"[4] He helped to found[5] the Broederbond (Afrikaans, "Brotherhood" or "League of Brothers"),[1] the powerful Afrikaner Calvinist men's secret society that played a dominant role in South Africa under apartheid.
The Broederbond became especially synonymous with the Afrikaner-dominated National Party that won power in 1948 and implemented the racial segregation policy of apartheid.
[7] Naudé was ordained in 1939 as a minister in the South African Dutch Reformed Church and joined the Broederbond as its youngest member.
[6] The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 (during which the South African police killed 69 black demonstrators protesting against restrictions on their freedom of movement) ended his support for his church's political teachings.
"[9] In the three decades after his resignation from the denomination, Naudé's vocal support for racial reconciliation and equal rights led to upheavals in the Dutch Reformed Church.
[1][10] The Cottesloe Consultation's resolutions rejected race as the basis of exclusion from churches, and affirmed the right of all people to own land and have a say in how they are governed.
In 1963 Naudé founded the Christian Institute of Southern Africa (CI), an ecumenical organization with the aim of fostering reconciliation through interracial dialogue, research, and publications.
[4] Stoically anticipating the enormous pressure by the Afrikaner political and church establishment that was to come, he told his wife: "We must prepare for ten years in the wilderness.
[11] In 1967 Naudé and Geyser won a libel case against conservative Pretoria Professor Adriaan Pont, who had called them communists.
[3] In 1970 Naudé was among a few white South African Christian leaders "who openly called for understanding of the WCC decision" to provide financial support for liberation movements in southern Africa.
[3] In 1973 the state withdrew his passport,[8] but temporarily returned it in 1974 so that he could travel to the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana USA, to receive the Reinhold Niebuhr Award for justice and peace.
[3] As the CI increasingly incorporated black African radicals like Steve Biko, Naudé had to bear the brunt of harassment by the state security police.
[1] From 1977 to 1984 the South African government "banned" Naudé – a form of house arrest with severe restrictions on his movements and interactions.
[5] Other leaders of the Christian Institute suffered the same fate, including Brian Brown, Cedric Mayson, and Peter Randall.
Although under constant police surveillance, Naudé managed to secretly help anti-apartheid resistors move around and out of South Africa by providing them with old vehicles that he had repaired himself.
[16] After his term at the South African Council of Churches ended, Naudé continued to serve a number of anti-apartheid and development organizations, including the Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, the Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation, Kagiso Trust, and the Editorial Board of Challenge Magazine.
[17] Naudé received fourteen honorary doctorates during his lifetime[6] and in 1993 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the American Friends Service Committee.
Naudé was called "one of the true Christian prophets of our time" by the acting secretary of the World Council of Churches, Georges Lemopoulos.
[12] Naudé's comments after the 1976 Soweto uprising presciently anticipated an outflow of South Africans in the post-apartheid era.