More than 90 years of developing young leaders

A history of courage and leadership

The Junior Chamber movement arrived in South Africa in 1932, when the Cape Town Junior Chamber of Commerce was started. Johannesburg followed in 1933 and Durban in 1954. In 1957, Junior Chamber South Africa became the first national organisation from the African continent to affiliate with JCI. At its peak it grew to around 2,000 members in more than 60 chapters.

In 1973, at the height of apartheid, members opened membership to all races and applied to the government for permission to establish multi-racial chapters. Permission was granted in 1974, making JCI South Africa the first organisation of its kind to be allowed to do so. In 1990, the General Assembly adopted a declaration rejecting apartheid and affirming that South Africa should be a non-racial society.

South Africans have held almost every appointed and elected office in JCI, from Secretary General (Neville Mackay, 1963–1967) to Executive Vice President and Treasurer. In 1977, Johannesburg hosted the first JCI World Congress ever held on African soil, and in 2021 JCI South Africa hosted the World Congress again, held fully virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the dawn of democracy in 1994, JCI South Africa has worked towards a non-racial, non-sexist, free and prosperous South Africa. We have hosted the JCI Africa and the Middle East Conference in 1996, 2007, 2016 and 2025, helped establish JCI Mozambique and JCI Lesotho, and in 2024 were recognised by JCI as a 100% Efficient National Organisation.