Jan Smuts
From Freepedia
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM (May 24, 1870 – September 11, 1950) was a prominent South African statesman and general. He was Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948. He was also a lawyer and an intellectual.
As Prime Minister, he opposed a majority of Afrikaners that wished to continue and further the de facto Apartheid of the inter-war years. After the Second World War, he established and supported the Fagan Commission, which advocated the complete abandonment of all segregation in South Africa. However, Smuts lost a general election before he could implement the suggestion, and died, just as de jure Apartheid was being implemented.
He led commandos in the Second Boer War for the Transvaal. Later, he led the armies of South Africa against Germany, capturing Namibia and commanding the British Army in East Africa. He became a Field Marshal in the British Army in 1940, and served in the Imperial War Cabinet under Winston Churchill.
Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was in the establishment of the League of Nations, the idea for which is usually credited to Woodrow Wilson, but the implementation of which was guided by Smuts. He later urged the formation of a new international organisation for peace: the United Nations. He sought to redefine the relationship between the United Kingdom and her colonies, by establishing the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 2004 he was named by voters in a poll held by the South African Broadcasting Corporation as one of the top ten Greatest South Africans of all time. The final positions of the top ten were to be decided by a second round of voting, but the programme was taken off the air due to political controversy, and Nelson Mandela was given the number one spot based on the first round of voting. In the first round, Jan Smuts came sixth.
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Youth
Childhood
Jan Christiaan Smuts was born into a wealthy Afrikaner family on a farm called Bovenplaats, near Riebeeck West, in the Cape Colony. His father was a Dutchman by ancestry, whilst his mother was of Huguenot descent. At a young age, Jan's family moved from the Bovenplaats farm to one farther north, called Stone Fountain.
Jan was a sickly child, quiet and reserved. He had little interest in the operations of the farm, thus invoking his father's displeasure. Upon his father's instruction to Jan to make something of himself, he went to school at age 12, in nearby Riebeek West. Although originally too shy to study, Jan eventually came to love reading. At home, Jan's family spoke only Afrikaans, but the English that Jan learnt at school allowed him to read from a much wider range of subjects. He excelled in his studies, and soon surpassed his classmates, who had started school at an earlier age. However, his dedication to reading, and his disdain for recreation, made him no friends.
Jan was ordered by many parties, including his father, the headmaster, and a doctor, to read less; his family feared that he would not develop without inter-personal or practical skills, and so locked away all of Jan's books. However, Jan found ways of finding new books, often resorting to stealing them from the school. In an attempt to channel Jan's academic streak, the headmaster entered him for the entrance exam for Victoria College, a prominent Afrikaans college in Stellenbosch. He passed, and joined Victoria College in 1886.
Victoria College
At Victoria College, Jan faced similar problems to those that he faced at school. He was reclusive and addicted to his studies. Without social outlet, he buried himself in his books. He taught himself High Dutch. He immersed himself in German and in the works of the German romantics, whilst learning Ancient Greek, so that he could study the classics.
Smuts wrote extensively for the college magazine, on the major political issues confronting South Africa. He attacked the practices of slavery and of segregation, and expounded the virtues of the Bible and the idea of European Providence. He led a class on Bible study for African men, seeing it as his duty to 'civilise' them with the Word of God.
In Stellenbosch, he met Isie Krige, with whom he fell in love. She adored him, and revered him for his unparalleled intellect. He was happy with having any female acquaintance, especially someone who gave him self-confidence.
Meanwhile, the Smuts family farm had fallen upon hard times, and Jan's family desperately needed more hands working the land at Stone Fountain. However, since Jan was frail and lacked any farming skills, his father recognised that the only profession that Jan could take up in the area was the clergy. Jan refused to be boxed in. Although a keen student of the Bible, by the time of his graduation, he was no longer as devoted to religion as he once was. Thus, he put together all his money, borrowed heavily from his tutors, bade farewell to his love, and moved to the United Kingdom.
Cambridge
Jan went to study at Christ's College, Cambridge, a bastion of academia at the heart of the British Empire. However, Jan detested university. Still lacking social skills, isolated by a different upbringing, and older than the majority of students, he struggled to fit in. He saw the average Cambridge undergraduate as being immature and wasteful. Consequently, he kept himself to himself, once more.
Despite his timidity, Jan excelled at law. In the final examinations, he finished top of the class. His professor said that Smuts was the best student ever to study law at Cambridge, and a slew of academic awards and accolades affirmed his tutor's belief. Smuts was admitted to the Middle Temple at the age of 24, and was offered a professorship at Christ's (which would have made him amongst the youngest ever appointed). Homesick, he turned the offer down, and returned to South Africa before he could be called to the Bar.
