[1] Rodney Smith, a white South African, read about Pentecostal beliefs and the Azusa revival in William Seymour's Apostolic Faith newsletter.
Smith and another Azusa missionary, Henry Turney, organised to create a work that eventually became the Assemblies of God in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
[1] Turney, who received his Spirit Baptism in 1906 at Azusa Street, played a large part in this missionary work.
[1][2] In September 1909, two evangelists from Pieter Le Roux's church walked from Wakkerstroom to Johannesburg where they held meetings with the Zulus.
In Johannesburg, Pentecostals were evangelizing workers in the Diamond Mines and inmates in local jails, totaling about 250,000 South Africans.
One of the country's biggest Pentecostal denominations, The Apostolic Faith Mission, had an all-white leadership council.
Many white church leaders at this time were a part of the apartheid-era government, such as Gerrie Wessels, who was a senator of the National Party in 1955 and served as vice-president for the Apostolic Faith Mission until 1969.
He created a "Back to God Crusade" where he emphasised restoring black dignity and fighting crime while staying out of politics.
[2]Bhengu’s friend Edgar M. Louton was later forced to cut ties with the Assemblies of God because of his criticism of Apartheid.
[2] in 1994, the African Christian Democratic Party was founded by Pentecostals and evangelicals with focus on opposition to abortion and homosexuality.
Eventually, other Pentecostal leaders such as Ray McCauley and Frank Chikane criticized the party for their focus on being conservative.
[2] Apartheid was a system in South Africa, put in place around 1948 by the newly elected white Afrikaner National Party, which legally enforced segregation.
Such as Frank Chikane, a black Pentecostal member of the Apostolic Faith Mission, who joins the Student Christian Movement in the 1970s to help guide them towards political activism.
[2] Ray McCauley of the mostly white, neo-Pentecostal Rhema Church, starts becoming involved in politics near the end of apartheid.
The Full Gospel Church of God teach of integrity, prophecy, empowering members and leaders to operate within biblical standards, and are contemporary yet remain faithful to their Pentecostal origins.
The first bishop to be sent to South Africa, Marcelo Crivella, which was near the end of apartheid, preached of equality between the whites and blacks.