, and Robert Miller and his family settled in Johannesburg; Ruth and Bishop Brown, who were Margaret Ford's mother and stepfather, settled in Durban. Lowell and Edith Johnson settled in Cape Town while Eleanor and Lyall Hadden settled in Pretoria.