THE STATE AND AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES IN BOTSWANA A statistical and qualitative analysis of the application of the 1972 Societies’ Act PART II Wim van Binsbergen

homepage | index page Botswana state and churches | Part I | Part III | Part IV | Part V

2. Towards a quantitative profile of Botswana churches (a)

In the late 1960s, Barrett summarized the situation in Botswana with regard to African Independent churches in the following terms:

 ‘Until recently most independent movements in Bechuanaland had originated in South Africa, being imported by migrant labourers from outside and by returning workers. Various types of prophet and Zionist churches flourished among the Bamangwato, Bakwena and the southern tribes; but few large tribal secessions of the type frequent elsewhere have occurred here.

              Soon after 1960, several new bodies arose in the north of the territory, being mainly healing sects of Zionist type. Although in 1966 [the year Botswana gained territorial independence] independents [as a church type] in Botswana only numbered some ten thousand, their size and influence were growing daily.’ (Barrett 1968: 24).

There is general agreement that in the past quarter of a century, African Independent churches in Botswana have seen a most remarkable growth. Yet it turns out to be difficult to measure that growth in concrete numerical terms. Although studies like Werbner 1985 and Lagerwerf (1982) deal with categories of churches rather than with any one church in particular, there is no study which reliably and convincingly oversees the entire field on the basis of quantitative data.

The Registrar of Societies, other sources of data, and their analysis

                                What we have, in addition to qualitative analyses largely in the form of case studies, is a number of lists which together offer the crude data on which the following quantitative analysis is based.

                        Every year the Registrar of Societies is required to publish, in the official Government Gazette, a full list of all societies including churches which by 31st March of that year

 (a) are registered,

 (b) exempted from registration,

 (c) have been cancelled in the course of the previous year, or

 (d) are required to give proof of their existence.

The Registrar also keeps record of all societies’ changes of name, constitution, objects, address, and officers, and of their audited accounts. Registered societies moreover are required to submit annual returns; this, together with greater restrictions on their initiative to change their name etc., constitutes the main distinction between registration and exemption from registration. The actual functioning of this administrative regime we shall examine in greater detail below; suffice it to say at this stage that the Registrar of Societies’ office contains the main body of raw data on Botswana churches — cosmopolitan as well as African Independent and other.

                        In addition to the annual lists in the Government Gazette, these data have been made accessible by two researchers: the physician Staugård who included two nearly identical lists of 157 and 158 African Independent churches — with date of registration (Staugård’s closing date is February 1984), number of members and location of headquarters — in publications on traditional healers in Botswana (Staugård 1985, 1986); and Fako, a researcher at Botswana’s National Institute of Documentation and Research, who published a list of the registered churches of Botswana, with dates of registration, location of headquarters and number of congregations (Fako 1983). In 1983 the Central Statistical Office published part of the results of the 1981 national census in the form of a Guide to the villages and towns of Botswana, which for every locality in the country lists the names of the churches found there, if any (Republic of Botswana 1983). Finally, Rev. Janson produced a list of the Spiritual Churches of Francistown, with their addresses. The advantage of the latter two sources is that they are not concerned with official registration, and allow us more than a glimpse of those Botswana churches who eluded the Registrar of Societies’ attention.[1]

                        These various lists are presented by their authors without any analysis. When compared to each another they turn out to be strikingly inconsistent: the same church may be listed under several name variants (even within one and the same publication),[2] and different churches with similar names may be treated as one. Even when data collection for the lists was only one or two years apart[3] as is the case for the Fako and Staugård lists, there is an alarming lack of overlap between them:

Table 1. Botswana African Independent churches as listed by Staugård (1986) and Fako (1983).[4]