Climbing the Ladder
Return to South Africa
Smuts returned to South Africa to much acclaim. News of his achievements in Europe had reached Cape Town, and he was feted local academics as an example of South African intellectual agility. Despite the plaudits, Smuts did not excel as he was expected to. He practised as a barrister, but his abrasive manner and shyness won him no friends amongst clients or jurists.
Without work in law, he sought it elsewhere. The most notable of his occupations was as a freelance journalist, writing in Dutch or in English. He wrote on a range of subjects, from trekking to literature, and from South African politics to his other preoccupation, Walt Whitman, on whom he had written a hitherto published book at Cambridge. Eventually, he found a niche, writing for the influential Cape Times.
As his involvement at the Cape Times increased, so too did his involvement in the political intrigue of South Africa, forming his political views for later years. The concept of a unified South African state within the British Empire had many proponents amongst abolitionists, Anglophiles, and expansionists. New-found mineral wealth from the diamond and gold mines of the Transvaal made expansion and unification an economic viability, and captured the imaginations of some of the more powerful men in the Cape Colony. Smuts was one such man.
Cecil Rhodes
Inspired by the vision of South African unity, Jan Smuts joined the Cape branch of the Afrikaner Bond. He was deeply committed to its leaders, including Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr. Smuts held no sway in such great affairs. Fortunately, Hofmeyr knew Smuts' father, Jacobus, as a staunch supporter. Upon Hofmeyr's recommendation, Cecil John Rhodes' company, De Beers, offered Jan Smuts a job as a legal advisor. In this capacity, he helped further both Rhodes' commercial interests and his own political interests. Given a voice by his new role, he delivered numerous speeches in defence of Rhodes. He was much criticised by many newspapers, who thought there to be a great malevolence about Rhodes' ambitions in the independent republics.
Rhodes was indeed secretly plotting to overthrow the Transvaal government, replacing it with a client state. In 1895-6, Rhodes orchestrated the Jameson Raid, in coordination with Uitlanders in the Transvaal imder the leadership of Leander Starr Jameson. Whereas Rhodes planned in secret, the Uitlanders talked openly of the end of Paul Kruger's government. Thus, by the time the attack was launched, the Transvaal government was prepared. What followed was a fiasco, as disputes with Jameson and the Uitlanders, debates on the use of force, and abysmal planning turned the raid into an unmitigated disaster.
To Johannesburg
Afrikaners in the republics and the Cape Colony were outraged, including Smuts and the Afrikaner Bond. But, whereas Hofmeyr and the Bond could simply censure Rhodes and take a new stance, Smuts could do nothing to ease the shame or repair his reputation and tattered career. He had hero-worshipped Rhodes, was in his employment, and had spoken openly of Rhodes' good nature. He slipped away from Cape life, back to Riebeek West and the family farm. The years had still not turned Smuts into a farmer, and he was forced to make a decision about his future direction. He knew he couldn't return to Cape Town, so toured the Transvaal. In August 1896, Smuts shut up shop in Cape Town, rescinded his British nationality, and moved to the boom town of Johannesburg.
Despite previous attraction, Smuts found Johannesburg to be his own personal hell. At the time, it was little more than a massive mining camp, populated by men that Smuts considered to be nought but drunken gamblers. He set up a law practice in the town, but it was a miserable failure: worse, even, than his practice in Cape Town. His old manners and disdain for all vices won him no friends in Johannesburg, where few were as influenced by modern British liberalism as they were in the Cape. Without business, he left Johannesburg for Pretoria, and resorted to his old mainstays, politics and journalism.
A New Direction
Whereas before the Jameson Raid, Smuts was pro-Rhodes and pro-British, he knew that he could find neither audience nor sympathy in the harsh world of the Transvaal. His own instincts, betrayed by Rhodes, also contributed to a detachment from all that had gone before. Hence, out of instinct and necessity, Smuts swung from one extreme to the other: from Cecil Rhodes to Paul Kruger. He furiously spat anti-British bile in the Afrikaans press, condemning all those opposed to the Transvaal's ageing President as irrevocably treacherous. For the next two years, Smuts zigzagged across South Africa, preaching anti-British rhetoric the likes of which the country had never seen.
On one issue, though, Smuts found himself at loggerheads with Kruger. Whereas Smuts saw great promise in the Afrikaner youth, Kruger saw nothing but disappointment. He surrounded himself with fellow veterans of Afrikaner politics, whilst simultaneously using the Transvaal's unparalleled wealth to import European-born Dutchmen (Hollanders) to do government jobs in the republic. Smuts was outraged, as this contradicted his idea of African separation from the Old World. He believed that, if South Africa was ever to be free of foreign intentions, it had to reinvent itself in its own, fresh, identity. To this end, he established the Young Afrikander Movement, promoting this principle.
