Boesak will visit Wellington

Press, 14 October 1989, Page 3

Boesak will visit Wellington

PA Wellington A South African anti-apartheid leader, the Rev. Dr Allan Boesak, will visit Wellington in February. The Rev. John Murray, a Presbyterian minister, said Dr Boesak had accepted an invitation by St Andrew’s on The Terrace to give lectures and take part in celebrating 150 years of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. Dr Boesak, who is president of the .Geneva-based World Alliance of Reformed Churches, is expected to attend the Commonwealth summit conference in Malaysia this month.

Dr Boesak is the son of a schoolteacher and worked as a farm labourer to help support his family. At 14 he became a sexton in the local church of the N.G.K., the coloured branch of South Africa’s mainstream Dutch Reformed Church. It was generally supportive of the establishment — but Dr Boesak changed that. After his return to South Africa in 1976 from the United States and the Netherlands where he studied for his doctorate, he became a central figure in an alliance of radical

churchmen dedicated to turning the N.G.K. into an anti-apartheid institution. Later, after he was elected president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Dr Boesak was largely responsible for persuading the N.G.K. Mission Church to declare apartheid a heresy. He fulfilled a similar function in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. Mr Murray, minister at St Andrew’s, said dates had yet to be finalised for Dr Boesak’s visit. He expected Dr Boesak to meet Government and Church leaders.