Dr Allan Boesak is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric, politician and anti-apartheid activist. In 1985, along with Winnie Mandela and Beyers Naudé, he won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, given to an individual or group whose courageous activism is at the heart of the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights movement.

Boesak was sentenced to prison for fraud in 1999 but was subsequently granted an official pardon and reinstated as a cleric in late 2004. He is best known for championing same-sex marriages in South Africa.

Dr Allan Boesak's profile summary and bio

How old is Dr Allan Boesak?

Dr Allan Boesak (aged 77 as of 2023) was born on 23 February 1946 in Kakamas, Northern Cape, South Africa. Boesak’s father, a schoolteacher, died when he was six.

At 14, he became a sexton in the separate Coloured sector of the local Nederduitse Gereformeerde Sending-Kerk.

Regarding his education, Dr Allan attended Bellville Theological Seminary. In the early 1970s, he studied at theological institutions in Kampen, Holland and New York, earning a PhD in 1975.

Is Dr Allan Boesak married?

In 1991, Boesak exchanged nuptials with journalist and television personality Elna Botha in the St-Stephens Church in Cape Town. The duo has enjoyed marital bliss for over three decades. However, Allan was previously married to Dorothy Rose Martin from 1969 to 1991.

The theologian is blessed with six kids: four daughters, Andrea, Sarah-Len, Belen and Pulani, and two sons, Lieneker and Allan Jr.

Professional career

Dr Allan gained notoriety during the 1980s as an opponent and critic of the National Party’s policies and played a major anti-apartheid activist role as a patron of the United Democratic Front. In 1991, he was elected chairman of the Western Cape region of the African National Congress (ANC).

In 1986, Boesak invoked the anti-apartheid Belhar Confession, which criticised all forms of discrimination, to say that the church should allow same-sex marriages and appoint gay clergy. In December 2008, he left ANC and joined the Congress of the People Party.

The same month, Allan called out Thabo Mbeki for failing as the Southern African Development Community’s official mediator to heed the churches’ call for peace-keeping force.

In June 2013, the Christian Theological Seminary and Butler University in Indiana appointed him the Desmond Tutu Professor for Peace, Global Justice and Studies. As an author, Boesak has written several books and publications. They include:

• Dare We Speak Of Hope?: Searching for a Language of Life in Faith and Politics
• The Tenderness of Conscience: African
• Call for an End to Unjust Rule
• Kairos, Crisis and Global Apartheid
• Children of the Waters of Meribah
• Comfort and Protest: Reflections
• Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism
• If This Is Treason, I Am Guilty
• Finger of God
• Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power
• Running with horses
• Call for an End to Unjust Rule
• Selfless Revolutionaries

How much is Dr Allan Boesak’s net worth?

Various sources pen Boesak’s net worth at R7 million in 2023. He has amassed this wealth from his career as a Dutch Reformed Church cleric, politician, author and anti-apartheid activist.

Dr Allan Boesak’s profiles

The Northern Cape native is not active on social media. He does not have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.

Dr Allan Boesak is widely recognised for staging a war against apartheid. On several occasions, he has called out politicians and the church in a bid to bring change to South African society.

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