Cape Town - Beyers Naude may have been prime minister, or a much-decorated icon of Afrikanerdom, but he chose a lonely path of opposition to apartheid.
The Reverend Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naude was born on May 10, 1915 at Roodepoort in the-then Transvaal (now Gauteng) - just five years after the establishment of the Union of South Africa - to Jozua Francois, a dominee, and Ada Naude.
Beyers was named by his father after a general - Christiaan Frederick Beyers - of the Anglo Boer War of 1899 to 1902.
In 1921 the Naude family moved to Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape, where he matriculated in 1931 at the Afrikaans Hoer Volkskool.
Both he and his brother followed in their father's footsteps by reading theology at the University of Stellenbosch. He also graduated with an MA in languages.
Beyers became a co-minister to the Wellington congregation and in 1939 became the youngest member of the Broederbond. His father had been one of its founders.
He had the right pedigree to move on to greater things and by 1961, at the age of 46, he became acting moderator of the Southern Transvaal Regional Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, then viewed as the-then ruling National Party at prayer.
His later election as moderator - according to Hennie Serfontein in an essay on his life in They Shaped our Century - came as a surprise to him and as a shock to the Broederbond-controlled leadership of the DR Church as he had been publicly critical of apartheid on Christian grounds.
Turning point
Although initially attached to the philosophy of the National Party - apartheid - but in those days referred to by the ruling elite as "separate development", the massacre of 1960 at Sharpeville - in which 69 black South Africans were killed while peacefully demonstrating against the pass laws - was a turning point in his life.
After the Cottesloe Conference of 1960 organised by the World Council of Churches and the Cape and Transvaal Synods of the DR Church that same year, he became increasingly critical of apartheid.
Beyers went on to be a founder of the Christian Institute, an ecumenical non-racial organisation to unite all Christians. He also became editor of its publication Pro Veritate.
This did not make him popular in Broederbond or NG Church circles. He was forced to resign as moderator in October 1963 and left his congregation at Aasvoëlkop, Northcliff, Johannesburg. His farewell sermon was on the theme: "We must show greater loyalty to God than to man."
Then Broederbond chief and head of the South African Broadcasting Corporation Piet Meyer sat poe-faced in the congregation, according to Serfontein.
Icon of resistance
He was to be given a rough ride by the authorities for the next 25 years. Shelagh Gastrow in Who's Who of South Africa reports that in 1973 he refused to give evidence to the Schlebusch Commission, a parliamentary commission which was established by the BJ Vorster government to probe the Christian Institute, the Institute of Race Relations, the University Christian Movement and the National Union of South African students, which were viewed by the government as radical.
In the outside world, he was developing a reputation as an icon of resistance to apartheid and was awarded the Reinhold Niebuhr Award "for steadfast and self-sacrificing services in South Africa for justice and peace" in Chicago in 1974.
His passport was confiscated on his return. Meanwhile in October 1975 he was fined 50 rand or one month imprisonment for refusing to testify before the Schlebusch Commission. He was arrested on October 28, 1976 for refusing to pay the fine. He was jailed for one night but the dominee of his church - Dr Jan van Rooyen - paid the fine.
'An outcast among Afrikaners'
In October 1977 he was banned for five years. The ban was extended in 1982 for three years.
Serfontein reported that he was deeply influenced by the life of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, who opposed Hitler. Bonhoeffer was hanged on Hitler's instruction three weeks before the end of the Second World War
On his 80th birthday in 1995, then President Nelson Mandela described him as a prophet. "Beyers Naude became an outcast amongst the Afrikaners, amongst many whites and amongst the church that he loved. Such is the price that prophets are required to pay. Standing in the tradition of great Afrikaners and patriots like Braam Fischer, Betty du Toit and others, his life is a shining beacon to all South Africans - both black and white."
"It demonstrates what it means to rise above race, to be a true South African. If someone asks me what kind of a person a New South African should be, I will say: Take a look at Beyers and his wife Ilse," said Mandela.
"I want this evening, on behalf of South Africans, to thank Beyers and Ilse Naude for their sacrifice. And I want to use this opportunity to call on all Christians, not least members of the NG Kerk, to take note of the positive contribution of this Afrikaner prophet. The time of conflict in our land is over. We must embrace one another on the basis of justice and nurture the extended family to which we all belong."
Beyers received many honours over the years including an honorary doctorate of Law from the University of Witwatersrand in 1974 and an honorary D Litt degree from the University of Cape Town in 1983. A Johannesburg street was renamed in his honour. It was previously named after the first National Party Prime Minister DF Malan.
- I-Net Bridge (News24)