                        Diligent comparison of the additional data provided on the churches (headquarters and year of registration), against the background of my participant observation among Francistown churches and of my perusal of a large number of files at the Registrar of Societies’ office in 1990, enabled me to construct an aggregate list of 299 churches which I am satisfied existed as separate organizations at some point in time in the course of the 1980s. Entering such information as each list had to offer, and adding the data I collected personally, the result was a computerized data set which despite many missing cases on one or more variables, still allowed some initial quantitative analysis conducive to a comprehensive national-level profile, however tentative, of churches in Botswana. The fact that the data set spans a period of a decade means that, as an analytical construct, it includes, on the far edge, some churches which have since ceased to operate, and on the near edge, churches which have only emerged in the late 1980s.

types of churches, congregations and membership

I divided the churches in the data set into three broad categories: cosmopolitan churches (22 in the data set), African Independent churches (as many as 233), and a residual category of 7 churches which in terms of their organization, Southern African embeddedness and perception by the population might be mistaken to be African Independent churches, whereas in fact they belong to international organizations. The Apostolic Faith Church, founded half a century ago in the then Southern Rhodesia by European initiative, is a case in point. Regrettably 37 churches eluded the first classification according to type, and had to be treated as missing on this variable.

                        With regard to membership the 233 African Independent churches in the list range from 20 members, for an incipient church,[5] to 10,700 for the wide-spread Zion Christian Church. Membership of the cosmopolitan churches is incompletely reflected in the data set but presumably could at a later stage be gleaned from other more or less accessible sources, e.g. the Christian Council of Botswana. The median church membership of the African Independent churches stands at 235 members, while their mean membership is 772.

                        Type and number of congregations. There is a statistically significant difference between the various types of churches as to their number of congregations within Botswana: against an average of nearly 10 congregations for the cosmopolitan churches, African Independent church on the average have between 2 and 3 congregations, and other churches just over 2.[6] Among the African Independent churches, the number of congregations ranges from 1 (the standard situation, found among 78%[7]), via 2 congregations (10%), to 68 for, again, the ZCC.

                        Membership of congregations in African Independent churches. These figures mean that the average congregation membership in the African Independent churches would stand as high as 310 members. On the basis of my participant observation in Francistown I would think that this is too generous an estimate when we interpret it in terms of actual attendance; it is likely that membership claimed in the annual returns to the registrar of societies (whence Staugård’s figures on membership derive) includes not only an active core who participates in church life on a week-to-week or even more frequent basis, but also a diffuse halo of less active members who refer to the church activities only when they specifically need the healing practices which the church is offering. But since statistics on churches of other types, and internationally, would seldom appear to be restricted to the active core this probable over-estimate need not greatly concern us.

                        Urban and rural distribution of congregations. The African Independent churches in our data set together have 300 urban congregations (of which 11 urban congregations belong to the largest church of this type, the ZCC),and 280 rural congregations (of which as many as 57 belong to the ZCC again). Considering that c. 25% of the Botswana population lives in urban settings as discussed above, this points very strongly to the urban slant in Independency in that country.

                        Presence of African Independent churches among the Botswana population. With some sleight of hand we might even stretch the data to arrive at estimates of the presence of African Independent churches among the Botswana population. The 233 churches of this type in our sample span the entire decade of the 1980s, and include churches which may have disappeared in the early 1980s as well as churches which only emerged in the late 1980s. Since there is no reason to assume that the rapid increase of Independency in Botswana has come to a halt, it is likely that more churches emerged in the 1980s than disappeared; moreover, since it takes some time before African Independent churches catch the attention of the sort of formal bureaucratic bodies from which most of our data set derives, it is most likely that a considerable number of recently emerged African Independent churches has in fact not been included in our data set. In other words, even although our aggregate collection of 233 specific churches at no moment in the 1980s represented the unique set of the churches of that type then actually in existence, the number of 233 can be considered a conservative estimate of the actual number of African Independent churches actually in operation in Botswana. Since our best estimate of the membership of each of these churches is the average value of 772 members (precisely: 772.225), we can estimate the total membership of this churches in 1985 (the middle of the entire decade spanned) at 180,000 members (233 x 772.225 = 179,928.42). For that year the total population of Botswana was estimated to be 1,131,700 (Republic of Botswana 1986: 9). The membership of the African Independent churches would be an estimated 16%. While this is a most significant number in itself, we have to take into account that very few people qualify for membership of these churches before their late teens. In 1985, the estimated Botswana population 15 years of age and above was put at 51.8% of the total population; of this more or less adult age cohort, the membership of the African Independent churches amounted to as much as 31%. Therefore, according to my estimates nearly one out of every three adults in Botswana could be counted as a member of an African Independent church. What matters with such estimates is their order of magnitude, not the precise figure. The estimate figure becomes even more impressive when we contrast it with that of a mere ten thousand adherents (not seven 6% of the present number) as mentioned by Barrett for the mid-1960s, and by that time only about 4% of the country’s population aged 15 years and older.

