Theo Kotze

Theo Kotze
Born	(1920-05-19)19 May 1920 Knysna, Cape Province, Union of South Africa
Died	5 July 2003(2003-07-05) (aged 83) Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Occupations	Methodist minister, theologian, anti-apartheid activist and lecturer
Organization(s)	Methodist Church of Southern Africa Christian Institute of Southern Africa
Known for	Leadership of the Christian Institute's Cape office and Christian opposition to apartheid
Spouse	Helen Clegg ​ (m. 1941)​
Children	5
Awards	Order of the Baobab in Silver (2008, posthumous)

Theo Kotze (19 May 1920 – 5 July 2003) was a South African Methodist minister, theologian and anti-apartheid activist. After serving Methodist congregations in Natal and Cape Town, he became chaplain to political prisoners on Robben Island in 1966. His chaplaincy was curtailed after prison authorities discovered that he was using prayers, hymns, sermons and pastoral conversations to convey information between prisoners and their families.

Kotze joined the Christian Institute of Southern Africa at its establishment in 1963. At the request of its national director, Beyers Naudé, he left the Sea Point Methodist Church in 1968 and became the Institute's regional director for the Cape and Namibia. He developed its Cape office into an interracial meeting place, educational centre and source of practical support for political detainees, banned people and their families. The office published information about detention, torture and state repression and supported the White Conscientisation Programme associated with the Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society.

When the South African government outlawed the Christian Institute on 19 October 1977, Kotze was placed under a five-year banning order. In July 1978 he escaped from South Africa in the boot of a diplomatic vehicle and entered exile. He subsequently worked as a minister, lecturer and anti-apartheid advocate in the Netherlands, the United States and Britain. Kotze and his wife returned to South Africa in 1993. In 2008 he was posthumously appointed a Grand Counsellor of the Order of the Baobab in Silver for his contribution to the struggle against apartheid.

Early life and family

Kotze was born at the Heads in Knysna on 19 May 1920. He came from an Afrikaner family. His father was a lawyer who had been imprisoned for supporting the Afrikaner rebellion of 1914, although he was less closely identified with the Dutch Reformed Church than other members of the family.

Kotze enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand to study architecture but did not complete the degree. He subsequently worked as a paymaster at the Simmer and Jack gold mine on the Witwatersrand.

During his early twenties he met Helen Clegg, a Methodist choir member and the daughter of an English Methodist minister. Through Helen and her family, Kotze became involved in the Methodist Church and came into contact with black Methodist ministers. He was particularly influenced by Seth Mokitimi, who later became the first black president of the Methodist Conference of Southern Africa.

Theo and Helen married in 1941 and had five children: Derek, Michael, David, Jennifer and Stephen. Helen later became closely involved in the work of the Christian Institute and was a member of the Black Sash. Their partnership was subsequently the subject of Jean Knighton-Fitt's biography Beyond Fear.

Methodist ministry

Kotze entered theological training in 1948 and began Methodist ministry in 1950. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1953.

His early parish appointments included congregations on the Natal coast in communities dominated economically by white-owned sugar estates. His ministry brought him into contact with the contrast between white landholding and black poverty and reinforced the influence of his friendships with black Methodist ministers.

The Sharpeville massacre of March 1960 marked a decisive change in Kotze's political and theological outlook. He increasingly interpreted apartheid as a system fundamentally opposed to the social implications of the Christian gospel rather than as a collection of individual injustices capable of limited reform.

Kotze later became minister of the Sea Point Methodist Church in Cape Town. He opened the congregation's activities to people across the racial divisions maintained by apartheid and preached publicly against racial discrimination. The congregation grew sufficiently large that major services were held in the nearby Adelphi Cinema, with reported attendances of between 1,000 and 2,000 people. The church also established a youth recreation and counselling centre and published a congregational newspaper.

His political preaching caused opposition from some white congregants and church members who believed that ministers should avoid political questions. In 1967 Kotze received a Christian Fellowship Trust scholarship that enabled him to visit Britain and continental Europe and establish relationships with international church and ecumenical figures.

Robben Island chaplaincy

Kotze served as a Methodist chaplain on Robben Island during 1966. There he ministered to political prisoners including Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe.

Kotze used the limited opportunities provided by religious services and pastoral visits to convey information about prisoners' families and events outside the prison. Messages could be incorporated into prayers, hymns and sermons or passed through private pastoral conversations and confession. When the prison authorities became aware of these practices, his chaplaincy was terminated.

