Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS (24 May 1870 – 11 September 1950) was a prominent South African and Commonwealth statesman, military leader, and philosopher. He served as a Boer General during the Boer War, a British General during the First World War and was appointed Field Marshal by King George VI during the Second World War. In addition to various cabinet appointments, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948. From 1917 to 1919 he was 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, making significant contributions towards the creation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He did much to redefine the relationship between Britain and the Dominions and Colonies, leading to the formation of the British Commonwealth.
This article is about Jan Smuts' rise from obscurity to high office, from his return to South Africa in 1894 until the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899. After setting up a law practice in Cape Town, the Anglophile Smuts was drawn to the charismatic Cecil Rhodes. After the Jameson Raid, he felt betrayed, and moved to the South African Republic. Transforming himself into a hard-line Anglophobe, Smuts found himself office at the heart of Paul Kruger's government. As confrontation with the British Empire loomed, Smuts played a crucial role in the failed peace talks.
In Cape Town
Return to South Africa
Smuts returned to the Cape in June 1895. News of his achievements in Cambridge had reached Cape Town; he was feted by local academics as an example of South African intellectual agility. He returned confident that his qualifications would lead to a successful legal career in the Cape; a career which would enable him to settle his debt with Professor Marais and to allow him to marry.
Smuts duly established his practice, but his briefs were few. With limited legal work he looked elsewhere to supplement his income. He managed to find a little work tutoring in Law, but his primary occupation quickly became freelance journalism. He wrote on a range of subjects, from articles on Cape flora and fauna to literary reviews, but it was to the world of politics that he was chiefly drawn.
Cape politics at that time was dominated by two men and one big idea. Cecil Rhodes and Jan Hofmeyr jointly proclaimed the ideal of unity; unity of the white population, Briton and Boer, and unity between the colonies and republics of Southern Africa.
Rhodes’s Vision
Rhodes was one of the richest men in South Africa; chairman of both De Beers Consolidated Mines & Consolidated Gold Fields - the dominant diamond mining company in South Africa and one of the largest gold mining houses, respectively. Rhodes was also chairman of the British South Africa Company, granted a Royal Charter in 1889, giving it the right to develop the country beyond the Limpopo - present day Zimbabwe and Zambia. Rhodes was a fervent British imperialist, committed to the spread of British influence over the world, most especially in Africa. Southern Africa was divided into four separate entities; there were two British colonies, the Cape and Natal, and two Afrikaner republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Rhodes, in common with many at the time, saw this region as essentially an economic and social whole. He was convinced that future depended on the realisation of this inherent unity, on the creation of a union both political and economic.
Rhodes was a British imperialist; ultimately he wished to see a united South Africa under the British flag. However, he realised at the outset that this was not something which the Cape Afrikaners would support, much less those in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He therefore reinvented himself as a 'colonialist', he began to emphasise the primacy of local interests, putting them above the idea of subordination to imperial power. This gained him the support of Hofmeyr, the Afrikaner Bond party, and a large portion of the Cape vote. Rhodes was elected Prime Minister of the Cape in 1889.