Jan Smuts
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Jan Christian Smuts, OM, CH (May 24, 1870 – September 11, 1950) was a prominent South African and Commonwealth statesman and military leader. He served as a Boer General during the Boer War, a British General during the First World War and was appointed Field Marshal during the Second World War. In addition to various Cabinet appointments, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948. From 1917 to 1919 he was also one of five members of the British War Cabinet, helping to create the Royal Air Force. He played a leading part in the post war settlements at the end of both world wars, and was one of the driving forces behind the formation of both the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945. As the foremost spokesman from the Dominions and Colonies his advice was decisive in reshaping the British Empire into the British Commonwealth.
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 German South West Africa 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.
One of his greatest international accomplishments was 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 British Commonwealth, as it was known at the time.
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
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He was born on the 24th May 1870 at the family farm, Bovenplaats, near Malmesbury, Cape Colony. His family were prosperous, traditional Afrikaner farmers, long established and highly respected.
Jan was quiet and delicate as a child, strongly inclined towards solitary pursuits. During his childhood he often went out alone, exploring the surrounding countryside; this awakened a passion for nature which he retained throughout his life.
Jan was the second son of the family. As the second son, rural custom dicated that he would remain working on the farm, a full formal education was typically the preserve of the first son. However, in 1882, when Jan was twelve, his elder brother died; Jan was now sent to school in his brother's place. Jan attended the school in nearby Riebeek West. He made excellent progress here despite his late start, catching up with his contemporaries within four years. He moved on to Victoria College, Stellenbosch, in 1886 at the age of sixteen.
At Stellenbosch, he learnt High Dutch, German, and Ancient Greek, and immersed himself further in literature, the classics, and Bible studies. His deeply traditional upbringing and serious outlook led to social isolation from his peers. However he made outstanding academic progress, graduating in 1891 with double First-class honours in Literature and Science. During his last years at Stellenbosch Smuts began to cast off some of his shyness and reserve, it was at this time that he met Isie Krige, whom he was later to marry.
On graduation from Victoria College, Smuts won the Ebden scholarship for overseas study. He decided travel to the UK, to read law at Christ's College, Cambridge.
Smuts found it difficult to settle at Cambridge. He felt homesick and isolated by his age and different upbringing from the English undergraduates. Worries over money also contributed to his unhappiness, his scholarship was insufficient to cover his university expenses. He confided these worries to a friend from Victoria College, Professor JI Marais. In reply, Professor Marais enclosed a cheque for a substantial sum, by way of loan, urging Smuts not to hesitate to approach him should he ever find himself in need. Thanks to Marais, Smuts financial standing was secure and he gradually began to enter more into the social aspects of the university, although he retained his single-minded dedication to his studies.
During his time in Cambridge he found time to study a diverse number of subjects in addition to Law, including writing a book, 'Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality'. The thoughts behind this book laid the foundation for Smuts's later wide-ranging philosophy of Holism.
Smuts graduated in 1893 with a double First. During his time at Cambridge he had been the recipient of numerous academic prizes and accolades, including the coveted George Long prize in Roman Law and Jurisprudence. One of his tutors, Professor Maitland (one of the great legal minds of the century), described Smuts as the most brilliant student he had ever met.
In 1894 Smuts passed the examinations for the Inns of Court, entering the Middle Temple. His old college, Christ's College, offered him a fellowship in Law. However Smuts turned his back on a potentially distinguished legal future. By June 1895 he had returned to the Cape Colony, determined that he should make his future there.
Climbing the Ladder
Smuts began to practise law in Cape Town, but his abrasive nature made him few friends. Finding little financial success in the law, he began to divert more and more of his time to politics and journalism, writing for the Cape Times. Smuts was intrigued by the prospect of a united South Africa, and joined the Afrikaner Bond. By good fortune, Smuts’ father knew the leader of the group, Jan Hofmeyr, who recommended Jan to Cecil Rhodes, who owned the De Beers mining company. In 1895, Rhodes hired Smuts as his personal legal advisor, a role that found the youngster much criticised by the hostile Afrikaans press. Regardless, Smuts trusted Rhodes implicitly.
