Apartheid activist, PCUSA favorite, to face trial Alan Boesak’s bookkeeper has already received a six-year sentence

EAST LONDON, South Africa – Alan Boesak, a former Dutch Reformed Mission Church minister, 1988 dedication service preacher at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, daily preacher at the 1984 General Assembly in Phoenix, and 1996-97 "theologian in residence" at the Presbyterian Church (USA) Stony Point Conference Center, has been charged with nine counts of fraud and 21 counts of theft involving the misappropriation of funds donated to his Foundation for Peace and Justice. In a November 21 trial, Boesak’s bookkeeper, Freddie Steenkamp, 41, pleaded guilty to similar charges and implicated Boesak, whose court case will go to trial in February.

By Parker T. Williamson

According to a report published by Ecumenical News International, Steenkamp pleaded guilty before the High Court in Cape Town to five counts of fraud and one count of stealing 3.7 million rand ($770,000) from the Foundation for Peace and Justice. The money had been given to the foundation by DanChurchAid, Norwegian church charities, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Coca-Cola Foundation in Atlanta and American singer Paul Simon.

Falsified accounts

Steenkamp told the court in a written statement that he had deliberately falsified foundation accounts after making unauthorized loans to himself. He said that Alan Boesak, head of the Foundation for Peace and Justice, was his "hero and idol," and that when he observed the anti-Apartheid clergyman embezzling more than one million rand of donor funds, he felt that he could do so as well. "I believed that what Boesak was doing was right," said Steenkamp.

Steenkamp, who was sentenced to six years in prison, testified that Boesak made loans to himself and then wrote them off the books. He said that when he saw "the ease with which figures and amounts are manipulated" he decided to make unauthorized loans to himself as well.

After admitting to an adulterous relationship, Boesak stepped down from his South African pulpit in 1990 and passed on his post as president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to retiring Princeton Seminary professor Jane Dempsey Douglass. Following his departure from church leadership, Boesak became active in politics and was named ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. But when the fraud charges were filed against him he resigned his diplomatic appointment.

Spiritually strong

Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court Boesak maintained his innocence: "It won’t be an easy road," he said. "I’m spiritually strong … God is with us."