President Thabo Mbeki says people like the late Dr Beyers Naude who daringly challenged apartheid policies had a greatest contribution in ensuring South Africa became a truly non-racial country.

Hatred, fear and bitterness would have been prominent features in South Africa if it were not for likes of Dr Naude, the President told mourners in Johannesburg yesterday.

Delivering his speech at the funeral in Johannesburg yesterday, President Mbeki said Oom Bey, as he was known, made remarkable sacrifices for the country and, thus, would forever occupy his rightful place among the heroes and the heroines of the country.

The President said the late anti-apartheid cleric made it possible for South Africans of all races to live and walk together.

"Today we are free. Today we can attend to our problems and challenges with no fear that a flood of blood will drown our country.

"Dr Naude handed down the lesson to all of us who together are his people without regard to race, colour, gender and age that we must abandon the false interest which in the long run cannot but destroy each and every one of us", he explained.

President Mbeki further said South Africa had a great need for people with the vision, conviction and courage of Dr Naude and people ought to reach out together for the real power of brotherhood, sisterhood and a whole community.

Dr Naude died last week. He will be cremated tomorrow and his ashes scattered in Alexander where he had taken refuge after being ostracised by the white community for speaking out against apartheid.

"He was determined that even death should not separate him from these, the poor and the downtrodden, whose suffering and pain had caused him to act in a manner that obliged others to categorise and treat him as a traitor," said President Mbeki.

Fellow cleric Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said Oom Bey gave the credibility of Christianity back to black people and observed that: "the more the apartheid system attempted to discredit him, the more his stature grew."

Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Land and Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza and Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni also attended the funeral.

In Alexander, hundreds converged at the Altrek Stadium to pay their last respects to the man they had adopted as their own.

Wheelchair-bound for the past five years, Dr Naud