[3] Christianity arrived in South Africa with settlers from Europe in 1652, when the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (the Dutch East India Company) authorized Jan van Riebeeck to establish a post to resupply food and fuel to ships traveling between the Netherlands and Southeast and South Asia.
[4][6] In July 1737, the Moravian Brethren send Georg Schmidt to South Africa as a Christian missionary.
The Dutch Reformed Church believed that baptised Christians must be free citizens and could not be slaves and forced Schmidt to leave South Africa.
[5] At the start of the 19th century, Christian missionaries arrived from England, Scotland, France, the US and the Netherlands[8] to work in South Africa and to travel on to the rest of the continent.
Swiss churches, South Africa and Apartheid, Berlin: LIT Verlag (Coll.