Jan Smuts is well known in South Africa as a major historical figure. He helped establish South African autonomy while still a subject of the British crown and was vital to the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
His influence, however, spread far beyond the country’s borders. First and foremost, he made his name as a soldier. He saw his fair share of war in his lifetime and provided vital support to the Allied cause in the First and Second World Wars. He holds the honor of being the only man to serve as a general in both these conflicts.
When the fighting was over, Smuts’ impact on the world stage grew even greater.
His legacy helped change the entire world.
The Early Life of Jan Smuts
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Jan Smuts was born on May 24, 1870, into a well-respected Afrikaner family near Malmesbury in the Cape Colony. His parents were Jacobus Smuts and Catharina, who believed in traditional Afrikaner values and way of life. Jan grew up on the family farm and was not sent to school until the age of 12 after his older brother, Michiel, had died.
Despite the late start, Jan made excellent progress at school and caught up to his peers quickly. At the age of 16, he enrolled in Victoria College, Stellenbosch.
While at Stellenbosch, he was exposed to political thought and became a follower of J.H. Hofmeyr, a prominent politician in the Cape Colony noted for his anti-imperialist stance. During his time at Victoria College, he also met Isie Krige, his future wife.
Smuts graduated in 1891 from the University of the Cape of Good Hope (Now the University of South Africa/UNiSA) with double first-class honors in Literature and Science.
His academic brilliance led to him being awarded a scholarship to study overseas, and he moved to the United Kingdom, where he studied law at Christ’s College (a constituent college of the University of Cambridge). During his time in the UK, he felt homesick and was unable to adjust to the culture, which was so different from his upbringing.
Nevertheless, he threw himself into his work and achieved the top marks in both parts of the law course. In fact, Lord Todd, the Master of Christ’s College, stated that in the centuries of Cambridge’s existence, its most outstanding members were “John Milton, Charles Darwin, and Jan Smuts.”
After this display of academic brilliance, Smuts returned to South Africa in 1895 and began practicing as an advocate in Cape Town.
Professional Career
While practicing law, Smuts also became involved in politics, which began to take over his career as a lawyer. Smuts was a proponent of the Afrikaner Bond, ostensibly South Africa’s first political party. It was formed because of the need for Afrikaner unity and representation under British rule.
The party, however, was divided, and Smuts supported the movement in the party led by J.H. Hofmeyr, who worked to create unity, not just among Afrikaners but to build better relationships between the Afrikaners and the British.
Hofmeyr was a friend of Smuts’ father, and Hofmeyr was able to recommend Smuts to the governor of the Cape Colony, Cecil John Rhodes. Smuts ended up in the employ of Rhodes and De Beers, which was Rhodes’ mining company. However, in 1896, when Rhodes launched the Jameson Raid in a bid to seize the Afrikaner-dominated South African Republic (also known as the Transvaal Republic), Smuts felt betrayed and resigned from his position at De Beers.
In 1897, Smuts married Isie Krige. The following year, he gave up his practice in Cape Town and moved to the Transvaal, where he became State Attorney and advisor to the country’s Executive Council under the leadership of President Paul Kruger.
Worsening relations between the Boers (Afrikaners) and the British led to the Second Anglo-Boer War (often referred to as simply the “Boer War”), which broke out in 1899 and lasted until 1902.
Jan Smuts as a Soldier and a Politician
After conflict broke out between Britain and the Boer Republics, Smuts spent much of his time as both an administrator and a soldier. He traveled between Pretoria (the capital of the South African Republic) and the front. He distinguished himself in military matters, but when Pretoria was occupied by the British, Smuts continued the war as a guerilla fighter, eventually receiving his own command.
His understanding of military doctrine was, like his academic abilities, quite brilliant. He led his kommando to within 75 miles (120 kilometers) of Cape Town before being recalled to participate in peace proceedings.
The war ended in defeat for the Boers, and despite Smuts’ support for the cause, he remained supportive of the idea of a united South Africa with the British and the Boers having equal rights in a single state.
He campaigned tirelessly with General Louis Botha, a fellow politician and fighter, for the recognition of Boer rights. Together, they strove for a union between the former Boer republics and the British colonies in South Africa. Botha was named Prime Minister of the Transvaal Colony on March 4, 1907, and Jan Smuts became the Minister of Education.
Soon after, the Transvaal government encountered resistance from the Indian community because of the law requiring Indians to register according to the Asiatic Registration Act of 1906 (later repealed and re-enacted in 1908), which was an extension of laws designed to segregate the population.
The Indian community was represented in the Transvaal by the famous Mohandas Gandhi. He had met many times with Smuts to resolve the situation. The two greatly respected each other, and Gandhi even gifted Smuts a pair of sandals he had made. Smuts wore these sandals on numerous occasions.
In 1910, the colonies were joined together to form the Union of South Africa, which, like Canada and Australia, existed as a dominion of the British Empire. In the first Union cabinet, Smuts held the positions of Minister of Interior, Defence, and Mines.
