Jan Smuts: The Uncelebrated Afrikaner Farm Boy Who Nearly Became Britain’s Prime Minister
A remarkable man with an extraordinary career
South Africa has been the birthplace of any number of famous and internationally recognised men and women who have excelled in their field of endeavour.
Most are remembered but one is accorded little attention.
By any chosen measure, Jan Christiaan Smuts should be revered as the greatest South African that ever lived. The fact he isn’t revered demonstrates the impact of history rewritten by those wanting to obliterate (for them) an unpalatable past while simultaneously creating their vision of the future.
Born on the twenty-fourth of May 1870 at the family farm Bovenplaats near Malmesbury, he only started school at Riebeeck West when he was twelve years old but quickly caught up with the other pupils. Next, he attended Victoria College, Stellenbosch from where he graduated in 1891 with double first-class honours in Literature and Science.
Possibly the most important accolade among the many prizes he won as a student, was the Ebden Scholarship for Overseas Study. This enabled him to read law at Christ College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a double first in 1893.
One of his tutors, Professor Maitland who was a leading figure among English legal historians, described Smuts as “The most brilliant student” he had ever met while Lord Todd, the Master of Christ College said in 1970,
“In 500 years of the college’s history, of all of its members, past and present, three had been truly outstanding: John Milton, Charles Darwin and Jan Smuts.”
High praise indeed for an Afrikaner farm boy!
Despite being offered a Fellowship in Law at Cambridge, Smuts returned to South Africa in 1895 and after short stints of practising law and writing for The Cape Times newspaper, he became intrigued with the possibility of a united South Africa and to this end joined Cecil John Rhodes, the owner of De Beers Mining Company, who had similar visions.
However, the association ended badly with Smuts outraged when Rhodes launched the Jameson Raid in the summer of 1895–6. Feeling betrayed by his employer, friend and political ally, Smuts resigned from De Beers and became state attorney in The South African Republic in Pretoria.
On the eleventh of October 1899, British forces invaded the Boer Republics, starting the Second Boer War. In the early stages, Smuts served as President Paul Kruger’s eyes and ears, handling propaganda, logistics, communication with generals and diplomats and anything else that was required. In the second phase of the war, he excelled at hit-and-run warfare and the unit he commanded evaded and harassed a British army forty times its size.
Later Smuts realised that due to the British scorched earth policy and the system of concentration camps in which twenty thousand Boer women and children had died, the war could not continue, and he then played a leading role in peace negotiations that culminated in a peace treaty being signed on the thirty-first of May 1902.
During the First World War, Smuts led the South African army against Germany, captured German Southwest Africa (Namibia) and commanded the British army in East Africa. From 1917 to 1919 he was a member of the British War Cabinet. He also became a Privy Councillor and was primarily responsible for the establishment of the Royal Air Force (formerly the Royal Flying Corps) in 1918.
Together with Louis Botha, Smuts played a pivotal role in the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and was appointed Minister of Defence, Mines and Interior. He also formed the Union Defence Force. When Botha died in 1919, Smuts became Prime Minister and held the position until 1924.
After his defeat by the Nationalists in 1924, Smuts wrote a critical philosophical work entitled “Holism and Evolution” and entered academia, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society in 1930 and Rector of St Andrews University the following year.
During the Gold Standard crisis of 1933, Smuts was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of South Africa and when World War Two broke out in 1939 he again became Prime Minister.
The Nationalists wanted South Africa to remain neutral, but Smuts believed Germany, under Hitler, had to be defeated and accordingly followed Britain and declared war on Germany.
The importance of Smuts to the Imperial war effort was emphasised by quite an audacious plan proposed as early as 1940 to appoint Smuts as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should Winston Churchill die or become incapacitated during the war. The idea was put by Sir John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, to Queen Mary and then King George VI, both of whom warmed to the idea.
Smuts became a Field Marshall in the British Army in 1941 and served in the Imperial Cabinet under Winston Churchill. When hostilities ended, Smuts was a signatory to the Peace Treaty and in signing this document he became the only person to have signed the treaties ending both the First and Second World Wars!
Thereby ends the history lesson but it begs the question, “Why did his political career falter and collapse?”
Firstly, he was betrayed by a large section of his own United Party supporters who decided to teach him a lesson in the 1948 General Election. It appears Smuts had made promises of rewards for South African servicemen volunteering to serve in the army during the war and had failed to meet those promises or had downright reneged on them.
In addition, the local populace was unhappy with fuel and commodity shortages that were being experienced locally due to exports to help support Britain and other European countries and critically, Smuts was leaning towards a relaxation of the separatist system that favoured whites to the disadvantage of blacks.
These issues infuriated a large section of his support base who decided to retaliate by voting for the Nationalists. This they would do to teach Smuts a lesson and once he had learnt it, they would simply vote him back into power at the next election.
Big mistake! All went to plan with the Nationalists defeating the United Party in terms of seats but not in terms of votes and once in power, the Nationalists entrenched their position by fair means or foul and went on to retain control for forty-six years.
Next, fate played a cruel trick when he died from a heart attack just two years after his defeat and thus never got the opportunity to contest his unseating.
According to Paul H. Courtenay, a Churchill historian and researcher, after Smuts’ passing, Churchill secluded himself in his bedroom for half a day to pen a heartfelt letter to Mrs. Isie Smuts, his wife.
“Please accept my deepest sympathy in your sorrow and deprivation. I know how vain are words in such sadness, and how much worse it is for those who stay than for those who go. But there must be comfort in the proofs of admiration and gratitude that have been evoked all over the world for a warrior-statesman and philosopher who was probably more fitted to guide struggling and blundering humanity through its sufferings and perils towards a better day than anyone who lived in any country during his epoch.”
Tragically, Jan Christiaan Smuts was consigned to the forgotten annals of history courtesy of the new National government that successfully rewrote history to almost entirely exclude this South African giant.
Statesman, scholar, soldier, academic and botanist, gone and all but forgotten.
