Bahá’í Administration Under Apartheid

In its statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on 19 November 1997, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of South Africa described the position of the Bahá’í community during the apartheid years:

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> During the apartheid years, both individual Bahá’ís and our administrative institutions were continually watched by the security police. The surveillance and investigation by the police was due to the racially integrated nature of the Bahá’í community and its activities.

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> During the time when the previous Government prohibited integration within our communities, rather than divide into separate administrative structures for each population group, we opted to limit membership of the Bahá’í Administration to the black adherents who were and remain in the majority of our membership and thereby placed the entire Bahá’í community under the stewardship of its black membership. Happily, such policies were eased and we were able once again to have racially integrated administrative bodies which were and are democratically elected by and from the entire body of adult adherents of the Bahá’í Faith.

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