Beyers Naude, the Afrikaner theologian who turned his back on his church's belief that apartheid in South Africa was justified to become one of the system's most outspoken critics, has died at the age of 89.
Naude died in the early morning hours yesterday at a retirement village in Johannesburg just days after he was released from hospital in a frail condition having suffered an infection, his family said.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela yesterday hailed Naude as a brave man who had stood up against apartheid at a time when it was unpopular for white people to do so.
Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naude spent 20 years preaching in the Dutch Reformed Church that strongly enforced the philosophy of racial segregation. The plight of black people under apartheid and the escalation of state sanctioned violence in black residential townships like Sharpeville in the early 1960s, however, forced Naude to reconsider his beliefs.
During a sermon in September 1963, he denounced apartheid and condemned his church for providing the theological justification for the policy.
"I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to retain my integrity as a human being and as a Christian, I had to stick clearly, unequivocally and fearlessly in whom I believed in, what I believed in and why I believed," he later explained. Naude was immediately ostracized from the Afrikaner community and labeled a traitor.
In 1972 he gave a sermon at Westminister Abbey in London, traveled through Europe and the US and began speaking out in earnest against the system of racial segregation that even prohibited blacks and whites from attending church together.
In 1977 authorities banned the theologian, restricting his movements and activities.
Naude later became the head of the South African Council of Churches and forged strong friendships with banned African liberation movement leaders.
After the fall of apartheid in 1994, Naude was reinstated as a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, and in Johannesburg a busy freeway and an inner city square were named after him.
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