Crisis and Opportunity
Smuts concept of a free South Africa was somewhat tempered by the illiberal government of Paul Kruger. 'Uncle Paul' had won election three times, and, after each triumph, he tightened his grip on power. When the Courts of Justice refused to bow to him, he picked a fight with one of his former political rivals, Chief Justice John Gilbert Kotzé. In 1898, Kruger waited to fight another election, won again, and promptly fired his old adversary. The majority of jurists were outraged at this disregard for the separation of powers. Virtually alone, Jan Smuts saw this national crisis as an opportunity.
Smuts wrote a legal thesis in defence of Kruger, arguing that nothing he did was either illegal or unethical, the embattled leader instantly earmarked Smuts as a future star. Requiring counsel, he appointed Smuts as State Attorney of the Transvaal. Smuts demanded that Kruger dispose of his Hollander ministers. Such was the President's desperation for such a staunch ally that he did so without consideration. Amongst the legal profession, this move was widely resented, as Smuts was only 28, and he had little experience of either Afrikaner law or constitutional law. However, amongst Kruger's opponents, he was lauded for his audacity to stand up to Kruger. Out went Kruger's old guard, of ageing Europeans, and in came a young, African man. Moreover, Smuts had an intimate knowledge of the enemy on whom Kruger had his sights: the British.
Reinvigorating the Dutch
Smuts took to his new job zealously. He still saw elements of the old order, corrupting and repressive, in the system that he had inherited, and immediately set to work to eradicate them. He fired the chief of police in Pretoria, and centralised police powers in his office. He dismissed the chief detective of the Transvaal, and hired new detectives, whom Smuts knew would take the fight to the criminals that populated the mining camps.
In reforming the police force, Smuts further polarised South Africa, as if it wasn't divided enough. He made countless new enemies. He was resented by the older Afrikaners, who saw him as an interfering youth, in above his head. He was resented by the Hollanders, who thought Smuts out to get them. He was resented by the British, who thought him too powerful a foe to stand shoulder to shoulder with Paul Kruger. At the same time, he was respected by the young Afrikaners, who saw him as timely relief from the illiberalism and corruption of the past.
Fighting for Peace
Far more important than the petty squabbles about police corruption was the looming threat of war with the British Empire. In early 1897, Sir Alfred Milner became High Commissioner for South Africa, and the situation took a turn for the worse. Milner urged the British government to dispatch more soldiers to South Africa in order to maintain the balance of power in the region. Although the men were never sent, Kruger interpreted these overtures as being aggressive, not conservative. Meaning to quell what he saw as a civil war, President Martinus Steyn of the Orange Free State begged Kruger to agree to a peace conference in Bloemfontein.
Due to his loyalty to Kruger and his knowledge of the British demeanour, Smuts sat with Kruger in the Transvaal delegation. In the event, Smuts ran the show. As the only man of the Transvaal delegation fluent in English, he jumped in at every opportunity, speaking for the entire country in his refusal to grant political rights to the Uitlanders. Milner, furious that he could not speak directly with President Kruger, ignored Smuts, whom he considered to be a lowly and unsuccessful lawyer. Incandescant with rage at this insult to his intelligence, Smuts drafted the final offer to Milner, but deliberately included a paragraph that he knew would be unacceptable. Outraged at this insult, Milner called the conference off, and returned to Cape Town. All parties were resigned to war.
The Boer War
The War Begins
See Second Boer War
On the 11th October 1899, the two Boer republics declared war on the United Kingdom. Immediately, commandos, armed with German rifles and artillery and trained by the best European officers, marched into Natal and the Cape Colony. The hawkish Smuts, though, saw no service in the early stages of the war. His battlefield was Pretoria, where he served as President Kruger's right hand man. He wrote dispatches to generals, published propaganda, organised logistics, and contacted with Transvaal diplomats in Europe. With the initial successes of the war, came much of the credit for it.
After the defeats inflicted upon the Afrikaner forces at Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Paardeberg, the British forces, considerably outnumbering the Afrikaners, flooded across the Orange River, and into the republics. The government of the Transvaal fled from Pretoria to convene in Machadodorp. These reverses hardened Smuts' resolve. He ordered the destruction of the gold mines, which he saw as the only British objectives, but this action was blocked by a local judge. Smuts raised an army of 500 men as quickly as he could, and demanded the banks be emptied and their reserves be placed on a train for Machadodorp. The train carrying Smuts, his soldiers, and all the Transvaal's gold was the last to leave Pretoria before the town fell, only hours later, to the British Army.
The Guerrilla War
With every Afrikaner town in the hands of the British, President Kruger in exile in the Netherlands, and formal resistance at an end, the British extended an offer of peace to the Afrikaners. Acting in the name of Kruger, Smuts rejected the terms, and urged the generals to fight on. He described to Louis Botha a manner of guerrilla warfare, which would be suited to the vast expanses of the Veldt. Botha, Barry Hertzog, Christiaan De Wet, and Koos de la Rey each commanded commando forces to raid the British positions across South Africa.
