Christopher Nteta, 70, antiapartheid activist

CHRISTOPHER NTETA

Christopher Jabulane Nelson Nteta - a Methodist minister, professor, and political activist who worked to end apartheid in his native South Africa - died of heart failure April 22 in Tshwane, South Africa, while visiting family. He was 70, and lived in Middleton.

That Mr. Nteta died in the country he was unable to return to for more than 20 years as a political exile served as a fitting coda to his life and work, relatives said.

"There's some level of symmetry there that I think he would find somewhat pleasing," said his son Tatishe of Northampton.

Born in Louis Trichardt, South Africa, to a family of educators, Mr. Nteta graduated from University of Fort Hare in Eastern Cape Province, becoming an ordained minister in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa in 1961.

After graduation he founded a ministry in Pietersburg, now called Polokwane, where he met the former Glory Mosehle, and they married in 1964. During his time in Pietersburg, he began speaking out about the church's role in the system of apartheid, the legal segregation of blacks and whites, challenging religious leaders to disassociate with it.

"That made him almost a real target, in terms of the South African police, and the other ministers who were afraid to question what was going on," Glory Nteta said.

In 1966, he accepted a scholarship to attend Harvard University Divinity School, and left South Africa for Cambridge. He earned his master's of theology in 1971.

At Harvard, he became involved in the antiapartheid movement, joining several groups and councils and cofounding the Greater Boston Branch of the African National Congress, serving as its chairman for several years.

"He was a very focused and sort of intense person. He had very strong beliefs, which really showed in his political activities," his wife said.

As part of his fight against apartheid, Mr. Nteta urged corporations and organizations to divest their financial holdings in South Africa, including Cambridge-based Polaroid Corp., where a series of protests eventually led the company to cut all its South African business ties.

He "was very, very thoughtful and very purposeful about the changes that needed to be made in society and the relevance of his religious role and his religious training in that," said Willard R. Johnson, professor emeritus of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who knew Mr. Nteta through Boston's antiapartheid movement.

Mr. Nteta was officially exiled from South Africa in 1970. "For a while, he was a man with no country," said his daughter, Aggie of Silver Spring, Md. But he became a naturalized US citizen in 1990.

The apartheid state was dismantled in the early 1990s, and a new constitution was adopted in 1993 that went into effect the following year. In 1994, Mr. Nteta was able to participate in a free South African election, voting from Boston. He also traveled with his daughter back to his native land for the first time since his exile.

"He had always believed that one day there would be freedom in South Africa, and if it wasn't for his generation, then for the next generation," his wife said.

At a conference there, Mr. Nteta warned South Africans not to forget the past struggles of apartheid, his daughter said.

"He hadn't been on the soil for 28 years, but at that conference, he was the person to bring this voice, to be this reality, to people who might have been caught in this political correctness honeymoon phase," his daughter said.

Mr. Nteta began teaching in 1970 at the former Boston State College, which later merged into the University of Massachusetts at Boston, becoming a full-time professor at the school's College of Public and Community Service in 1991, teaching history and civil rights classes. He taught as an adjunct at several other colleges, most recently Boston College, with course topics ranging from the civil rights movement to South African history.

Asgedet Stefanos, an associate professor at UMass-Boston, reading in part from a reflection on Mr. Nteta that she read at his memorial service, said he was loved and respected by students, was an unwavering advocate for black students, and had an "exquisite sensitivity to those who were injured by social justice and a deep respect for their unrecognized strengths and capacities."

"He was fearless in speaking up, naming the unnamed," she said. "Chris's activism was profoundly political and moral. He never let himself off the hook."

His first responsibility, though, was always to his family, whether he was taking his children to a wrestling match at the Boston Garden or caring for his grandchild. His daughter said he was approachable and entertaining, always making people laugh and, with his wife, always looking after people in the South African community.

He was "just engaging, so many roles wrapped up into one: father, revolutionist, professor, so many different things that you never got tired of them," his daughter said.

The reason for his visit to South Africa last month, a memorial service for his siblings, had been an opportunity to see old friends and express love for his extended family, his son Tatishe said.

"The physical removal from the country does not impose on you distance in other respects," Mr. Nteta told the Globe in 1986. "In many other respects, you are even closer."

In addition to his wife, son and daughter, he leaves another son, Sebole of Lynn; a brother, Phopi of Gaborone, Botswana; and two grandchildren.

Services have been held.