Beyers Naude’ ‘alive and kicking in Alex’

Beyers Naude’s eldest son, Johann, has expressed the family’s gratitude to the people of Alexandra for accepting and welcoming his father during the difficult and painful years of apartheid.

The son of the former staunch opponent of apartheid, who dedicated his life towards dismantling what his son described as the ‘horrendous policy of racial segregation’, was speaking during a church service to mark the 100th birthday of his father at the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa in Alexandra.

Dr Christian Frederick Beyers Naude, affectionately known as Oom Bey, was ordained as a church minister in Alexandra in 1980 when he left the NG Kerk in the same year due to his beliefs and convictions against the system of apartheid.

He worked closely with the community of Alexandra as the righthand man of the late Rev Dr Sam Palo Buti and went on to found the Christian Institute, a non-racial ecumenical organisation that challenged the established traditional church while providing humanitarian relief to the victims of apartheid.

The service and book launch for the well-decorated Oom Bey, who was born on 10 May 1915 and died on 7 September 2004, was organised in partnership with the Beyers Naude Centre for Public Theology at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town.

“I would like to convey the family’s gratitude to the people of Alexandra for accepting and welcoming my father at his time of greatest need for love and comfort when his own Afrikaaner people ostracised him for his beliefs and convictions.

“I know my father is alive and kicking in the streets of Alexandra, where his ashes were scattered as per his wish after being housed for several months at Linda Twala’s funeral parlour,” Johann said.

Johann was one of the many recipients of the copies of the book on the conversations on the working life of Oom Bey entitled Cultivating the seeds of Hope: Conversations on the life of Beyers Naude.