The mission was closed in 1865, but reopened in 1903.The South African government limited the amount of missionaries allowed to enter the country in 1921 and in 1955.

Starting around 1930, a man had to trace his genealogy out of Africa to be eligible for the priesthood, since black people were not permitted to be ordained.

In 1954 when church president David O. McKay visited South Africa, he removed the requirement for genealogical research for a man to be ordained, stipulating only that "there is no evidence of his having Negro blood in his veins".

After the church's 1978 Revelation on Priesthood removed the official prohibition against black priests, local opposition continued.

Local preachers told their congregations not to feed or house the missionaries and encouraged new converts to leave the LDS church.

[4] In 1855, the original three missionaries went home and encouraged their fellow Latter-day Saints to emigrate to Utah and helped raise funds for them to do so.

The mission closed in 1865 because of government restrictions, and a lack of knowledge of Afrikaans, isolation from church headquarters, and local opposition to polygamy.

Dunn is believed to be the first black African convert baptized in Africa, though he did not remain an active member for long.

[5] Another early convert of African descent was William Paul Daniels, who joined the LDS Church in 1915 while visiting relatives in Utah.

Wright repeatedly expressed to the First Presidency the difficulty in establishing the church in the region caused by the ban on ordaining men of black African descent to the priesthood.

This was especially problematic because previous general authorities required even men who appeared white to prove a total lack of black African ancestry before they could be ordained and records were often unavailable or incomplete.

After the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood, Mahlangu, his family, and many other people still waited to be baptized, likely because of lingering feelings of racism among some members of the church.

Church president Spencer W. Kimball visited Johannesburg in 1978 for an area conference,[15] and the first black branches formed in Soweto in the 1980s.

Some white members were specially assigned to attend the branch in Soweto to help with integration, which was difficult but somewhat successful.

[15] As of the early 1990s the majority of Latter-day Saints in South Africa were English-speaking white people, mainly of British origin.

[9] Felix Mynhardt, a gifted polyglot who was not a member of the LDS church, assisted Johann P. Brummer in translating The Book of Mormon into Afrikaans.