A group of uniquely informal churches that marry African traditions with Christian beliefs is experiencing phenomenal growth among black South Africans and is rapidly becoming the new mainline denomination.
"Some of us worship under trees, others in garages or sitting rooms or schools or flats. Our aim is to bring the people together. That is what made the African people survive oppression," Bishop Mshengu Tshabalala said.
Tshabalala heads an umbrella organisation called Ikhaya Leziyoni, meaning Home of the Zionists, who are among the three main groups - Apostolic, Ethiopian and Zionist - that form the emerging African Independent Churches (AICs) in Africa.
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South Africa has the single largest grouping of AICs on the continent with an estimated 6 000 congregations.
'There are literally thousands of these churches' "There are literally thousands of these churches and it can consist of 20 or 10 000 congregants," said Francois Swanepoel, a professor at the University of South Africa's Bible Centre which is actively involved in the training of AIC leaders.
"It is not this large structured movement but the way in which they work together is unknown to us," he added.
The Zionist Christian Church (ZCC) is the largest of the AICs and achieved a 400 percent membership growth between 1980 and 1996, according to an independent research body, the South African Institute of Race Relations, in its 2002/2003 statistical survey.
The bulk of the dramatic rise happened between 1991 and 1996 when apartheid South Africa was making its transition to a non-racial democracy. The ZCC officially has about four million members, but it is believed to be far more.
The Afrikaner's protestant Dutch Reformed Church is the second largest with about 3,6 million members, but it experienced a mere 1,4 percent growth between 1980 and 1996, marginal compared to that of AICs.
'Alternative religion which does not reject all traditions out of hand'
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