By Zanele Makola
On Easter Sunday, 20 April, the International Pentecostal Holiness Church (IPHC) married more than 1,500 couples in a mass wedding, under the leadership of Comforter Michael Sandlana, in Kanana City, near Heidelberg, Gauteng. This record number of married couples is believed to significantly outnumber the mass wedding that took place over the same period in 2023, when 400 couples tied the knot.
The highlight of this year’s mass wedding was that it was hosted for the first time in “The Dome” — the largest congregational dome in the Southern Hemisphere, with a capacity of 60,000.
The IPHC’s long-standing tradition continues as thousands of couples are welcomed into holy matrimony on one special day. The church hosts mass weddings three times a year, but this particular event is noteworthy, with the largest number of couples participating since the church’s founding in 1962.
One of the officiating priests, Vusi Ndala, said this year’s mass wedding was unique. “What made this year’s mass wedding unique is that for the first time in the history of the church, we have more than 3,000 individuals getting married in one city at once. So they are going to be blessed into holy matrimony all at the same time. This is historic, it has never happened before, and we would want to imagine that it is also a world record. There has never been such a mass wedding,” he explained.
A distinctive feature of this year’s mass wedding was the inclusion of polygamous unions — a custom rooted in African culture and supported by the church.
“It is a practice of the church to welcome polygamy. We do not only celebrate it, but we embrace it. So, as you saw, some couples or some men were marrying more than two or more than three wives. Some of them already have three wives and can add on as many as they want, as long as the man has the capacity to support the brides he has married,” he added.
Priest Nicodemus Morabe told local and international media that mass weddings are a traditional church ritual, characterised by polygamous unions. He went on to say that in such a large congregation, a groom’s existing wives play an important role in welcoming the new bride into the family.