When Rhodes launched the Jameson Raid, in the summer of 1895-6, Smuts was outraged. Betrayed by his employer, friend, and political ally, he resigned from De Beers, and disappeared from public life. Seeing no future for him in Cape Town, he decided to move to Johannesburg in August 1896. However, he was disgusted by what appeared to be a gin-soaked mining camp, and his new law practice could attract little business in such an environment. Smuts sought refuge in the capital of the South African Republic, Pretoria.
Through 1896, Smuts’ politics were turned on their head. He was transformed from being Rhodes’ most ardent supporter to being the most fervent opponent of British expansion. Through late 1896 and 1897, Smuts toured South Africa, furiously condemning the UK, Rhodes, and anyone opposed to the Transvaal President, the autocratic Paul Kruger.
Kruger was opposed by many liberal elements in South Africa, and, when, in June 1898 Kruger fired the Transvaal Chief Justice, John Gilbert Kotzé, most lawyers were up in arms. Recognising the opportunity, Smuts wrote a legal thesis in support of Kruger, who rewarded Smuts as State Attorney. In this capacity, he tore into the establishment, firing those he deemed to illiberal, old-fashioned, or corrupt. His efforts to rejuvenate the republic polarised Afrikaners.
After the Jameson Raid, relations between the British and the Afrikaners had deteriorated steadily. By 1898, war seemed imminent. Orange Free State President Martinus Steyn called for a peace conference at Bloemfontein to settle each side’s grievances. With an intimate knowledge of the British, Smuts took control of the Transvaal delegation. Sir Alfred Milner, head of the British delegation, took exception to his dominance, and conflict between the two led to the collapse of the conference, consigning South Africa to war.
The Boer War
On October 11 1899, the Boer republics declared war on the United Kingdom. In the early stages of the conflict, Smuts served as Kruger’s eyes and ears, handling propaganda, logistics, communication with generals and diplomats, and anything else that was required. As the war turned against the Afrikaners, Smuts organised the successful retreat from Pretoria. The British offered the Afrikaners the olive branch of peace, but Smuts refused to negotiate whilst there was still hope. He restructured the surviving Afrikaner armies in guerrilla corps, or commandos.
In the second phase of the war, Smuts served under Koos de la Rey, who commanded 500 commandos in the Western Transvaal. Smuts excelled at hit-and-run warfare, and the unit evaded and harassed a British army forty times its size. However, the other generals were not faring so well, and the generals decided to launch one final, desperate, attempt to turn the war on its head, and they decided that Smuts would lead it.
Smuts was to lead a force of 340 men into the Cape Colony, and incite an insurrection amongst the Afrikaners in the Cape. It began poorly, as 100 men were killed simply reaching enemy territory. On enemy turf, Smuts was isolated and picked off by the British army and Basuto raiders. Through this adversity, they struggled on, inspired by Smuts’ refusal to surrender. They raided supply lines and farms, spread Afrikaner propaganda, and intimidated those that opposed them, but they never succeeded in causing a revolt against the government. This raid was to prove one of the most influential military adventures of the 20th Century and had a direct influence on the creation of the British Commandos and all the other special forces which followed. With these practical developments came the development of the military doctrines of deep penetration raids, asymmetric warfare and more recently elements in fourth generation warfare.
In early 1901, Smuts became fed up with running away from the enemy, and set up camp in the Hex Valley, from where he sent out recruiting agents to search for sympathetic prospective soldiers, who bolstered his force to 3,000 strong. All the while, Smuts knew that the Afrikaners in the republics were occupied and suffering for Smuts’ obstinate leadership. To end the conflict, Smuts sought to take a major target, the copper-mining town of Okiep. With a full assault impossible, Smuts packed a train full of explosives, and tried to push it downhill, into the town, where it would bring the enemy garrison to its knees. Although this failed, Smuts had proven his point: that he would not stop at anything to defeat his enemies. Seeing his determination, the British offered a ceasefire and a peace conference, to be held at Vereeniging.