Smuts served with de la Rey, raiding British supply trains across the Western Transvaal. Smuts soon proved himself to be an excellent soldier, brave but intelligently so, and acutely aware of the limitations of their small force. The small force of 500 men evaded an army forty times its size, and severely weakened the supply lines of the entire British Army in South Africa. These successes were small, though, in the scale of the conflict. Whereas de la Rey and Smuts were wildly successful in their region, Botha and Hertzog (leading the two largest armies) found it difficult to replicate the tactics and success of their compatriots. Gradually, the British built a system of forts, concentration camps, and armed patrols, and cut the country up with great lines of barbed wire and trenches.
As it became harder to evade their armies, the Afrikaners ran out of success. The generals met in secret, and discussed peace. Botha and Smuts decided that they had greatly underestimated the resolve of the British politicians, and sent a telegram to Kruger to ask for his advice. He responded, without the full knowledge of the dire situation in which the Afrikaners found themselves, to fight on. The Free State's two representatives, Steyn and De Wet, derided the suggestion of peace. In the end, they resolved to launch one last attack, and turn the conflict in its head. For this operation, they chose Smuts.
The Raid on the Cape
The plan asked for Smuts to lead an army of 340 men into the Cape Colony, as stealthily as possible. From there, he would attempt to draw support from the Afrikaners of the Cape, and instigate a general rebellion against the British government in Cape Town. For Smuts, just getting near British territory would be tough, as Kitchener had recently launched a major campaign to rid the Orange Free State of commandos, and, especially, of Smuts. Smuts escaped capture by the British no fewer than a dozen times, and his forces rendezvoused on the border after a month, with only 240 men left.
Once in the Cape Colony, Smuts' raiders were cut off from their homeland. They were harried by Briton and Basuto alike, and were weakened by disease and starvation. Those that were worst wounded or sick were left to be captured by the British. The men turned against Smuts, but he urged them onwards, always optimistic that he it would turn. It did, when they encountered a cavalry squadron at camp, and ambushed them, taking their horses, food, uniforms, guns, ammunition, and luxuries. With this success came their own self-belief again. For the next few months, the raid was highly successful in distracting and tiring the British.
For all this, the aim of the raid was never to distract and tire, but to incite an insurrection of the population. Despite their success at distracting and disrupting, hardly a single local Afrikaner took up arms against the British, and Smuts realised that no such small raid would succeed in achieving such a grand objective. He decided to establish headquarters, and command as if head of an army. He made the Hex River valley his home, and sent his men far and wide to enlist and to forage. Soon, his army numbered three thousand, mostly local farmers.
He decided to launch a final attack, to bring the British back to the negotiating table, and to force an agreement in favour of the Afrikaners. He threw every man into an attack on the copper-mining centre of Okiep. His force surrounded the town, but could not attack the garrison head-on. In a show of bravado, Smuts packed a train with explosives, and attempted to detonate it in the town, blowing it sky-high. Although this attempt failed, it proved his resolve to fight through any means. As soon as possible, the British offered Smuts a peace conference, to be held at Vereeniging, to discuss a final peace treaty and resolution. Although not achieving its original objective, the raid had been a rousing success.
The Treaty of Vereeniging
To Vereeniging, the Transvaal and the Free State sent thirty delegates each to meet the British. Whereas the Transvaal and the Orange Free State had been ravaged by the war equally as thoroughly, only the Transvaal delegates wanted peace. The commandos knew that President Steyn, General De Wet, Hertzog, and the 27 other Free State delegates would rather fight to the death than sign a treaty of surrender. Thus, when they elected the representatives of the Transvaal, they chose men of peace, and not war heroes. Smuts was not elected, but Louis Botha appointed him to be the chief legal advisor to the Transvaal delegation. In this way, Smuts took a key role in debating the complex legal and semantic arguments.
During the debates, Smuts used his knowledge of both military and legal aspects, of government and of academia, to guide the delegation. His mastery of English, of Afrikaans, and of High Dutch allowed him to speak before others, and, unlike at Bloemfontein, no man dared to speak over he who had so successfully attacked the Cape. Smuts dominance of the table at Vereeniging allowed the doves in the Transvaal delegation to win. Francis William Reitz, tabled a compromise, ending the war, allowing the two republics limited sovereignty, and calling for slimmed down delegations to meet in Pretoria to negotiate with the British. Reitz knew that the British would reject the proposal, but he also knew that the greatest stumbling block to a resolution wasn't the deputation from London, but that from Bloemfontein. Thus, the Transvaal needed to buy time, with smaller parties involved, to negotiate fully with the Free State representatives.
