The City of Tshwane will honour the late theologian and pastor Dr Nico Smith with a civic funeral. Smith defied his traditional apartheid-era Afrikaans upbringing by voluntarily living in a black township between 1985 and 1989. Smith and his wife Ellen moved to Mamelodi to be closer to his black congregation.
Smith had been raised by his parents to see black folk not as people but “as implements” (his own words in a 1985 interview with the New York Times). Smith was later ordained by the Dutch Reformed Church which quoted scriptural justifications for apartheid and became of member of the secretive and elite Afrikaaner fellowship - the Broederbond. However, it was a 1963 meeting with Karl Barth, the famous German theologian which changed his thinking. Smith testified that Barth challenged him with the following words: ‘Will you be free to preach the Gospel even if the government in your country tells you that you are preaching against the whole system? That made a deep impression on me.”
Smith said that he knew that he needed to step out and confront the injustices present in South Africa. “I knew I had to make a choice,” he said. “I would have to decide to teach my theology but not apply it, or apply it and take the consequences.”
Smith resigned from the Broederbond, and began working against apartheid. His work culminated in the period 1985-1989 where he was at the forefront of the fight against apartheid. Smith routinely demanded inquiries into the killings of anti-apartheid activists, while in 1988 he organized 170 whites to move in with black families in Mamelodi and 35 blacks to live in the homes of whites in Pretoria’s suburbs.
Upon hearing news of his death, the ANC prepared a statement which said that "We will also remember him as a stalwart of our congress movement, a fearless fighter who sacrificed his well-being and forsook his privileged white status, in terms of the then apartheid racial design of the South African society, to join hands and lead the struggle for the emancipation of black people."
The funeral will be held on Thursday at Melodi ya Tshwane on the corner of Bosman and Vermeulen streets. Mourners will be able to view the body between 9am and 10am, followed by a service. Smith died of a heart attack on Monday.