From Our Archives (jw.org / Watchtower Online Library), “United in a Divided Country”
“On the other hand, Jehovah’s Witnesses obeyed the law and did not get involved in protests or attempts to change the government. … Under apartheid, racial groups were segregated into their respective residential areas. Therefore, congregation territories were usually composed of people of the same race.”
The article describes how Witnesses in South Africa worked within apartheid law: a white speaker barred from a black area addressed a circuit assembly from the far side of a farm fence; congregation territories followed the racial residential map; the organisation declined to take part in protest. It records a multiracial convention in 1993 and growth from 4,831 publishers in 1948 to 58,729 in 1994.
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Provenance and verification note for From Our Archives (jw.org / Watchtower Online Library), United in a Divided Country
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026, read in full from the document’s own HTML and re-checked independently. The first sentence quoted stands under the sub-heading “Dealing With Division-Fueled Dangers” and the second under “Witnessing in Segregated Territories”, in that order; an earlier version of this record gave them in the reverse order. The article is part of the undated “From Our Archives” series and carries the publication code “foa article 6”; it mentions a 2021 figure, so it was published no earlier than 2021. Following the ledger’s convention for undated official web pages, the access date is recorded in the date field. The 2007 Yearbook is cited by the article itself for further detail.
Notes. The organisation’s own account of how its congregations operated under a legally segregated system, published on its current website.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-foa-south-africa-apartheid