The First World War
After the First World War broke out, South Africa declared war on the Central Powers. However, Jan Smuts almost immediately had to turn his attention to the prospect of civil war; the Maritz Rebellion broke out in South Africa. Boers who wanted to nullify the Union and restore the South African Republic had taken up armed resistance and challenged the government. They did this by allying with Germans in South West Africa (now the country of Namibia).
South African forces, under the leadership of Jan Smuts and Louis Both, took the fight to the Germans and the rebellious South Africans.
Smuts and Botha crushed the rebellion by February 1915 and subsequently defeated the Germans in South West Africa. Meanwhile, Smuts was also in charge of South African troops in East Africa, where they fought against the Germans until the end of the war.
In early 1917, Jan Smuts went to London to join the Imperial War Cabinet. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was impressed by Smuts and kept him on for the decision-making processes for the rest of the war.
Smuts was instrumental in separating the Flyings Corps from the army. He was also partly responsible for the formation of the Royal Air Force as a separate branch of the military.
After the war, Smuts was a leading figure in the Versailles peace process and argued for a peace that would not crush Germany. Despite failure in this regard, Smuts was highly regarded for his military and political acumen wherever he went. He was one of the principal figures in the creation of the League of Nations.
The Interwar Era
On the international scene, Jan Smuts represented the Allies after the war and worked to bring Europe out of the chaos that had emerged. He was sent to treat with Béla Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic in attempting to resolve border issues, but the short-lived communist state rejected Smuts’ demands.
In August 1919, Louis Botha died, and Jan Smuts succeeded him as Prime Minister of South Africa. He held this position until 1924, when he was defeated by a coalition that brought the National Party to power. J.B.M. Hertzog headed this government and was South Africa’s prime minister until 1939.
Smuts was also a deep thinker. He penned the philosophical theory of holism, in which he proposed that nature tends to form wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. His book Holism and Evolution (1926) was well-regarded by contemporary thinkers.
During his time as prime minister in the early 1920s, Smuts presided over a series of incidents in which much human life was lost. The Rand Rebellion was a revolt in the mining industry and resulted in Smuts using airplanes to bomb rebellious miners. The Bulhoek Massacre was the result of a group of people refusing to vacate their land and being fired on by police—an action which resulted in the death of 163 people.
Another incident was the Bondelswarts Rebellion in 1922. Overwhelming force was used against several hundred KhoiKhoi people in South West Africa who were protesting the South African administration and an increased tax on dogs.
The Second World War
Smuts served as Deputy Prime Minister from 1933 until 1939 when Hertzog proposed South Africa’s neutrality at the outbreak of the Second World War. Opposing this notion was Smuts, and parliament voted in favor of joining the war on the side of Great Britain. Hertzog resigned, and Smuts took up the mantle of prime minister again.
Smuts joined the Imperial War Cabinet once again and helped guide the Allies to victory. It was even decided that if anything were to happen to Winston Churchill, Smuts would take over the role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Nevertheless, Smuts played a smaller role in the Second World War than he had in the First World War and was tasked with ensuring the Axis forces were defeated in North Africa. Nevertheless, under his guidance, South African forces played a significant role in the war, serving in North Africa as well as in Italy, where they won great admiration from American General Mark Clark, who commanded the Allied forces in Italy.
Towards the end of the Second World War, Smuts was a leading figure pressing for the formation of the United Nations. He wrote the first draft of the UN preamble.
Post-War Life
In 1948, Jan Smuts and his United Party lost the general election to the Herenigde Nasionale Party (HNP). Despite winning almost 50% of the votes—11% more than the HNP—the latter managed to win more seats and thus was tasked with forming a new government. Smuts resigned from his post as prime minister, and D.F. Malan of the HNP became the new leader of South Africa.
A major reason for the political defeat was Smut’s vague plans for racial dynamics in South Africa. He believed that integration at some unspecified point in the future was inevitable and, during his tenure as prime minister, he had already extended old-age pensions and disability grants to Africans and Indians.
The HNP offered a clear plan for segregation in South Africa, which proved to be a popular idea among the electorate at the time. Apartheid was implemented as a result of the HNP’s victory.
Smuts’ disapproval of apartheid was very clear: “The idea that the Natives must all be removed and confined in their own kraals is in my opinion the greatest nonsense I have ever heard.”
Despite his opinion on the matter, Smuts still upheld racial laws that were already in existence, and his legacy is one of ambiguity in this regard.
After his political defeat, Smuts traveled to England and became the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, a post he held until his death on September 11, 1950, from a heart attack. He was 80 years old.
His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered south of Pretoria at a place now named Smuts Koppie.*
*A koppie is a rocky hill.
Jan Smuts played an important role not just in South African history but in world history. He was a pragmatic leader who understood the limits of what was possible but campaigned tirelessly for a more integrated, peaceful world.
