South African Christianity, like that in the rest of the African continent, is explosive, phenomenal, and relative in numbers. Contemporary South African Christianity is enormously vibrant and diverse. Theologians and sociologists agree that Africa is continuing to make a major contribution to the shift of the centre of gravity of Christianity to the Global South taking place in this century. Researchers on South African Christianity encounter one common trend, and that is diversity and proliferation. The increasing diversity has led some scholars to conclude that speaking about African Christianities in the plural, to emphasise that “different strands or traditions ... may not be compatible one to another” (Ukah 2007:2). As the recent dynamics and new realities encounter the emerging African socio-cultural realities that are intertwined with religious views and outlooks, it has become a highly complex task to attempt to classify African Christianity This book is the result of just over two years of work of researching, reading, discovering, analysing, and reflecting on these dynamics in South Africa. Most of the lingua franca used is based on South African language philosophies and worldviews. As a norm, Chapter 1 is built on history. For one to understand the present, one needs to know the past. The past helps us understand the present. This first chapter is a pulamadibogo – a preface or a foreword sketching how Christianity came to South Africa. However, the chapter starts by alluding that missionaries did not enter a godless continent when they arrived in Africa with the gospel of Christ. The African God is characterised with benevolence, sustaining power for protection and prosperity of the human race. Munificence accompanied by altruism is what this God is all about. He is not remote-controlling the affairs of the universe, but a transcendent God who dwells among and reigns supreme above For the period 1652–1820, the South African colonial society was dominated by settlers designating themselves by various names such as colonists, inhabitants, Afrikaners, Christians, Whites or Europeans. This population was composed, among others, by of the Dutch, Germans, French and English. Different tribes received the gospel through different mission agencies, and their reaction to the Bible message also differed.