Prayer Times in South Africa

Muslims and mosques in South Africa

South Africa's Muslims are a small but historic minority. The 2016 Community Survey counted about 892,685 Muslims, 1.6% of the population, and later reports put the share at roughly 2%. About 95% are Sunni and the rest Shia or other, and Shia Muslims are found particularly in Cape Town. Islam arrived with the Dutch colony: free Muslim labourers called Mardyckers came in 1658, and exiled political prisoners and enslaved people from the Dutch East Indies and India followed. Sheikh Yusuf of Makassar was exiled to the Cape in 1694, and his group at Zandvleit formed the first cohesive Muslim community in the country.

A second stream came from British India. Indentured labourers brought to the sugar fields of Natal from the 1860s included roughly 7% to 10% Muslims, and by 1911 a total of 152,641 Indians had reached the colony, followed by traders. After 1994 an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 African Muslim immigrants arrived, along with South Asian economic migrants, most of them in cities such as Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria. Each stream brought its own school of law: the Hanafi school is followed by most of the Indian community, the Shafi'i school by the Cape Malay, Konkani Indian and East African communities and the Western Cape in general, and the Maliki school by a growing group of West and North African migrants.

The old mosques tell the story. The Auwal Mosque in Cape Town, built in 1794, is the oldest in South Africa, and the Palm Tree Mosque building dates from 1788 and has been a mosque since 1807. The Jumuah Musjid in Grey Street, Durban, built in 1881, was the first mosque in Natal, and the Nizamiye Mosque in Midrand, Gauteng, completed in 2012, shows the newer, larger style. Religious bodies include the Muslim Judicial Council, founded in 1945, which provides halaal certification, the Jamiat ul-Ulama of the Transvaal (1923) and the Sunni Jamiatul Ulama (1979).

For prayer times, South Africa is in the southern hemisphere, so the longest days fall in December and January and the shortest in June, the reverse of Europe. The country does not use daylight saving time and keeps one zone, South African Standard Time (UTC+2), so Durban and Johannesburg share a clock while Cape Town's sun rises and sets later by the clock in summer, because it lies further west. This site shows the Hanafi Asr time first for most of the country and the Standard (Shafi'i) time first in the Western Cape, in line with the local schools. Moon sighting is done locally and by councils, so neighbouring communities can begin Ramadan or Eid on different days, and each mosque sets its own congregation times.

Sources, checked 2026-10: Wikipedia: Islam in South Africa; Wikipedia: Auwal Mosque.