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A South African minister is to set up an Afrikaans-language church in Auckland, saying he wants to cater for the many South Africans who have migrated to New Zealand.
Reverend Marthinus Riekert is quitting the United States to move to Auckland, saying he could not ignore the appeals from a community of South African nationals who had relocated there.
Mr Riekert joined the Congregational Church of Middlebury, in Vermont, as pastor in 2005.
According to Statistics New Zealand over 21,000 people here speak Afrikaans.
Challenge Weekly religious newspaper said Afrikaans was now the second most common language after English in East Coast Bays churches on Auckland's North Shore.
The growing cluster of Afrikaans speakers has resulted in East Coast Bays library becoming a part-time Afrikaans language nest for pre-schoolers.
They are among the thousands of South Africans to have left their homeland to escape violent crime.
Mr Riekert said he and his family were attracted to New Zealand by its healthcare system, which he said could provide affordable services to his extended family.
Those services were increasingly unavailable in South Africa and unaffordable in the United States, Mr Riekert said.
- NZPA
