Smuts, Jan Christiaan

Smuts, Jan Christiaan ( Christian Smuts) (b. 24 May 1870, d. 11 Sept. 1950). Prime Minister of South Africa 1919–24, 1939–48 Born in Bovenplaats (Cape Colony) and a childhood friend of Malan, he was educated at Stellenbosch and studied at Cambridge University (1891–4) before returning to the Cape in 1895. He moved to the Transvaal and was appointed state attorney (1898). He became a distinguished leader in the South African War, agreeing with Louis Botha in 1902 that it was better to accept an honourable peace while Afrikaner forces were still relatively strong.

Throughout his life, he was committed to Botha's ideals of reconciliation between English-and Afrikaans-speaking Whites. In Botha's first Transvaal government of 1907, he became Colonial Secretary and Minister for Education. In 1908, he had a pivotal role in drawing up the Constitution of the Union of South Africa, becoming Minister of the Interior, Mines, and Defence in 1910, exchanging the first two portfolios for Finance in 1912. As Botha's deputy he supported the invasion of German South-West Africa (Namibia) during World War I, which he led as second-in-command. In 1916, he accepted a British request for help in the struggling campaign in East Africa, and was appointed a lieutenant-general in the British army. He represented South Africa at the Imperial Conference of 1917, and was persuaded by Lloyd George to stay in London and join the British War Cabinet. He set up the Royal Air Force as an independent service, became involved in British domestic politics (e.g. persuading Welsh miners not to go on strike), influenced strategic planning, and undertook countless diplomatic missions. He influenced the establishment of the League of Nations, and took part in the Paris Peace Conference.

‘Weary and sick of honours’ bestowed upon him by the British, he retired to South Africa, only to be made Prime Minister on Botha's death a few days later (27 August 1919). His conciliatory attitude towards the Unionists who favoured close ties with Britain continued to anger the Afrikaners, while his suppression of the general strike in the gold mines of 1922 triggered the opposition of Labour. Meanwhile, his suppression of the millenarian Black peasant Israelite movement in Bulbek in 1921 showed his willingness to use force against the last remnants of rural Black resistance to colonialism. In opposition, he was hostile to Hertzog's nationalist policies which he feared would alienate the English-speaking population. Under the influence of the Great Depression, he became Minister of Justice and Deputy Prime Minister under Hertzog in 1933.

While less of a segregationist than Hertzog, he accepted the 1936 racial laws (which formed the basis of the introduction of apartheid in 1948), satisfied that he had secured a good compromise. He broke with Hertzog when the latter opposed South Africa's entry into World War II and was defeated in Parliament. Despite continuing Afrikaner opposition he committed troops to the British war effort. In 1945, he took part in the establishment of the UN in San Francisco, successfully drawing up a preamble to the charter enshrining fundamental human rights. However, he was subsequently shaken by the UN's hostility to South Africa's racial policies and its desire to annex South-West Africa.

Accepting that an industrializing South Africa needed a skilled labour force, he improved the rights of Indians in Natal, invested in the education of Blacks, and relaxed the controls over Black urbanization. These measures were met with general hostility, however, and in 1948 he unexpectedly lost the elections to Malan. The most internationally respected South African statesman before De Klerk, at home his intellect became a burden as he failed to develop a ‘common touch’, while never fully appreciating the potential of Afrikaner nationalism on the one hand, and African grievances against segregation on the other.