Once more, Smuts took the lead in negotiations, but, unlike at Bloemfontein, nobody ignored the war hero at Vereeniging. However, the thirty Free State refused to play ball, and blocked any overtures of peace. Francis William Reitz proposed a smaller conference at Pretoria, where the leaders would hammer out a deal. There, Smuts and Lord Kitchener formed a professional understanding, both being experienced in, but tired of, war. By themselves, they negotiated an agreement, which met the approval of the Free State’s representative, Christiaan De Wet. The result of the agreement was the Treaty of Vereeniging, signed on May 1 1902.
A British Transvaal
For all Smuts' exploits as a general and a negotiator, nothing could mask the fact that the Afrikaners had been defeated and humiliated. Baron Milner had full control of all South African affairs, and established an infamous Anglophone elite, known as Milner's Kindergarten. As an Afrikaner, Smuts was excluded. Defeated but not deterred, in January 1905, he decided to join with the other former Transvaal generals to form a political party, Het Volk, to fight for the Afrikaner cause. Louis Botha was elected leader, and Smuts his deputy.
When his term of office expired, Milner was replaced as High Commissioner by the more conciliatory Lord Selborne. Smuts saw an opportunity and pounced., urging Botha to persuade the Liberals to support Het Volk’s cause. When the Conservative government collapsed, in December 1905, the decision paid off. Smuts joined Botha in London, and sought to negotiate full self-government for the Transvaal within British South Africa. Using the thorny political issue of Asian labourers, the South Africans convinced Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and, with him, the cabinet and Parliament.
Through 1906, Smuts worked on the new constitution for the Transvaal, and, in December 1906, elections were held for the Transvaal parliament. Despite being shy and reserved, unlike the showman Botha, Smuts won a comfortably victory in the Wonderboom constituency, near Pretoria. His victory was one of many, with the People’s Party winning in a landslide and Botha forming the government. To reward his loyalty and efforts, Smuts was given two key cabinet positions: Colonial Secretary and Education Secretary.
Smuts proved to be an effective leader, if unpopular. As Education Secretary, he had fights with the Dutch Reformed Church, of which he had once been a dedicated member, who demanded Calvinist teachings in schools. As Colonial Secretary, he was forced to confront Asian workers, the very people whose plight he had exploited in London, led by a certain Mohandas Gandhi. Despite Smuts’ unpopularity, South Africa's economy continued to boom, and Smuts cemented his place as the Afrikaners’ brightest star.
During the years of Transvaal self-government, no-one could avoid the predominant political debate of the day: South African unification. Ever since the British victory in the war, it was an inevitability, but it remained up to the South Africans to decide what sort of country would be formed, and how it would be formed. Smuts favoured a unitary state, with power centralised in Pretoria, with English as the only official language, and with an inclusive electorate (including women, many Asians, and even Africans). To impress upon his compatriots his vision, he called a constitutional convention in Durban, in October 1908.
There, Smuts was up against a hard-talking Orange delegation, who refused every one of Smuts’ demands. Smuts had successfully predicted this opposition, and their objectives, and tailored his own ambitions appropriately. He allowed compromise on the location of the capital, on the official language, and on suffrage, but he refused to budge on the fundamental structure of government. As the convention drew into autumn, the Orange leaders began to see a final compromise as necessary to secure the concessions that Smuts had already made. They agreed to Smuts’ draft South African constitution, which was duly ratified by the South African colonies. Smuts and Botha took the constitution to London, where it was passed by Parliament, and signed into law by Edward VII in December 1909. Smuts' dream had been realised.
The Old Boers
The Union of South Africa was born, and the Afrikaners held the key to political power, for they formed the largest part of the electorate. Although Botha was appointed to Prime Minister of the new country, Smuts was given three key ministries: those for the interior, the Mines, and Defence. Undeniably, Smuts was the second most powerful man in South Africa. To solidify their dominance of South African politics, the Afrikaners united to form the South African Party, a new pan-South African Afrikaner party.
The harmony and cooperation soon ended. Smuts was criticised for his over-arching powers, and was reshuffled, losing his positions in charge of Defence and the Mines, but gaining control of the Treasury. This was still too much for Smuts' opponents, who decryed his possession of both Defence and Finance: two departments that were usually at loggerheads. At the 1913 South African Party conference, the Old Boers, of Hertzog, Steyn, and De Wet, called for Botha and Smuts to step down. The two narrowly survived a conference vote, and the troublesome triumvirate stormed out, leaving the party for good.