Mandela later recalled Kotze as a Methodist chaplain whom the government considered excessively political.

Kotze formed a particularly close relationship with Sobukwe, a fellow Methodist. After Sobukwe was released from Robben Island and restricted to Kimberley, Kotze continued to visit and minister to him until Sobukwe's death in 1978.

Christian Institute

Cape regional director

Kotze became a member of the Christian Institute when it was established in 1963. In 1968, at Naudé's request, he left the Sea Point congregation to establish and lead the Institute's Cape office. By 1969 he was serving formally as regional director with responsibility for the Cape and Namibia and was later described as a deputy national director of the Institute.

The Cape office initially operated in central Cape Town before moving to 1 Long Street in Mowbray, opposite major rail and bus connections. The move was financed through a “Space to Keep Pace” campaign. Kotze envisaged the premises as a “church without walls”: an accessible centre where people of different races, churches, religions and political outlooks could meet without having to satisfy denominational or ideological conditions.

The central room was used for shared interracial meals and gatherings known as the Agapé. Domestic workers, clergy, political activists, students, diplomats, academics and international visitors could meet around the same table. Kotze and theologian Margaret Nash helped develop an Agapé liturgy expressing fellowship across racial, denominational and social boundaries.

Cochrane later argued that the Cape office was distinguished not only by its political opposition to apartheid but by the personal relationships it created. Kotze sought to combine resistance to injustice with pastoral care, friendship and practical support.

Programmes and publications

The Cape office organised public meetings, seminars, vigils, educational workshops and Bible studies. It raised money for community and political-support initiatives and distributed information that was otherwise difficult to obtain because of censorship and restrictions on the press.

Kotze and the Cape office supported people subjected to banning orders, detention and political prosecution. He frequently attended court proceedings and visited the families of prisoners and detainees. The theologian Charles Villa-Vicencio later recalled that few people appearing on political charges in the Cape courts failed to see Kotze present as a source of pastoral support.

The office housed the Cape component of the SPRO-CAS II White Conscientisation Programme. Its staff included former National Union of South African Students president Neville Curtis, human-rights activist Dot Cleminshaw, writer Ivor Shapiro, June Pym and James Cochrane. The programme sought to confront white South Africans with their participation in and responsibility for apartheid rather than treating them as detached observers of racial oppression.

The Cape office also published Bandwagon, an occasional journal recording detentions, banning orders, disappearances and political court cases. The publication assembled information that was usually dispersed across newspaper reports and legal proceedings.

In 1977 Kotze, Anglican priest David Russell and Dot Cleminshaw were principal contributors to the Christian Institute report Torture in South Africa. Based on court records and authenticated press reports, it documented allegations of torture and abuse by the security police. The report was prepared secretly, printed in Athlone and distributed to newspapers, churches, embassies and members of Parliament before the authorities prohibited its circulation.

Harassment and arrest

The work of Kotze and the Cape office attracted sustained surveillance and harassment from the security police and white right-wing groups. The offices and meeting places were subjected to threatening telephone calls, smear campaigns, attempted arson and vandalism. Shots were fired into the Kotze family home on one occasion, although nobody was injured.

A right-wing group known as Scorpio targeted Christian Institute activities in Cape Town. After a meeting held by the Institute, a church hall in Rondebosch was destroyed by fire. Christian Institute members gathered evidence concerning the organisation and its apparent relationships with police officers, but no prosecutions followed.

In 1972, protests followed the expulsion of student leader Abram Onkgopotse Tiro and the Student Representative Council from the University of the North. Police broke up supporting demonstrations at St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, and Kotze was among those arrested.

The government subsequently investigated the Christian Institute through the Schlebusch Commission. In 1975 it designated the Institute an “affected organisation”, preventing it from receiving money from outside South Africa and placing its programmes under increasing financial pressure.

Banning and exile

On 19 October 1977 the government declared the Christian Institute and a number of Black Consciousness organisations unlawful. Kotze was served with a banning order under the Suppression of Communism Act. The order was to operate until October 1982.

Kotze was confined to the Wynberg magisterial district, prohibited from attending gatherings and restricted from communicating with more than one person at a time. His house was raided and searched, and his ability to preach, conduct meetings or continue ordinary pastoral activity was effectively removed.

The Christian Institute's leaders decided that Kotze should leave South Africa and continue its international work. He was initially reluctant to go into exile. On 14 July 1978 he was concealed in the boot of a diplomatic vehicle and taken across the border into Botswana. There he received United Nations travel documentation before leaving for Europe.

