Beyers Naudé

Christiaan Frederick Beyers Naudé (10 May 1915 – 7 September 2004) was a South African cleric, theologian and the leading Afrikaner anti-apartheid activist. He was known simply as Beyers Naudé, or more colloquially, Oom Bey (Afrikaans, Uncle Bey).

Family background and early life

One of eight children, Beyers Naudé was born to Jozua François Naudé and Adriana Johanna Naude (nee) van Huysteen in Roodepoort, Transvaal (now Gauteng). The progenitor of the Naudé name was a French Huguenot refugee named Jacques Naudé who arrived in the Cape in 1718. The Naudé surname is one of numerous French surnames that retained their original spelling in South Africa. Beyers Naudé was named for General Christiaan Frederick Beyers, under whom his father had served as a soldier and unofficial pastor during the second Anglo-Boer War.

Jozua Naudé, an Afrikaner cleric, "was convinced that the British would never leave." He helped found and was the first chairperson of the Broederbond (Afrikaans, "Brotherhood" or "League of Brothers"), the powerful Afrikaner men's secret society that played a dominant role in apartheid South Africa. The Broederbond became especially synonymous with the Afrikaner-dominated National Party that won power in 1948 and implemented the racial segregation policy of apartheid. The elder Naudé also helped produce the earliest translations of the Bible into Afrikaans.