Religious organizations could openly oppose apartheid when radical political groups were banned

Evidence

Curiously enough, religious organizations played a key role, both in helping to force the dissolution of apartheid and in the transforming period of the 1990s. Religious organizations were able to work in the country in ways more radical political groups such as the ANC and the South African Communist Party were not after their bannings in the early 1960s. So deeply religious by conviction, Afrikaners were challenged to treat those equally committed to the language of the Lord with a modicum of respect even where they found their scriptural interpretation, religious conviction, and earthly resolve fundamentally at odds with their own. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1567

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader study of how religion provides a protected speech register under authoritarian states — parallels the civil rights movement’s Black churches.