wfn.org | Allan Boesak's Trial on 30 Charges Set for August

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

20-March-1997 
97132 
 
        Allan Boesak's Trial on 30 Charges Set for August 
 
                          by Noel Bruyns 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
EAST LONDON, South Africa--Allan Boesak, one of South Africa's most 
prominent clergymen in the struggle against apartheid, appeared briefly in 
the Cape Town Magistrate's Court March 17 to face 21 counts of theft and 
nine of fraud. 
 
     The court appearance follows allegations of misappropriation of donor 
funds from DanChurchAid, [a Danish church humanitarian assistance 
organization,] earmarked for victims of apartheid. Boesak was head of the 
now defunct Foundation for Peace and Justice through which the DanChurchAid 
money was meant to be channeled. 
 
     The charges follow protracted investigations and international 
publicity about the case. 
 
     After Boesak's court appearance, South Africa's justice minister, 
Dullah Omar, said that DanChurchAid had asked the Office for Serious 
Economic Offenses (OSEO), a police unit, to investigate the charges. The 
OSEO handed its report and all documentation to the attorney general, who 
decided that Boesak should be charged.  (Last week Dullah Omar was among 
the many people who gave Boesak an enthusiastic welcome when he returned to 
South Africa from the United States to face the charges.) 
 
     Boesak, who has consistently protested his innocence on all the 
charges,  was not asked to plead at yesterday's hearing. The trial was set 
for Aug. 4 in the Cape High Court.   He was released on his own 
recognizance. 
 
     "It won't be an easy road. I'm spiritually strong ... God is with us," 
he told supporters outside the Magistrate's Court. 
 
     Boesak, a former leader of the African National Congress in the 
Western Cape and ambassador designate to the United Nations in Geneva, 
entered the dock with Freddie Steenkamp, the former bookkeeper of the 
Foundation for Peace and Justice. 
 
     Boesak withdrew from his diplomatic appointment when the fraud 
allegations first made headlines. He went to the U.S. with his family, 
withdrew from active politics and took up academic posts first in New York 
State and later at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, 
California. 
 
     Among the conditions for his release pending the high court appearance 
are that he must hand in his passport and may not leave the country without 
the attorney general's permission.  He must report also to the police every 
Sunday. 
 
     [Boesak, a former minister in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 
South Africa, has a long association with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). 
He was the daily preacher at the 1984 General Assembly in Phoenix, Ariz., 
and preached at the dedication service for the Presbyterian Center in 
Louisville in 1988.  He was a theologian-in-residence at Stony Point 
Conference Center in New York last year.] 

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