Beyers Naudé

It was a Sunday morning in September 1963, in South Africa.

The Reverend Beyers Naudé climbed into the pulpit. It was his last sermon.

Before his congregation, he condemned apartheid. He said that God's authority must come before the authority of men.

Then he took off his minister's robe. And he walked out of the church.

To understand that gesture, you have to know where he came from.

Beyers Naudé was born on 10 May 1915, in Roodepoort, in the Transvaal. He was one of eight children.

His father, Jozua Naudé, was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. He had also helped found the Broederbond, an Afrikaner organization.

Beyers followed in his footsteps. He studied theology at Stellenbosch. In 1939, he became a minister. He joined the Broederbond, as its youngest member.

Everything seemed mapped out.

Then came 1960. At Sharpeville, police killed sixty-nine Black demonstrators.

After the massacre, Beyers Naudé stopped supporting his Church's political teachings. It justified apartheid with the Bible.

So he opened the Bible himself. He studied it closely, to prove that those justifications did not hold.

That same year, at Cottesloe, South African churches met with the World Council of Churches. Their resolutions refused to exclude anyone from a church because of race.

In 1963, Beyers Naudé left the Broederbond, after twenty-two years. He founded the Christian Institute and edited its journal, Pro Veritate.

His Church forced him to choose: remain a minister, or lead the Institute. He chose the Institute. He lost his status as a minister.

That was when he preached his last sermon.

He did not disown his roots. "I am an Afrikaner," he said.

But the road grew hard. In 1965, when he was welcomed as an elder in a parish, there was an uproar. That same year, the Security Police raided the Institute's offices.

In October 1977, the government banned him, along with the Institute. For seven years he lived under restrictions. Even the number of people he could be with at once was limited.

The ban was lifted in September 1984.

The following year, he succeeded Desmond Tutu at the head of the South African Council of Churches.

In 1987, he was part of a group of Afrikaners who went to meet ANC representatives in Senegal.

In 1990, the ANC sat down with the government at Groote Schuur. In its delegation was a single Afrikaner: Beyers Naudé.

In 1995, he turned eighty. Nelson Mandela paid tribute to him. He called him:

At the end of 1999, Beyers Naudé returned to the Aasvoëlkop congregation. Not in the pulpit this time. In the pews, as an ordinary worshipper.

He died on 7 September 2004, at eighty-nine. On 18 September, he was given a state funeral.

Beyers Naudé acted in the name of his Reformed Christian faith. His way of widening the circle of his own, beyond race, echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing.

His ashes were scattered in Alexandra township.

The son of a founder of the Broederbond now rests there, among those apartheid had tried to keep apart.