The urban/rural dimension in Botswana churches

Rural presence. Considering the huge expanse of the Botswana countryside, and its population’s extensive exposure to and participation in the outside world for over a century, it is to be expected that the range of number of rural congregations of the churches in our data set is considerable: its maximum lies at 61, again for ZCC. In the data set, 80 churches have one rural congregation — this often being a particular church’s only congregation. The important point however is that many churches (as many as 168) have no rural congregations at all, while only 65 churches have only rural congregations and no urban congregations.

                        Church type and number of congregations in urban and rural areas. There is a statistically significant difference between the three types of churches as to number of urban congregations,[8] as well as rural congregations.[9] In both environments cosmopolitan churches have far more congregations than the African Independents and the others, which do not greatly differ from each other.

                        Urban orientation. If we limit ourselves to the African Independent churches the relative urban bias in Botswana churches is again manifest: 55 African Independent churches have no urban congregation (while 159 have one or more), while 128 African Independent churches have no rural congregation (while only 89 have one or more). One could construct a simple scale of a church’s ‘urbanity’: the number of its urban congregations expressed as a fraction of its total number of congregations; this scale of course runs from 0 to 1, and for the African Independent churches its mean lies well above .5, notably at .66; its median lies even at 1, since 58% of the African Independent churches in the data set boast an ‘urbanity’ score of 1. For reasons of simple arithmetic, the ‘rurality’ score is the mirror-image of the ‘urbanity score. In interpreting this urban slant of the Botswana churches and particularly of the African Independent ones among them, it is important to appreciate that we are dealing with relative differences here between town and countryside — and in the light of the general discussion of Botswana above nothing else could be expected. Therefore it is little amazing that with regard to scores on these ‘urbanity’[10] and ‘rurality’ scales the three types of churches do not differ significantly from each other.[11]

bureaucratic incapsulation quantified: churches and the Registrar of Societies

Since our argument in the second part of this paper will concentrate on the Registrar of Society as the institutional locus where the interaction between the state and the African Independent churches in Botswana takes place, let us look at the information that analysis of our data set has to offer on this point.

                        Relative aloofness of churches vis-à-vis the Registrar of Societies. First an impression relating to one particular point in time: the Registrar of Societies’ list of societies for 31st March, 1990. Of the 299 churches in out data set, 13 (4%) were exempted, 181 (61%) were registered according to the 1990 list, 3 (1%) were required to give proof of their existence, 1 (0%) saw its registration cancelled, and as many as 101 (34%) do not appear at all on the 1990 list under whatever heading. In other words, out of early three hundred churches known to have existed in the 1980s, more than one third was out of the scope of the Registrar of Societies’ attention by 1990: either because they had never been registered nor exempted, or because they had been cancelled earlier on and by 1990 were supposed to be no longer in existence. For the African Independent churches alone these figures are very similar: 1 (0%) were exempted, 145 (62%) were registered according to the 1990 list, 3 (1%) were required to give proof of their existence, 1 (0%) saw its registration cancelled, and 83 (37%) do not appear at all on.

                        Registration status. Overlooking the entire period of the 1980s, we find that of the 299 churches in our data set (and with the limited information at our disposal) at least 13 (4%) were exempted, 181 (61%) were registered at some point in time and remained that way, at least 3 (1%) were required to give proof of existence, as many as 55 (18%) churches were registered and then later saw their registration cancelled, and 47 (16%) churches were never registered in the first place.