At Pretoria, the British deputation was led by Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner, who could hardly have been more different. Smuts and Kitchener had mutual professional respect, and talked bilaterally, avoiding the interjection of administrators, such as Milner. Moreover, both Kitchener and Smuts had seen the futility of the war, which had descended into little more than mutual murder. Bilaterally, Smuts and Kitchener negotiated a settlement that suited the Free State representative, De Wet.
Hence, on 1st May 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging, a document that was mostly written by Jan Smuts and Lord Kitchener on their own, was signed by representatives of the United Kingdom, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic.
Under the British Crown
A Fresh Start
The Boer War had irrevocably changed the face of South Africa, but, for Smuts, it was back to work as usual. Whilst De Wet, de la Rey, and Botha toured Europe, hailed as conquering heroes, Smuts returned to his former day job, as a mediocre lawyer. Smuts was as restless in this capacity as ever, and yearned to take part in politics again. Alas for Smuts, the British dominance of South Africa since Vereeniging made it almost impossible for an Afrikaner, no matter how well versed in the English language or British thinking, to break through. More worrying for Smuts, many Boers disapproved of his, and others', leadership during the war: some wished for a fight to the death, whilst some wished that the war had ended after the fall of Pretoria.
Having seen the generosity of the British treasury in London, Botha came to the conclusion a unified South Africa, within the British Empire, would serve both Briton and Afrikaner well. However, Lord Milner was the enemy of the Afrikaner, being chiefly responsible for creating a British monopoly on government posts (called Milner's Kindergarten). He saw no place for Dutch-speakers in the government of South Africa. To counter Milner, and to unite the Afrikaners, the former generals of the Transvaal army, including Smuts, formed the People's Party (Het Volk) in January 1905. The objective of the party was straight-forward enough: self-government, and, ultimately, the creation of a federal South African state.
Changing of the Guard
In 1905, Milner's term as High Commissioner came to an end, and, for Smuts, it couldn't come a minute too soon. Milner was replaced by a more conciliatory man, Lord Selborne, who was in deep admiration of Smuts. Selborne was keen to discuss any manner of constitutional arrangement, but, without the backing of the Conservative government in London, Selborne could advance the process no further than Smuts could. Of course, the Conservative government was dependent upon the support of the British people, and that soon dried up.
Later that year, the Conservative government resigned, and was replaced by a Liberal one under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, which was later confirmed at a general election in February 1906. The new government was led by some of the more active anti-Imperialists in Parliament, including a few that had sympathised with the Boer republics in the South African War. Smuts recognised this opportunity, and set off for London as soon as he heard the news. When he arrived, he was astonished to find so much opposition to the Conservatives' policy in South Africa.
Smuts negotiated from a starting position of full self-government for the Transvaal within British South Africa. Whilst this was dismissed by the Conservatives as unrealistic and counter-productive, most Liberal politicians saw things Smuts' way. Campbell-Bannerman failed to understand the Afrikaners' refusal to work with Milner. Regardless, he was compelled to agree. The Liberal government had been elected partly on the back of opposition to the Chinese indentured labour that had saved the gold mines. Campbell-Bannerman realised that the Chinese workers could not be removed, for that would cripple the economy, and knew that the Afrikaners could never be outnumbered by the British in South Africa. Thus, he decided to pass the buck to the Afrikaners, under whose remit of self-government the miners would fall. He persuaded the cabinet to accept Smuts' demands.
Election
In December 1906, a new constitution for the Transvaal was drawn up, under which an immediate election would find a government. This gave the People's Party two advantages. First, it was fighting an election according to a constitution that it had written. Second, it was fighting an election at a time at which it was the predominant force in Transvaal politics. Nonetheless, neither Botha nor Smuts, the two leaders took the task of election too lightly.
Across the Transvaal they toured, whipping up public support for their cause and their candidates. Botha was a natural-born politician, and the crowds loved him. Less popular was the shy and distant Smuts. Despite his quiet nature, and the controversies of the Boer War, Smuts was comfortably elected in the Wonderboom constituency, near Pretoria. Across the board, the People's Party had scored a massive victory. Botha became the Prime Minister, forming his government solely from the People's Party. Chief amongst his ministers was Smuts, who became both the Colonial Secretary and the Education Secretary: two of the top positions.
Ruling the Transvaal
Immediately, Botha set off on a diplomatic tour of Europe, taking advantage of his celebrity, and left Smuts in charge of the Transvaal. Smuts took a disliking to the bureaucracy, the discussion and the compromise of government. He saw action as the best response to crisis. Crisis came soon, in the form of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Calvinist movement pressed Smuts to take advantage of self-government, by making Afrikaans and Calvinism compulsory for schoolchildren. Although a Calvinist himself, Smuts had grown out of his former zealotry, and found that he could not agree with their aims. He wanted a secular state, and he wanted the next generation to be well versed in the English language, not Afrikaans.
