Name, name, name ... ’n blik op die name van die Onafhanklike Swart Kerke

Abstract

In the South African population censuses of the past the thousands of African Independent Churches were all classified and tabled together in one category. Since 1980 only one, the Zion Christian Church, has been identified separately. Previous statistics did not make it possible to know which of these churches were the larger ones, where they were based and which groups were growing as these statistics were very general. This article gives the reasoning behind the proposal made to the Central Statistical Services to enumerate some of these churches separately, and to classify the more or less 4 500 churches into a number of categories on the basis of their stated names.