Islam in Soweto has grown over the past five decades into a visible and established part of the township’s religious landscape, shaped by community teaching, grassroots organisation and the work of early pioneers who laid its foundations during apartheid.
Among them is Sheikh Sayed Ali Zhange, a founding figure of the Soweto Muslim Association (SMA), which played a central role in establishing early Islamic education, coordinating community learning spaces and supporting the growth of mosques across the township.
For Zhange, the journey began in 1970 with a deeply personal awakening to Islam.
“The truth will come out. It was always hidden by the colonialists,” he reflects in an interview with One Nation Media (ONM), describing how colonial education distorted understanding of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the faith itself.
He recalls how even formal schooling contributed to this misrepresentation: “Even in school, they made Muhammad a bad person,” despite his belief that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was “a great messenger of Allah, the one who brought a change in the world.”
Curious, he followed an invitation to a mosque, an experience that changed his life. “I didn’t know it was a mosque. I thought it was the Indian religion,” he recalls.
What he witnessed there, people in prayer, standing, bowing and prostrating, was something he says he had already seen in a dream of people bowing down.
Within days, he embraced Islam.
From that moment, his focus turned to sharing the message. “Take this religion as your religion. Spread the message of Allah,” he recalls being told, a directive that would shape his life’s work in Soweto. At the same time, Soweto itself was entering one of the most defining chapters in its history.
Youth uprising
On June 16, 1976, thousands of students took to the streets in what became known as the Soweto Uprising, resisting the apartheid government’s education policies. The image of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, fatally shot during the protests, became a global symbol of youth resistance and the brutality of apartheid rule.
While schoolchildren marched against an oppressive education system, another parallel struggle for knowledge was unfolding within communities.
Zhange began teaching children in informal spaces across Soweto, building early Islamic learning circles at a time when formal religious infrastructure was limited. In a small storeroom provided by a local shop owner, he taught Arabic letters, Islamic belief and the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
What began with a few children quickly expanded. “It became more now. I didn’t know what to do,” he recalls, as numbers increased and transport became difficult to manage.
By the mid-1970s, this grassroots effort had evolved into a structured organisation. Land was secured in 1975 and, with support from Muslim donors abroad, Masjid al-Ummah was established in Soweto.
The mosque became a centre of worship, learning and community development, anchoring a growing Muslim presence in the township. Masjid al-Ummah has also faced moments of destruction and renewal.
Originally established in the 1980s, the mosque was severely damaged in 2002 in a bombing carried out by suspected right-wing extremists in the post-apartheid period.
Despite the attack, the mosque was later restored with support from the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), whose renovation work was completed in 2019.
Community leaders described the restoration as a significant moment of solidarity, allowing the mosque to once again function as a place of worship and community gathering in the heart of Soweto.
Alongside other early pioneers, Zhange helped establish the Soweto Muslim Association, which played a key role in coordinating Islamic education, supporting outreach programmes and strengthening madrasah structures across Soweto.
Over time, students from these early learning spaces went on to study Islam in countries such as India, Pakistan and Egypt, before returning to Soweto as teachers who continued to expand local education.
In the broader post-apartheid landscape, Soweto reflects both remembrance and transformation, a township shaped by resistance, but also by communities that built institutions of faith, learning and identity from within.
Today, Islam remains firmly rooted in Soweto’s social fabric, with multiple mosques serving communities across the township and organisations like the SMA continuing their foundational work.
What began with a pamphlet in 1970 grew into a movement of teaching, organisation and community building, one that expanded alongside Soweto’s own history of resistance and resilience.
And in that story, Islam remains not only a faith tradition, but a living institution shaped by the people who carried it forward.