Still Resisting: South African Apartheid & American Racism with Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak

Sponsor(s): Brazos Press “The Anti-Greed Gospel”

Episode Description: In this episode, Ekemini and Christina are honored to be joined by Dr. Allan Boesak, the South African Anti-Apartheid Theologian. We discuss the points of convergence and divergence between apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow in the U.S. South. The ways in which the vestiges of both racial oppressive systems continue to oppress our people in the United States and South Africa. Put on your thinking caps because we ‘bout to learn today! 

Learn more about Dr. Allan Boesak: 

Prof. Allan Aubrey Boesak studied Theology at the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church at the University of the Western Cape, was ordained in Immanuel Dutch Reformed Mission Church in Paarl in 1968 at age 22. In 1970 he started advanced studies at the Theological University at Kampen in the Netherlands, and was awarded the Doctor’s degree in Theology in June 1976. A week after the Soweto Uprisings, he returned to South Africa to become Chaplain to students at the University of the Western Cape, Peninsula Technicon, and Bellville Teachers College, and then minister at Bellville Dutch Reformed Mission Church.

Dr. Boesak served the church in various ecumenical positions, including as Moderator of his church, Senior Vice President of the South African Council of Churches, and President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, representing over 70 million Reformed Christians in 150 countries. Under his leadership the WARC declared apartheid a sin and a heresy and suspended the two white Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa for their moral and theological justification of the apartheid system. Over the years, Dr. Boesak became a world-renowned liberation theologian and a coveted speaker at global ecumenical events. In October 2017 Yale University Divinity School hosted him as the Lyman Beecher Lecturer, its most prestigious lectureship series.

Dr. Boesak’s involvement in public life and South Africa’s freedom struggle began in 1976 with his leading role in resistance politics in South Africa. In 1983 he called for the formation of the United Democratic Front which would grow into the largest, nonviolent, non-racial anti-apartheid formation in the history of the struggle. A fervent believer in direct, militant, nonviolent action, he became its most visible leader at home and abroad. He worked with President Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Rev. Frank Chikane, Rev Beyers Naudé and a whole array of African and world leaders to end apartheid. Prof. Boesak is recipient of fourteen honorary Doctor’s degrees and more than twenty international awards. Among those are the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Award, the Champion for Justice Award from the Indiana Centre for Middle East Peace, the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta Georgia USA, among many others. 

Allan Boesak is an award-winning author of 24 books. His most recent publications include Pharaohs on Both Sides of the Blood-red Waters, Prophetic Critique on Empire - Resistance, Justice and the Power of the Hopeful Sizwe (2017); Children of the Waters of Meribah - Black Liberation Theology, the Miriamic Tradition, and the Challenges of 21st Century Empire, (2019), Selfless Revolutionaries: Biko, Black Consciousness, Black Theology, and a Global Ethic of Solidarity and Resistance (2021), and, co-authored with Rev Judge Wendell Griffen, Parables, Politics, and Prophetic Faith, Hope and Perseverance in Times of Peril, (2023). Published in 2024 is his most recent work, The Fire, the River, and the Scorched Earth Between: Fifty Years of Black Liberation Theology through the Lens of Allan Aubrey Boesak a 4-Volume set containing the texts of a series of public lectures on Black Liberation Theology, essays, and sermons. Prof Boesak has taught