Pat Sidley
THE old boys’ club of the church’s anti-apartheid movement had a celebration this week — to acknowledge Beyers Naude’s 80th birthday.
At the celebration, which took place near Sharpeville, the World Council of Churches, South African Council of Churches and All Africa Council of Churches indulged what the human memory does best — remembering the good times.
“There’s lots of hugging here,” remarked Naude, releasing himself from the clutches of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
It had been shortly after the massacre at Sharpeville, 35 years ago this week, that South African churches gathered under the auspices of the World Council of Churches at Cottesloe to discuss the thelogical implications of race and apartheid.
All were agreed at that conference that racism and the Gospel were incompatible. Among the white Dutch Reformed Church delegation was Naude, then a Broederbond member and leading light in Afrikaner church circles.
After then Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd “got to” the delegation of the DRC, it reneged on its principled stand, “all except Beyers Naude”, said Tutu from the podium.
“The story of Beyers Naude is the story of our struggle and ultimately of our liberation,” he said, digressing briefly from a stream of jokes.
Tutu recalled the years of suffering Naude had endured. “Beyers became a leper in the Afrikaner community.”
Reminding the party-goers of what it meant to be banned, he described it as a “twilight existence … imprisoned at your own expense. You are not allowed to attend a gathering … You speak to only one person at a time. You can’t attend even the funeral of your child. You couldn’t go on holiday, couldn’t go on a picnic.”
None of this was lost on Naude who, speaking to his wife Ilse in front of his friends, thanked her for the years of support in which she found herself unable to enjoy normal life without his participation.
The evening had been the culmination of a conference co- sponsored by the World Council of Churches and the South African Council of Churches to assess the role of the church in South Africa and its relationship to the continent and the broader church community of the world.
The list of speakers and guests included an array dating back to the days of the Christian Institute where fellow traveller Reverend Theo Kotze had begun that journey with him — and was there to talk about it. So was his former assistant, now Gauteng safety and security minister, Jesse Duarte. She recalled the efforts Naude had made to officiate at the wedding of the young prisoner Carl Niehaus (present as well).
She described the intensity of those years, and Naude’s persistence, in a few words: “It wasn’t a battle, it was a war.”
Several guests had spent more than their fair share suffering for their fight against apartheid. This included Francois Bill who had been detained during the state of emergency.