Naudé, Beyers (1915-2004), was a South African Afrikaner minister and activist against apartheid (racial segregation). He founded the Christian Institute, which sought to unite all churches and reconcile Black people and white people in South Africa.
Naudé was born on May 23, 1915, in Roodeport (now part of Johannesburg), South Africa. He graduated from the Stellenbosch University School of Theology in 1939. He was an orthodox Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) minister and promoter of Afrikaner nationalism. In 1960, Naudé began to campaign against apartheid after the massacre at Sharpeville (now part of Vereeniging), in which 69 Black people were killed, and was harassed by the authorities throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. Naudé eventually left the DRC in 1980 to join the Black African Reformed Church. In 1974, with the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, he received the Reinhold Niebuhr Award for promoting peace in South Africa. The University of Notre Dame bestows the Reinhold Niebuhr Award yearly to the person “whose life and writings promote or exemplify the area of social justice in modern life.” From 1985 to 1987, Naudé served as secretary general of the South African Council of Churches. He died on Sept. 7, 2004.
