The purpose of this book is to gather in a single narrative the rather disparate stories of Dominican friars in Southern Africa over the past four centuries. Dominicans from Portugal and Portuguese India were present in South-East Africa from 1577 to 1835. Patrick Raymond Griffith, an Irish Dominican, became the first resident bishop in South Africa in 1837. A Dominican mission was established in 1917 with the arrival of a group of English friars. A second group arrived from the Netherlands in 1932. The aim is to provide a social history of the Dominicans in Southern Africa, that is, a history that deals specifically with the social and cultural factors of historical development. The Dominicans ministered in a political, social and cultural context which impacted on their apostolic activities and, in turn, was affected by them. The book's terminus ad quem is 1990, when the National Party opened a process of political negotiation, thus ending more than forty years of apartheid rule.

Dominicans have been in sub-Sahara Africa since the fifteenth century. Today the Order has communities in a dozen African countries. The story is recounted here by many voices, the majority from Africa itself while the rest have long associations with that continent. In this book only the Dominican friars are taken into account. The nuns and apostolic sisters are mentioned in passing. No doubt another book will be necessary to tell the full story.