Smuts was attacked for being irreligious, or even blasphemous, and the pastors of the Dutch Reformed Church campaigned heavily against Smuts. In the end, though, there was little that the church could do in the face of the government, backed by the Selborne administration in Cape Town. Smuts knew that, if there was one thing Afrikaners could do, it was to bear a grudge. The Reformed Church, counting three-quarters of Afrikaners amongst its members, could certainly wield great political power.
Gandhi
With Transvaal prosperity unrivalled outside the British Isles, a great number of immigrants from other parts of the Empire flooded to South Africa. The two largest groups were Malays and South Asians. For the Afrikaners, this was a problem. They threatened to undercut European wages, and to take a slice of the wealth created by the mines. Smuts sought to clamp down on the stream of immigrants by any method necessary. He tore into the gangs that smuggled them into the country, limited Indian employment rights, and had each foreign worker register with the government. Opposing Smuts was an Indian lawyer by the name of Mohandas Gandhi.
Gandhi responded to the Transvaal's heavy-handedness with non-violent resistance, as he would in India years later. Smuts imprisoned the most vocal opponents in the Asian population, including Gandhi. The press was outraged, and caricatured Smuts as though he were another Kruger: Crude, fierce, and unyielding. Smuts caved in to Gandhi's passive resistance, letting the Indians go but offering Gandhi no definite promise of concessions.
Incidents such as these were few and far between. Smuts' battle with the Dutch Reformed Church was more representative of his tenure in power. He knew how to fight fire with fire, but Gandhi got under Smuts' skin without so much as raising his fists. The Indian affairs aside, by 1909, Smuts had created a very strong government, backed by a booming economy. Nonetheless, the issue of Union was still as pressing as ever.
Smuts' Vision
As it always had, friction developed and increased between the component parts of South Africa. After Vereeniging, a compromise had been reached on railway harmonisation and customs union, but, with its architect, Lord Milner, out of the picture, a new agreement had to be reached. Although treated, politically, as parts of one whole, the Transvaal and the three colonies could not be more dissimilar. All of South Africa's wealth came from the Transvaal, whilst the three colonies would have been destitute without the Transvaal's need for support services. Botha and Smuts held all the cards.
Smuts argued that there could be no South Africa without complete political union. During the war, Smuts had grown to despise the enmity of the British and the Boers, and to realise the futility of South African fratricide. Smuts made impassioned pleas to the Transvaal Parliament: "There is only one road to salvation, the road to Union and to a South African Nation".
For Smuts, union meant unitary. He had examined the failures of the American federal system, and was disappointed at its inertia and its great disparities. Not all parties were agreed. Smuts, having faith in his intellect and rhetoric, called for a convention to be held in Durban, where Briton and Afrikaner alike could be persuaded of his ambition.
Convention and Union
The summer of 1908-9 was stiflingly hot in Durban. Nonetheless, in October 1908, delegates from across South Africa braved the heat and humidity to attend Smuts' convention. Smuts had planned carefully his line of attack, tailored to the needs and demands of each delegate, and he was sure that he would succeed. He knew that compromise on all issues would be impossible, so focused on the general principles, intending to leave more technical and less significant matters to the future South African Parliament.
The delegates, though, jealously guarded their own interests, and there were numerous disputes: On the powers of the provincial councils, the extension of the franchise, the location of the capital, the official language of the Union, and even the size of the standard railway gauge. Smuts resolved these issues with careful wording, vague promises, and compromise.
The most hard-fought battles were between Smuts and the Orange delegates. Steyn and Hertzog were indomitable, and keen not to allow the Transvaal to dictate the general message of the Afrikaner people. Smuts was willing to compromise to achieve consensus. He agreed to create three separate capitals, at Cape Town, Pretoria, and Bloemfontein. He agreed to give Dutch equal status to English in the constitution. Nevertheless, Smuts could not concede on any of his broader point of Union. Steyn and Hertzog were opposed to any Union that would reduce the powers of the provincial parliaments.
Whilst Steyn and Hertzog could never accept such a conclusion, the other delegates already had. Gradually, over time, the resolve of the Orange delegates was worn down. The summer was drawing to a close, and the environment better set for conciliation. Smuts lay out his proposals in one final speech, drawing on the constitutions of a dozen nations, and argued passionately in favour of his ideal. In the end, the Orange delegates were forced to agree. They could not afford the Orange colony to become a footnote in South Africa, isolated from Smuts' grand ambitions. Besides, Steyn and Hertzog had secured many concessions that would compensate for the loss of sovereignty.
