The outline of the South African case (the unbanning of the ANC and other movements in February 1990, the first democratic multiracial elections in April 1994) are well known and will be presupposed here. South Africa has perhaps the strongest national tradition in the study of religion and politics in the Third World. But one of the darkest corners is ‘what positions the wide array of … evangelicals have taken’ (Hale 1993: 41), and this despite the fact that ‘South African history has been profoundly shaped by evangelical Christianity’ (de Gruchy, in Hale 1993: 45). Indeed, it could be argued that this is the most strongly evangelical country in the continents we are examining.

Evangelicals ‘brought to South Africa a wide array of legacies [in politics, from] Calvinist theocracy … through the Lutheran notion of the “two kingdoms” to a British nonconformist insistence on the separation of church and state’ (Hale 1993: 55). This is especially important when contrasted with Latin America where, although representatives of all these traditions arrived, the common condition for many years of tiny Protestant minorities in Catholic societies did not fully allow the distinctive traditions to flower.

A good place to start is with the composition of the Protestant field. Hendriks (1995) surveys the census results from 1911 to 1991 and alerts us to where an inquiry about evangelicals in politics needs to be directed.

In 1991 nearly 75 per cent of the population are Christians.