Nico Smith

Nico Smith (1929 – 19 June 2010) was a South African Afrikaner minister and prominent opponent of apartheid. Smith was a professor of theology at the University of Stellenbosch, a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood) organization, and a minister of the apartheid-supporting Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). However, he abandoned his upper-class lifestyle to live with the impoverished and segregated blacks of Mamelodi, a suburb of Pretoria. From Mamelodi, he worked to support the black community and oppose apartheid. Smith joined the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA), the separate branch of the Dutch Reformed Church for non-whites, due to the DRC's refusal to oppose apartheid.

Smith grew up in the rural reaches of the Orange Free State, and was raised by his father with conventional Afrikaner views on the inferiority of coloureds and blacks at the time. He "took to the streets" to celebrate the 1948 election in which the pro-apartheid National Party won the most seats (despite losing the popular vote). Smith spent seven years at the University of Pretoria where he earned his theology degree. He was ordained a minister of the apartheid-supporting Dutch Reformed Church. Smith spent a 7-year period doing missionary work in the black homeland of Venda, where he saw the gap between white and black in South African society up close. He then spent three years performing staff work at the Dutch Reformed Church headquarters in Pretoria. While in Pretoria he received an invitation to join the prestigious Afrikaner Broederbond, which included many of the elites of Afrikaner society and government. Smith would later say of his 10-year membership of the Brotherhood that he was "thankful that God gave me an opportunity to discover what was going on in the hearts and minds of Afrikaners." Smith continued his professional ascent with the help of the Brotherhood, and he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Stellenbosch.

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