The Rev. Nico Smith dies at 81; white South African pastor who
fought apartheid  Smith and his wife were the first whites
officially permitted to live in a black township in the '80s. He
left the Dutch Reformed Church because it refused to oppose
racial separation.  June 21, 2010  The Rev. Nico Smith, a white
pastor who challenged South Africa's apartheid system by moving
with his wife into a black township in the 1980s, has died. He
was 81.  Smith collapsed Saturday while attending a friend's
birthday party in Pretoria and died before he could be taken to
a hospital, said Marita Laubscher, the eldest of his three
daughters.  Smith was one of a few clerics in the 1980s who left
the white Dutch Reformed Church — the largest denomination among
the Afrikaners who then held political power — because of the
church's refusal to actively oppose apartheid.  Smith had been a
missionary in the far north of South Africa and later a theology
professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He began preaching
in Mamelodi, the