Islam in South Africa

Islam in South Africa is a minority religion, practised, according to 2015 estimates, by roughly 1.9% of the total population.Islam in South Africa has grown in three phases. The first phase brought the earliest Muslims as part of the involuntary migration of slaves, political prisoners and political exiles from Africa and Asia (mainly from the Indonesian archipelago) that lasted from about 1652 to the mid-1800s. The second phase was the arrival of Indians as indentured labourers to work in the sugar-cane fields in Natal between 1860 and 1868, and again from 1874 to 1911. Of the approximately 176,000 Indians of all faiths who were transported to the Natal province, almost 7-10% of the first shipment were Muslims.

The third phase has been marked - post apartheid – by the wave of African Muslims that have arrived on the shores and borders of South Africa. Recent figures put the number at approximately at 75-100 000. Added to this are a considerable number of Muslims from the Indo-Pak subcontinent that have arrived as economic migrants. Although, the majority of Muslims are Sunni, smaller numbers are Ahmadi, particularly in Cape Town.

In the 17th century the Dutch controlled East Indies and the Cape. Muslims were brought from Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia), etc. as slaves including those who waged Jihad in the Dutch colonies.

The first recorded arrival of free Muslims known as Mardyckers is in 1658. Mardycka or Maredhika implies freedom. The Mardyckers were people from Amboyna in the southern Moluccas and were brought to the Cape in order to defend the newly established settlement against the indigenous people, and also to provide labour in the same way that they had been employed at home, first by the Portuguese and later by the Dutch, in Amboyna. Jan Van Riebeeck had requested that the Mardyckers be sent to the Cape as a labour force. The Mardyckers were prohibited from openly practising their religion: Islam. This was in accordance with the Statute of India (drafted by Van Dieman in 1642) which stated in one of its placaats [statutes]: "No one shall trouble the Amboinese about their religion or annoy them; so long as they do not practise in public or venture to propagate it amongst Christians and heathens. Offenders to be punished with death, but should there be amongst them those who had been drawn to God to become Christians, they were not to be prevented from joining Christian churches." The same Placaat was re-issued on 23 August 1657 by Governor John Maetsuycker probably in anticipation of the advent of the Mardyckers to the Cape of Good Hope. The Placaat governed the Cape as part of the Dutch Colonial Empire.

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