It's a history extending back more than 40 years, but an era not so very different than our own. Instead of hot wars in the Middle East, it was cold war across the US, Europe and Asia. Instead of impending terrorist strikes, it was saber-rattling with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

So quite in addition to all other reasons to form a new church and bring the help Scientology brings everywhere, LRH envisioned a special role for this nation as a point of safety to yet salvage man no matter the potential devastation at the hands of a madman.

That's why he descended on Johannesburg, in 1960, to take the helm of a fledgling Church. But if those were his reasons for embarking to South Africa, it took on a whole new meaning when he arrived. For what he found was a land representing both all that is good in this world, and all that is bad.

In terms of the bad, a single word said it all, apartheid and the suppression of virtually every indigenous people, perpetrated by the same psychiatric ideologies that laid 6 million to rest under the banner of eugenics during the second World War.

But beneath that surface, that obvious suppression he found something far more significant: An unbroken tradition of spiritualism extending back to the very dawn of man.

And, like all else LRH confronted, it was no ivory tower observation. For while he befriended Ministers and had tea with their wives, he also entered the townships, attended tribal celebrations, and even shared their beer. And what he found was an indomitable human spirit that, although suppressed, no one could extinguish.

Which is to say, he discovered it was not for nothing that Africa was called the "cradle of civilization," possessing a spirit that, if sparked, could burn forth throughout the world. And that's the substance behind LRH's prediction that:

"From Southern Africa will spring the next great civilization on this planet."