With the schism in internal party politics came a new threat to the mines that brought South Africa its wealth. A small-scale miners' dispute flared into a full-blown strike, and rioting broke out in Johannesburg after Smuts intervened heavy-handedly. After police shot dead twenty-one strikers, Smuts and Botha headed unaccompanied to Johannesburg to personally resolve the situation. They did, facing down threats to their own lives, and successfully agreeing a cease-fire.
The cease-fire did not hold, and, in 1914, a railway strike turned into a general strike, and threats of a revolution caused Smuts to declare martial law. Smuts acted ruthlessly, deporting union leaders without trial and using Parliament to retrospectively absolve him or the government of any blame. This was too much for the Old Boers, who set up their own party, the National Party, to fight the all-powerful Smuts. The Old Boers urged Smuts' opponents to arm themselves, and civil war seemed inevitable before the end of 1914. In October 1914, when the Government was faced open rebellion by Lt Col Manie Maritz and others in Maritz Rebellion, Government forces under the command of Botha and Smuts were able to put down the rebellion without it ever seriously threatening to ignite into a Third Boer War.
Soldier, statesman, and scholar
During the First World War, Smuts 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 shocking defeat in 1924 at the hands of the National Party.
While in academia, Smuts pioneered the concept of holism, defined as "the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution" in his 1926 book, Holism and Evolution. One biographer ties together his far-reaching political vision with his technical philosophy: [Crafford, p. 140]
It had very much in common with his philosophy of life as subsequently developed and embodied in his Holism and Evolution. Small units must needs develop into bigger wholes, and they in their turn again must grow into larger and ever-larger structures without cessation. Advancement lay along that path. Thus the unification of the four provinces in the Union of South Africa, the idea of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and, finally, the great whole resulting from the combination of the peoples of the earth in a great league of nations were but a logical progression consistent with his philosophical tenets.
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.
Smuts' importance to the Imperial war effort was emphasised by a quite audacious plan, proposed as early as 1940, to appoint Smuts as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should Churchill die or otherwise become incapacitated during the war. This idea was put by Sir John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, to Queen Mary and then to George VI, both of whom warmed to the idea. Template:Ref As Churchill lived for another twenty-five years, the plan was never put into effect and its constitutionality was never tested. This closeness to the British establishment, to the King, and to 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 United Nations would have 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.
After the War
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 that year he was also elected the first foreign Lord Rector of St Andrews University.
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 number of South African plants are 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.
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Jan Smuts Residence at Rhodes University, South Africa was named after him
Footnotes
- Template:Note Colville, Sir John: The Fringes of Power, pages 269-271 (ISBN 1842126261)
Bibliography
- Armstrong, HC - Grey Steel: A Study of Arrogance, (1939), ASIN B00087SNP4)
- Crafford, FS - Jan Smuts: A Biography, (1943)
- Friedman, B - Smuts: A Reappraisal, (1975)
- Geyser, O - Jan Smuts and His International Contemporaries, (2002), (ISBN 1919874100)
- Hancock, WK - Smuts: 1. The Sanguine Years, 1870—1919, (1962)
- Hancock, WK - Smuts: 2. Fields of Force, 1919-1950, (1968)
- Ingham, K - Jan Christian Smuts: The Conscience of a South African, (1986)
- Millin, SG - General Smuts, (2 vols), (1933)
- Reitz, D - Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, (ISBN 0962761338)
- Smuts, JC - Jan Christian Smuts, (1952)
Primary Sources
- Hancock, WK and van der Poel, J (eds) - Selections from the Smuts Papers, 1886-1950, (7 vols), (1966-73)
External links
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Categories: South African people | 1870 births | 1950 deaths | Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge | Boer War people | British Field Marshals | Prime Ministers of South Africa | World War II political leaders | Members of the Order of Merit | Companions of Honour | Apartheid in South Africa | Chancellors of the University of Cambridge