Isaiah Shembe

Isaiah Mloyiswa Mdliwamafa Shembe (c.1865– 2 May 1935), was the founder of the Ibandla lamaNazaretha, South Africa, which was the largest African-initiated church in Africa during his lifetime. A self-styled prophet who claimed to have been sent directly by God, Shembe started his religious career as an itinerant evangelist and faith healer in 1910. Within ten years he had built up a large following in Natal with dozens of congregations across the province. Although the Nazarites were eventually eclipsed in size by several other Zionist Churches, the Nazarite church eventually had well over one million members before it began to splinter into competing groups in the 1980s.

He was born in 1865, at Ntabamhlophe (Estcourt Area) in the Drakensberg region of Natal. He was of pure Zulu decent. When he was very young his family had fled from Shaka during the Mfecane period. His father, Mayekisa, traced his lineage four generations back among members of the Ntungwa tribe. His mother Sitheya, the daughter of Malindi Hadebe, was born at Mtimkulu.

Shembe's family left Natal for the adjacent Harrismith district of Orange Free State in the 1880s, ending up there as tenants for an Afrikaner family named the Graabes. The young Shembe appears to have labored for this Boer family as well, and spent considerable time working with the farm's horses. There is a considerable lore of hagiographic tradition concerned with the young Shembe. He is alleged, for instance, to have died young at the age of three, before being resurrected after his relatives sacrificed a bull prior to his burial. He was also allegedly visited by God on many occasions in these years.

Shembe claimed that the voice of God taught him how to pray. Thereafter it commanded him to find a place to pray to God on regularly basis. He started visiting the Wesleyan Church that was nearby. However he did not spend much time there, because the laws which he was taught in vision by the Word, were not followed in the church. For instance baptism by immersion was not practiced, this was one of the key law that made him desert the church. By the time of the South African War, Shembe was married and was working for the Graabes as a tenant in his own right. However, the war disrupted his situation. After abandoning his wives, he spent some time on the Rand as a migrant. During this time, he seems to have attended the African Native Baptist Church, led by William Leshega, in Boksburg.

...
Wikipedia