106. A Boer’s Global Influence, Part 2
On May 31, 1910, the first Parliament of the Union of South Africa was opened. The Cape Colony, Natal and the Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, previously independent, came together under the Union Parliament. The aforementioned regions then became provinces of the Union.
Louis Botha was the first Prime Minister with Jan Smuts his second in command. Smuts had three ministries in his portfolio, Interior, Mines and Defense. At first, the surprisingly liberal policies of the original Cape Colony government regarding voter’s rights were applied to the new Union. This allowed Blacks and people of mixed race (Coloreds) to vote, provided they possessed £25 and they had certain property. This only applied to men until 1936, when women were finally allowed to vote.
Sadly, these laws were gradually restricted, eliminating Black voters long before any thought of Apartheid (created in 1948). After Apartheid, even the Colored voters were eliminated in 1951. So, eventually, the country’s government became virtually all white, with the Afrikaners in the majority over the English, about 60 to 40 percent.
Botha and Smuts soon became unpopular with a powerful group known as the “Old Boers” (primarily Steyn, Herzog and de Wet) who demanded a “no confidence” vote in Louis Botha and Smuts. Their vote was narrowly defeated, and they left the government to later form the more right-wing Nationalist Party, constantly opposing the United Party of Jan Smuts.
The major schism between the two factions of the Afrikaners came to a head shortly after the outbreak of World War I. A number of prominent “Old Boers” as well as many of the “bitter einders” (Boers who had fought against Britain to the bitter end of the Anglo-Boer war and had refused to capitulate) joined Manie Maritz in rebelling against the Union of South Africa’s decision (as part of the British Commonwealth) to support Britain’s war against Germany.
Previous comrades-in-arms were fiercely opposed to each other. Botha and Smuts (who had engineered the creation of the Union) were firmly allied to Britain and were planning an attack on German South West Africa (now Namibia). Former Boer generals Koos de la Rey, Jan Kemp, Christiaan de Wet, Niklaas van Rensburg and Manie Maritz were key figures in the uprising against the Union government, in exchange for the support Germany had previously given the Boers.
Tragically, Koos de la Rey, while driving to a meeting with his co-conspirators, failed to stop at a roadblock and was shot dead. Ironically, the roadblock had been set up to capture William Foster, a violent but petty criminal who had formed the Foster gang, robbing banks and post offices, shooting and killing anyone in his way. The gang was finally cornered in a cave on the edge of Johannesburg. Foster’s wife Peggie offered to go into the cave to negotiate with the criminals but was persuaded by her husband to commit suicide with the rest of the gang. It was rumored that killing de la Rey at the police roadblock was a ploy by Smuts to eliminate his former friend, but this was later discounted as a grave mistake by the police. In 1964, I was hired by Percival Rubens, the director of a movie about the Foster gang, as an assistant director and stunt man. Parts of me appeared in about five places in the movie – falling off a bicycle, being shot in the leg and diving for cover during a gunfight, etc.
Anyway, the rebellion which included some 12,000 Afrikaners never really got off the ground. Manie Maritz attempted to capture the town of Keimos, supported by some German troops from South West Africa, but this also failed. What it did do, however, was to cause a schism between the Afrikaners, with the more right-wing element remaining pro-German and forming the core of the Nationalist Party, and the more centrist United Party which included most English-speaking South Africans joining the British Commonwealth.
In 1916, German forces, under the leadership of the remarkable Colonel (later General) von Lettow Vorbeck, had led over a quarter of a million British forces a merry dance around Tanganyika (now Tanzania) with only 3,000 German troops and 15,000 Askaris (Black troops). The incompetence of the British generals, plucked from obscurity in India, was so bad that in desperation the British government asked Jan Smuts to take command – relying on his skills as a former Boer War general and his knowledge of Africa. Conditions in tropical-forested Tanganyika were vastly different from the open plains of the Transvaal Highveld, however, and he was only partially successful. However, he and von Lettow Vorbeck formed a curious friendship, passing letters to each other under cover of white flags. Smuts congratulated von Lettow Vorbeck on being promoted to general and both men sent each other Christmas greetings. In 1922, both von Lettow Vorbeck and Jan Smuts were guests of honor at a commemorative dinner in Paris.
In 1919, Louis Botha died and Jan Smuts took over as Prime Minister of South Africa. This period in Smuts’ long career was possibly the most controversial. He was heavily criticized for the police’s handlings of an obscure religious group known as the Israelites who had squatted on land not owned by them. The police tried to move them but were attacked and in response killed 163 of the squatters with machine guns. His administration was also criticized for using excessive force against the Bondelswarts (a Nama ethnic group) in German South West Africa.
In 1920, Smuts went to Europe again and, along with Britain’s Lord David Cecil, drew up the principal draft of the League of Nations, which was established at the Paris Peace Conference of 1920. This was the forerunner of the United Nations and lasted until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In fact, Smuts was the only person to become a signatory of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
In 1921, Smuts met de Valera in Ireland and helped to broker a peace between warring British and Irish elements.
Later that year, a group of white miners went on strike in Johannesburg and assaulted the police, in protest against granting of more skilled jobs on the mines to Black miners. Smuts crushed the insurrection in three days but at the cost of many lives. This so-called Rand Revolt probably cost Smuts his re-election – along with his frequent trips overseas with his growing reputation as a World Statesman. In 1924, the right-wing Nationalist Party beat the United Party and ruled South Africa until 1939. Smuts, after spending some years in academia as well as going on botanical expeditions in Southern Africa, was invited in 1933 to join the weakening Nationalist Prime Minister Herzog to form a coalition government. He accepted and served as Deputy Prime Minister until 1939, when Herzog refused to join the rest of the British Commonwealth to declare war against Germany. In a referendum, Herzog was defeated and Smuts became Prime Minister once more.
This didn’t stop Smuts from responding to calls from Britain to help with the war effort. In 1941, he was appointed as a field marshal in the British Army and joined his old friend Churchill in the British War Cabinet. He was so popular in Britain that he was actually put forward as a possible Prime Minister of Britain should Churchill die or become incapacitated. He was a prominent guest at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1947.
Once again, the United Party underestimated the growing strength of Afrikaner Nationalism and probably took their re-election for granted. My parents and I had arrived in South Africa in 1947 and we were living in Cape Town in 1948 when the elections were held. I was asked to become a “car hopper” at the age of eleven, which entailed going to homes of established United Party voters, helping the infirm and retired voters to the car which took them to the voting booths. The United Party candidate was Zach de Beer, later to become the leader of the Progressive Liberals that moved to the left of the more conservative United Party. The Nationalist Party candidate where I helped was Weichardt, the former leader of the “Grey Shirts,” a pro-Nazi Afrikaner group. Despite my best efforts, the Nationalists came into power bringing their infamous Apartheid policy with them.
Smuts then retired from politics and was later appointed Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1948.
Winston Churchill was quoted as saying, “Smuts and I are like two old love-birds moulting together on a perch but still able to peck!”
Smuts died on the family farm Doornkloof near Pretoria on September 11, 1950.
He was an extraordinary man at many levels. His book Holism and Evolution published in 1926, in which he states very basically that the sum of the whole is greater than its parts, could be applied to many things including ExoTech in which the power of its Any-to-Any elements have the potential to create a whole new paradigm shift in the entire craft of computing!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.