Smuts drew up a final draft, to which all the delegates agreed. The constitution was ratified by the Parliaments of the Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal. Natal even held a referendum, which was passed by a massive majority of the white electorate. Smuts and Botha took the constitution to London to be passed by the British Parliament. With the aid of more impassioned Smuts speeches, The Act of Union was passed. It was given Royal Assent by King Edward VII in December 1909. The Union of South Africa was born.
Trials and Tribulations
Construction Begins
A new nation required a new Prime Minister. Smuts knew that he wasn't in the running, being too young and hot-headed. On the other hand, Botha was a front-runner and devoted his time to lobbying politicians, accordingly. This allowed Smuts a consolation. Although the Act of Union had been signed, the Transvaal still had another six months of independence, and, with Botha concentrating on jockeying for position, Smuts made the most of it.
Thanks to the Transvaal's fantastic wealth, the treasury was overflowing. Smuts' ambition for Pretoria to be the sole capital of South Africa was thwarted, but he saw to it that it would not miss out. He ordered the construction of the Union Buildings, high above Pretoria. They would act as the nerve centre of the South African administration. The total budget would be set at £1.5m: a fortune equivalent to over £700m in 2005, if accounting for economic growth and inflation.[1]
Meanwhile, the new Governor-General of South Africa, Lord Gladstone, was constructing his government. Opinion of the time dictated that Gladstone had two options for Prime Minister, Louis Botha and John X. Merriman, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Smuts trusted his old ally, Botha to form a sensible government, but some didn't. The old foes from Bloemfontein, Steyn, Hertzog, and de Wet, all backed Merriman, fearing that an unsympathetic Afrikaner would be infinitely worse than an unsympathetic Briton. In the end, Smuts' backing won the day, and Gladstone appointed Botha to be Prime Minister.
This, in turn, gave Botha free rein in constructing his cabinet. Smuts was the clear favourite to take a top job, but Botha had other ideas. Of nine cabinet offices, Botha offered Smuts three key positions: Minister for the Interor, Minister for Mines, and Minister for Defence. This gave Smuts control of virtually every area of government; Botha and Smuts now ruled all of South Africa in tandem.
A New Party
This government was still but a construction of the British élite, and not a representation of the people. Smuts knew that, although the people in the cabinet were right for the job, the old party structure could not survive into a new era. The leadership of Het Volk arranged a meeting with the representatives of the other Afrikaans parties, seeking to unite them into a single political bloc. From the Cape, came the Afrikaner Bond, and from the Orange Colony, Orangia Unie. Smuts persuaded them all to unite with Het Volk under one party leadership, to pursue common goals in the new Parliament. For the first time, Steyn and Botha, Hertzog and Smuts, were in agreement. Just in time for the first elections, the South African Party (SAP) was created.
In the September 1910 election, the new party won an outright majority in the South African Parliament, with 67 of the 130 seats. More promisingly, the opposition, the Unionist Party, was in broad agreement with many of the SAP's aims. The party appointed Botha leader and Smuts his deputy, and confirmed their government.
The Hatter's Tea Party
Old resentments, as always, took a heavy toll on the government. With Botha as Prime Minister, Henry Charles Hull as Finance Minister, and Smuts heading as many ministries as he could, the Transvaal élite dominated the government, to the chagrin of some and to the detriment of national unity. Although a veteran of Johannesburg, being British made Hull the primary target for the most acute criticism from the administration's enemies. Moreover, being of different stock meant that Hull held different opinions on important economic matters.
A cabinet dispute over the railways gave Botha the perfect pretext to relieve himself of Hull. The loss of a cabinet member led to a great reshuffle. Smuts remained Minister for Defence, gave up his roles as Minister for Mines and as Minister for the Interior, and gained Hull's former post. Although the business communities in South Africa were happy to see the roles shared out more evenly, they were aghast at the idea of Smuts holding the Finance Ministry. He had no experience of business or of commerce, and his legal practice had hardly been a roaring success.
Perhaps more importantly, they resented the union of the ministries for Finance and Defence: Two ministries that were usually at each others throats over funding and necessity. The fear was that Smuts would appropriate any funds that he thought necessary, and, as an ex-soldier, those funds were thought to be vast, with many MPs citing the use of the Transvaal's treasury in its last days as examples of Smuts' profligacy. To stymie Smuts, the House of Assembly threw out much of his financial policy, although falling short of refusing his budget. Despite the disputes over Smuts' appointment, the man himself pressed on with his policies, stridently ignoring criticism, as he had always done. Smuts' obstinateness became the butt of jokes, some of which described South Africa as "a democracy, with due apologies to Jan Smuts".