                        Registration status and type of church. A breakdown by type of church is offered by table 2:

37 missing cases

Table 2. Registration status by type of church

Table 2 shows that the exempted churches were almost exclusively found among the cosmopolitan ones; that the few churches required to give proof of existence were all African Independent ones; that virtually all churches which saw their registration cancelled were African Independent churches; and that the churches which were never registered are all African Independent ones. This suggest that with regard to bureaucratic treatment the three types of churches are significantly different; statistical analysis confirms this impression.[12] Clearly, the Societies Act is used by the state to extend its control specifically over African Independent churches, while cosmopolitan and ‘other’ churches are largely left to themselves.

                        The time dimension in registration. Registration went on at a considerable pace in the course of the years, as is clear from table 3. After an understandable clutter in the first few years after the enactment of the Societies Act, registration dropped to a slower pace in the late 1970s, to pick up again in the early 1980s and settle to roughly 10 registrations per year in the second half of that decade. Further statistical analysis[13] reveals that the three types of churches differ significantly as to year of registration: cosmopolitan churches were on the average registered in mid-1977, African Independent churches in mid-1980, and other churches in the spring of 1982.

49 missing cases (i.e. 47 church for which we have established that they have never been registered, and 2 ‘genuinely’ missing cases)

Table 3. Registration of Botswana churches per year

                                No statistical evidence of bureaucratic reluctance, on the part of the Registrar, to register African Independent churches. The percentage of African Independent churches registered (table 3) remained fairly constant through the years and reflects the 78% percent African Independent churches in the data set (and presumably a similar percentage in Botswana social reality). In other words, there is no evidence that the Registrar of Societies has undergone a change in his being prepared to register African Independent churches. However, within the category of African Independent churches there are statistically significant differences as to registration.

                        Registration status and number of congregations. When we look at our total data set of 299 churches, lumping the three types of churches together, statistical analysis reveals that there is a significant association between a church’s registration status and the number of its congregations: the exempted churches have by far the largest number of congregations, followed by the few churches which have to give proof of their existence, after which come the registered churches, those which saw their registration cancelled, and those which never cancelled, in that order.[16] Conspicuity vis-à-vis the state may constitute the underlying explanatory factor.

                        Registration status and number of urban congregations. Lumping the three types of churches together, statistical analysis reveals that there is a significant association between a church’s registration status and its number of urban congregations: the exempted churches have by far the highest score, followed by the three clustering types of registered churches, churches which have to give proof of their existence, and those which saw their registration cancelled, while those which never cancelled have the lowest number of urban congregations.[17] By and large the same relation holds between registration status and number of rural congregations.[18]

                        Urban orientation and registration status. Since exempted churches (meanly cosmopolitan ones) tend to have more urban congregations but especially more rural congregations than the other registration categories, it is clear that it is the size, rather than the urban/rural aspect, that is involved here. That is again confirmed by statistical analysis of the relationship between the ‘urbanity’ score and registration status; there is a significant relationship, but now it is the registered churches (largely the African Independent ones) which have the highest ‘urbanism’ score, followed by a cluster comprising exempted, cancelled and never-registered churches, while this time the line is closed by churches whose existence is doubted by the Registrar of Societies.[19] Of course, the ‘rurality’ score presents the mirror image of these findings.[20]

                        Cancellation of registration. The data only offer information on cancellation of registration in the 1980s; it is not clear whether such action was already taken in the 1970s, after the Societies Act had only been enacted in 1972. Of the 299 churches in the data set, 11 saw their registration cancelled in 1983, 43 between 1984 and 1990,[21] and 1 in 1990. These churches had been registered for a period ranging from 4 to 15 years, with a mean duration of 9.5 years and a median value of 9 years. In other words, churches which saw their registration cancelled appear to have had ample opportunity to consolidate themselves and live up to the requirements for continued registration; considering the costs of the registration process both on the sides of the churches (time, travelling, correspondence, lawyers) and on the side of the Registrar of Societies (time, correspondence), it is to be expected that churches are neither registered nor cancelled lightly; all the more amazing that in a decade yet as many as 55 (mainly African Independent ones met that fate.

