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.
While Smith still held to typical white South African views of the time, the seeds for his later change of position were planted in the 1960s and '70s.
[1] Smith began aggressively challenging apartheid in his classes, which drew the ire of his superiors who wanted him to "Teach theory, not conclusions.
"[1] Smith joined public protests against the government's bulldozing of squatter shacks in Cape Town, and he was called before a church commission to justify himself.
Smith decided to resign his professorship and leave the DRC to join its separate colored branch, the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa.
"[3] The swap was attacked as "designed to promote Marxist doctrine",[4] as nearly any opposition to apartheid was called a communist plot to destabilize the country.
[2] Smith's South African model of the in-home meal and story sharing earned the 1989 Beyond War Award,[6] and inspired the sustained Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group in the United States.
In Smith's view, too much nostalgia for the old days of special "cultural rights" risked a similar disaster; white Afrikaners should not complain about the black-dominated government in racial terms or ask for an end to affirmative action, but instead be loyal citizens of South Africa.
African National Congress spokesman Jackson Mthembu paid tribute to him as a "gallant fighter, and [we] will forever treasure the contribution he made in the struggle for liberation and the building of our democracy.
"[5] In 2012, the city of Pretoria renamed 27 streets in its central business district to better reflect the diversity of modern South Africa.