The final words of a dying mother to her Parish Priest, Fr. Pacificus Tait OFM, were the seed from which St. Anthony’s Home has grown. Fr. Tait was a Franciscan Missionary from Manchester, England who came to South Africa in 1960 and was Parish Priest at Dannhauser in 1963 when a dying mother asked him to take care of her two children. Fr. Tait was true to his promise and took care of Nancy and Ernest until he died in 1969.

 
Before his death Fr. Tait had enlisted the kind care of Dr. and Mrs. Khoza who lived at Kalabash and welcomed orphaned and vulnerable children into their home. By 1973, 22 children were living with the Khoza family! As the number of children grew the Fransciscan Friars offered the Khozas their disused seminary at Pomeroy and so the children moved there. Dr. Khoza died in 1978 and Mrs. Khoza cared for the children until her own death in 1985. The death of this wonderful couple not only brought up the question of the care of the children left parentless, but also alerted the Church Authorities to the great need for a Home for orphaned, abandoned and neglected children.
 
The solution was found in the Franciscan Minoresses of Melton Mowbray who committed themselves to establishing St. Anthony’s Home at its current site in Blaauwbosch Catholic Mission, near Newcastle. In the interim period the children were cared for at Amakhasi, in St. Antoine’s Old Age Home. St. Anthony’s building was completed in December 1987 and the children and Sisters arrived at their new Home just a few weeks before Christmas.
 
On the 20th October 1989 St. Anthony’s was officially recognised as a Place of Safety by the KwaZulu-Natal authorities and so subsidies for the care of each child began.
In 2003 the Franciscan Minoresses withdrew from the Home and the first secular Director was appointed, Mbongiseni Petrus Nzuza. Under his direction St. Anthony’s Home has continued to grow, always recognising the need to continue our development and transform to accommodate the ever changing needs of the children and communities we support.