Botha, Smuts and the First World War

Antonio Garcia and Ian van der Waag, Botha, Smuts and the First World War (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024)

MEMORIALS to generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts have not fared well in recent years; removed or defaced. This should not surprise. Both were products of a racist age and framed their attitudes and actions accordingly. But today’s antipathy towards them is somewhat ironic. As generals on the losing side of the Second Anglo-Boer War, they astutely and rapidly won the subsequent peace. Had they not done so, the majority of South Africans may have had no nation of any consequence to inherit.

Botha and Smuts are described by Antonio Garcia and Ian van der Waag as a duumvirate that requires a double-barrelled biography. Botha provided the heart, soul and empathy; Smuts the brain, vision and implementation. This combination forged the nation created in 1910, and harnessing peacetime imperialism and using the opportunity of World War I, they established South Africa as a global actor. They shaped the country as a modern nation pursuing its own interests within the British Empire epitomised by the broad church of the South African Party (SAP), within which J.B.M. Hertzog had already created a schism before the war.

One emblem of this ambition for South Africa was creation of the Union Defence Force (UDF), the making of a twentieth-century army that included commando elements and recalcitrant generals such as C.F. Beyers. He is described by these authors as an egoist with a chip on his shoulder. The UDF’s geographic remit was arguable, but its most likely role was the suppression of internal unrest as indeed occurred during the white miners’ strike of January 1914.

The outbreak of war brought division in the white community more sharply into focus. The parliamentary vote to fight alongside Britain was 91-10 and this reflected the feeling of most South Africans for a variety of motives; with the exception of a significant part of the Afrikaans-speaking community; most notably that of the Orange Free State and the northern Cape.

South Africa’s first foray into German South West Africa was inept and not helped by the defection of Manie Maritz. The defeat at Sandfontein and a looming Afrikaner rebellion incited by the Germans presented a dual threat. But the second invasion was brilliantly led in the field by Botha and based on commando-style mounted infantry and decentralised command. Smuts as chief of staff in Pretoria kept the administration functional. Neither had military training; both outshone their imperial and colonial peers and, indeed, the Germans in South West. The two generals saw their invasion and territorial expansion as building both empire and nation.

The schism within Afrikanerdom produced 10 000 rebels for various reasons, ideological and economic. Ninety per cent of Beyers’ rebel followers were bywoners. The rebellion fell apart and a general election was called in October 1915. Botha was regarded a traitor by many Afrikaners and the SAP lost 40% of their vote to the National Party, forcing it into a pact with the Unionists. There were subsequent rumours of a second insurrection with dissatisfaction about the costs of war, financial and other. One of the consequences was foot-dragging over participation in imperial intelligence gathering. The generals’ determination, in spite of the strictures of the Defence Act, to contribute to the war effort in Europe as well as East Africa led to a recruitment shortage (Natal was notably strong on rhetoric and short on volunteering) and the raising of the South African Native Labour Contingent and expansion of the Cape Corps, which heightened the race issue. With these threats in a time of war, the South African government kept a tight leash on information.

From early 1916 Smuts was absent from South Africa, first taking command in German East Africa where he achieved some success in challenging terrain of vast distances and rampant disease unsuited to South Africa’s preferred military tactics. Most of the casualties were unrelated to combat. In a sense Smuts was waging a war against the environment, aggravated by food supply deficiencies and medical shortcomings. But as a result of reducing Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s effectiveness, a rare British victory, Smuts was called to London where he became part of David Lloyd George’s government and inner circle; a remarkable achievement for a man who had been an enemy less than twenty years before.

Back home this role as imperial statesman was much resented by many and Botha, suffering from a heart condition, was under pressure from Hertzog and the National Party who argued that this war was not in South Africa’s interests. The matter of preferential imperial trade culminated in what was somewhat comically labelled the wool crisis. Nevertheless, the two generals (largely mistakenly) continued to regard the war effort as a building block of white nationalism. The British were heavily dependent on imperial resources and the War Cabinet reflected this. South Africa was in some senses the most significant of the dominions with its resources and geostrategic position astride the Cape route and in close proximity to Germans.

Both generals were at Versailles in 1919, ironically alongside the arch-imperialist Alfred Milner, and warning prophetically from experience against harsh peace terms. Smuts was at this stage ambivalent about future South African neutrality; something that would not trouble Botha as he died back home in August 1919. The SAP lost its greatest asset as Smuts was distrusted by many and lacked the common touch. The triple post-war threat consisted of African and Afrikaner nationalists and militant white labour. The elections of March 1920 and February 1921 saw a surge in support for the National and Labour parties that was eventually to bring them to power as the Pact government in 1924.

By this time a South African nation had been established: there were to be no further white insurrections. This owed a great deal to Botha’s emotional intelligence and Smuts’ intellectual acuity. Exactly where to place them in South African history will remain arguable. What is beyond doubt is that for a crucial decade they must be considered together.

This book’s authors often display a neat turn of phrase. Paul Kruger had ‘a face like a pile of rocks’; while Milner was a ‘hard-boiled imperialist with a moustache too’. Unfortunately, most of the writing lacks this verve and does not make for easy reading, exacerbated by the absence of thorough proof reading. Thus, the well-known mis-renderings of Dinizulu and the Native Land Act (of 1913); while in one sentence the Bhambatha rebellion of 1906 appears to precede the Anglo-Boer War of 1899‒1902.