Schism
Since the formation of the Union of South Africa, James Hertzog had been an impatient and uncomfortable minister in the Botha cabinet. Despite being the most powerful of the influential Bloemfontein circle, he held only the position as Minister for Justice. Hertzog refused to accept Anglophile influences in the cabinet, and, in that category, he included Smuts. Hertzog was issued an ultimatum, to either put up or shut up. When he refused, Botha dissolved the cabinet and dismissed the rebellious minister. It was exactly as Hertzog had intended, for he sought to be portrayed as a defender of the Afrikaaners. Upon his return to the Free State, Steyn said that Hertzog had been "martyred for what he had done for the Dutch".
Before the 1913 conference of the South African Party, in Cape Town, Hertzog persuaded De Wet to support his campaign against Botha and Smuts. Opening the conference, De Wet proposed a motion calling for the two leaders to resign, to be replaced by Steyn. The conference was thrown into disarray. The Old Boers, led by De Wet, Steyn, and Hertzog, spoke passionately for the expulsion of 'foreign' influences. However, when the motion came to the vote, Botha and Smuts triumphed, pulling through by the skin of their teeth. The Old Boers were outraged, and marched out of the conference. In 1914, this core of Old Boers, together with a few inexperienced politicians, such as Daniel François Malan and Tielman Johannes Roos, formed its own party, opposed to everything for which Smuts and Botha stood. They would become the National Party.
Soldier and Statesman
He formed the South African Defence Force, and was instrumental in the conquest of German East Africa. In 1917 he was invited to join the Imperial War Cabinet by David Lloyd George. In 1918, Smuts helped to create a Royal Air Force, independent of the army.
Smuts and Botha were key negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference. Both were in favour of reconciliation with Germany and limited reparations. Smuts advocated a powerful League of Nations, which failed to materialise. The Treaty of Versailles gave South Africa a mandate over Namibia, which was occupied from 1919 until withdrawal in 1990.
Smuts returned to South African politics after the conference. When Botha died in 1919, Smuts was elected Prime Minister, serving until a shock defeat in 1924 at the hands of the National Party.
Second World War
After nine years in opposition and academia, Smuts returned as Deputy Prime Minister in a 'grand coalition' government under Barry Hertzog. When Hertzog advocated neutrality towards Nazi Germany in 1939, he was deposed by a party caucus, and Smuts became Prime Minister for the second time. He had served with Winston Churchill in World War I, and had developed a personal and professional rapport. Smuts was invited to the Imperial War Cabinet in 1939 as the most senior South African in favour of war. In 28 May 1941, Smuts was appointed a Field Marshal of the British Army, becoming the first South African to hold that rank. This close cooperation with Churchill made Smuts very unpopular amongst the Afrikaner, leading to his eventual downfall.
In May 1945, he represented South Africa in San Francisco at the drafting of the United Nations Charter. Just as he did in 1919, Smuts urged the delegates to create a powerful international body to preserve peace; he was determined that, unlike the League of Nations, the UN had teeth. Smuts signed the Paris Peace Treaty, resolving the peace in Europe, thus becoming the only signatory of both the treaty ending the First World War, and that ending the Second.
His preoccupation with the war had severe political repercussions in South Africa. Smuts' support of the war and his support for the Fagan Commission made him unpopular amongst the Afrikaner and Daniel François Malan's pro-Apartheid stance won the National Party the 1948 election. Although widely forecast, it is a credit to Smuts' political acumen that he was only narrowly defeated (and, in fact, won the popular vote). Smuts retired from politics, and four decades of Apartheid followed.
He died on September 11, 1950 on his family farm of Doornkloof, Irene, near Pretoria, South Africa at the age of 80, and his ashes scattered on Smuts Koppie near the farm.
Miscellaneous
In 1931, he became the first foreign President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1948, he was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University, becoming the first foreigner to hold that position. He held the position until his death.
He is remembered also for the coining of the terms holism and holistic: abstractions not unnaturally linked to his political concerns. The earliest recorded use of the word "apartheid" is also attributed to him, from a 1917 speech.
Smuts was an amateur botanist, and a variety of grass is named after him.
Johannesburg International Airport was formerly named after him when it was known as Jan Smuts Airport.
The premier men's residence at the University of Cape Town, Smuts Hall, is named after him.
References
- Armstrong, Harold Courtenay: Grey Steel: A Study of Arrogance (predates ISBN; ASIN B00087SNP4)
- Geyser, Ockert: Jan Smuts and His International Contemporaries (ISBN 1919874100)
- Reitz, Deneys: A Boer Journal of the Boer War (ISBN 0962761338)
- Smuts, Jan Jr: Jan Christiaan Smuts: A Biography (ISBN 0837170591)
External Links
| Preceded by: Stanley Baldwin | Chancellor of the University of Cambridge 1948–1950 | Succeeded by: Arthur William Tedder |
Categories: 1870 births | 1950 deaths | Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge | Boer War people | British Field Marshals | South African Prime Ministers | World War II political leaders