Theo and Helen Kotze first lived in the Netherlands and spent time in the United States before settling in Britain in 1980. They preached, lectured and addressed church and anti-apartheid audiences in Europe and North America, seeking international support for South African political prisoners and opponents of apartheid.

Kotze joined the Department of Mission at the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham and also served as a Methodist minister in the city. His South African banning order was renewed in 1982 for a further three years, and South African publications continued to be prohibited from quoting him.

The Kotzes returned permanently to Cape Town in 1993 after approximately fifteen years in exile.

Theology and approach

Kotze understood opposition to apartheid as an implication of Christian discipleship rather than as an optional political activity. The command to love one's neighbour required the church to oppose institutions that assigned rights, resources and social standing according to race.

His theology shared themes with the theology of the cross and the theology of hope associated with German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, whom Kotze later came to know personally. He interpreted Christian faith through solidarity with people experiencing suffering, repression and exclusion rather than through the preservation of ecclesiastical privilege.

The concept of a “church without walls” summarised his approach to Christian community. Kotze did not understand ecumenism solely as cooperation among established denominations. The Cape office welcomed Christians from different traditions, people belonging to other religions and those who did not hold a religious faith but shared a commitment to justice and human dignity.

The Agapé meals gave physical expression to this theology. Under conditions in which apartheid regulated where people could live, travel, eat and gather, a shared interracial table became both an act of ordinary hospitality and a challenge to the organisation of South African society.

Kotze's pastoral approach also emphasised humour and personal relationships. Former colleagues recalled that he resisted allowing the dangers of political work to remove warmth, friendship and enjoyment from the community surrounding the Christian Institute.

Later life and death

After returning to South Africa, Theo and Helen lived in the Cape Town suburb of Rosebank. Kotze experienced a lengthy illness accompanied by serious memory loss during his final years.

He died peacefully in Cape Town during the early morning of 5 July 2003, aged 83. A memorial service was held at Rosebank Methodist Church on 15 July.

Helen Kotze remained in Cape Town until her death in 2013. She was survived by the couple's five children, fifteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Recognition and legacy

Kotze is remembered as one of the senior Christian Institute figures who transformed ecumenical criticism of apartheid into practical accompaniment of detainees, banned people, political defendants and their families.

Under his leadership, the Christian Institute's Cape office became a meeting place for religious leaders, students, activists, diplomats, community workers and people excluded from conventional white institutions. Cochrane described it as an institution whose small formal membership was disproportionate to its influence on successive generations of anti-apartheid activists.

Kotze's Robben Island ministry also became part of the history of religious resistance within the prison system. By using the limited freedoms permitted to a chaplain to maintain prisoners' connections with the outside world, he challenged the isolation imposed on political prisoners.

His life and partnership with Helen were documented in Knighton-Fitt's 2003 biography Beyond Fear: In South Africa's Darkest Days—Theo and Helen Kotze. An extensive oral interview with the couple recorded in 1980 is preserved by the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.

In 2008 the South African government posthumously appointed Kotze a Grand Counsellor of the Order of the Baobab in Silver. The official citation recognised his “excellent contribution to the struggle against the injustices of the apartheid system”.

Selected writings and documents

• (1971). “The Christian Institute—What It Is and What It Does.” The Cape Times, 7 April.
• (1973). Address to the Progressive Party Lunch Time Forum, 2 October.
• (1977). With Dot Cleminshaw, David Russell and others. Torture in South Africa. Cape Town: Christian Institute of Southern Africa.

See also

• Beyers Naudé
• Christian Institute of Southern Africa
• Robert Sobukwe
• Robben Island
• Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society
• List of people subject to banning orders under apartheid in South Africa

Further reading

• Cochrane, James R. (2004). “Agapé: Theo Kotzé and the Cape Office of the Christian Institute.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa. 118: 53–68.
• Knighton-Fitt, Jean (2003). Beyond Fear: In South Africa's Darkest Days—Theo and Helen Kotze. Cape Town: Pretext. ISBN 978-0-9584202-7-3.
• Walshe, Peter (1983). Church versus State in South Africa: The Case of the Christian Institute. London: C. Hurst. ISBN 978-0-905838-82-3.

External links

• Theo Kotze at South African History Online
• Interview with Theo and Helen Kotze, Studs Terkel Radio Archive
• National Orders awards, 2008, South African Government