homepage | index page Botswana state and churches | Part I | Part III | Part IV | Part V

[1]       Thus it is interesting to note that of the 56 African Independent churches from the 1981 Guide to the villages and towns of Botswana, which were ultimately included in my data set, only 22 were registered, 4 had seen their registration cancelled, and 30 had never been registered. While one appreciates the census officers’ dedication to facts, one would not have been surprised had one found a different attitude, one leading to the suppression — at least in print — of the census evidence of non-registered churches.

[2]       This is a feature even of the Registrar of Societies documents and official publications, which casts an interesting light on the legal professionalism of the functioning of that office.

[3]       This period is so short that the emergence (and/or registration) of new churches and the disappearance (and/or cancellation of registration) of older churches can only very partially account for the discrepancies between the lists. According to my analysis as below, in 1982 18 new African Independent churches were registered in Botswana, and in 1983 only 1; while only with regard to 3 African Independent churches do I have evidence as to their cancellation in 1983. However, the discrepancy between Staugård’s and Fako’s list concerns 43 churches.

[4]       Fako does not limit himself to African Independent churches but since Staugård does, only churches of that category have been included in this table.

[5]       In fact, the smallest number on record is 6 members, which however does not qualify in terms of the Botswana Societies Act: 10 is the minimum number of members for a society.

[6]       BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 65.849, DF=  2, P = 0.000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

55 missing cases

         TYPE denotes one of the variables used in the analysis; a discussion of the various variable names c.q. abbreviations appears below, in the factor analysis section of the main text.

[7]       Considering the relatively poor nature of the data available, percentages will be rounded to the nearest integer.

[8]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 23.282, DF= 2, P = 0.000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

57 missing cases

[9]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 86.948, DF= 2, P = 0.000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

54 missing cases

[10]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 1.124, DF=  2, P =  .570

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

57 missing cases

[11]           BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 1.124, DF= 2, P =  .570

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

57 missing cases

[12]              KRUSKAL-WALLIS ONE-WAY ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE FOR 299 CASES

 DEPENDENT VARIABLE IS: RIG

 GROUPING VARIABLE IS: TYPE

KRUSKAL-WALLIS TEST STATISTIC = 326.45

 PROBABILITY = .000 ASSUMING CHI-SQUARE DISTRIBUTION WITH 2 DF

37 missing cases

[13]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES, CHI-SQUARE =.940,  DF= 2,P = .625

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

79 missing cases

[14]    The Societies Act has only been in operation since 1972, which renders the data referring to before 1972 problematic.

[15]    At this stage in the analysis churches registered between 1984 and 1990 are identified by comparing the Fako (1983), Staugård (1986) and Registrar of Societies 1990 list; subsequent perusal of back volumes of the Government Gazette may yield the specific years and might also lead to a slight correction of the figure of 61 as registered in this period.

[16]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 298.847, DF= 4, P =  .000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

18 missing cases

[17]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES, CHI-SQUARE = 65.051, DF=  4, P = 0.000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

20 missing cases

[18]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 291.440, DF= 4, P =  .000

ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

17 missing cases

[19]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 7.158, DF= 4, P =  .128

20 missing cases

[20]BARTLETT TEST FOR HOMOGENEITY OF GROUP VARIANCES: CHI-SQUARE = 7.158, DF=  4, P =  .128

20 missing cases

[21]    At this stage in the analysis churches registered between 1984 and 1990 are identified by comparing the Fako (1983), Staugård (1986) and Registrar of Societies 1990 list; subsequent perusal of back volumes of the Government Gazette may yield the specific years and might also lead to a slight correction of the figure of 61 as registered in this period.

homepage | index page Botswana state and churches | Part I | Part III | Part IV | Part V

page last modified: 2000-05-17 19:53:00