Beyers Naude

Beyers Naud , an Afrikaner cleric who became one of the anti-apartheid movement ' s most powerful voices after spending half his life using the Bible to justify the racist system, died early Tuesday, a family spokesman said. He was 89.

Mr. Naud had grown increasingly frail over the past six months and was taken to hospital last week with circulation problems blamed on his age. He died at a retirement village in Johannesburg, said family spokesman and longtime friend Carl Niehaus.

South Africa ' s former white rulers denounced Mr. Naud as a traitor and tried to prevent him from spreading his message of racial tolerance. His church marginalized him and many whites ostracized him.

But with the fall of apartheid a decade ago, Mr. Naud went from outcast to hero, and then-President Nelson Mandela praised the " Afrikaner prophet " as a living spring of hope for racial reconciliation.

" 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, " Mandela said in a speech in 1995, marking Mr. Naud ' s 80th birthday.

Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naud was born in 1915 to a leading Afrikaner nationalist cleric who fought the British in the Boer War and helped found the Broederbond, or " Brotherhood, " a secret society of Afrikaner leaders that eventually became synonymous with the apartheid government.

Mr. Naud followed his father ' s path, getting a degree in theology from the University of Stellenbosch, a center of Afrikaner nationalism, and becoming the youngest member of the Broederbond.

As a cleric in South Africa ' s Dutch Reformed Church, Mr. Naud spent years as an unquestioning spiritual leader for Afrikaners the descendants of Dutch and French settlers and their deeply religious National Party.

The church, which created biblical justifications for South Africa ' s brutal racism, was often called " the National Party at prayer, " and Mr. Naud was seen as a rising religious and political star.

But after attending mixed-race church services in the 1950s, he began to have doubts about his church ' s doctrine.

The 1960 Sharpeville massacres, in which government troops killed 69 black demonstrators, sent Mr. Naud into an intense bout of soul searching and Bible study ending with his development of an alternative church theology that condemned racism.

When, with Mr. Naud ' s support, the World Council of Churches issued a statement rejecting apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd led a protest that ended with the South African church withdrawing from the council. Mr. Naud refused to change his position.

" It was the beginning of loneliness and isolation, something that I would experience again and again in the years ahead, " Mr. Naud once said.

He later helped found the Christian Institute, an organization that worked to promote reconciliation through interfaith dialogue.

In 1977, authorities " banned " Mr. Naud for five years, a punishment that severely restricted his movement and his ability to meet with people.

Mr. Naud was later ordained in the African Reformed Church and succeeded Archbishop Desmond Tutu as head of the South African Council of Churches.

Mr. Naud said he was never bitter toward those in the apartheid government who harassed him. His only real regret was waiting so long to fight for his nation ' s oppressed.

" I ' m grateful I managed to help some people at least, " he said.

Mr. Naud is survived by his wife, Ilse, and four children.