There is little doubt that South Africa is one of the world’s social test tubes. In many ways it is a microcosm of macro-global issues. This applies equally to an area which is not being studies as much as it should be: the interface of religion with socio-political processes.

There can be very few countries where this interface plays in and of itself as significant a role in the general flow of history as in South Africa. Religion – and indeed a very complicated configuration at that – is a social force knowledge without which no adequate understanding of the South African dynamic can be attained.