Louis Botha

Prime minister of the Union of South Africa (1910-1919)

• Born: September 27, 1862
• Birthplace: Near Greytown, Natal (now in South Africa)
• Died: August 27, 1919
• Place of death: Pretoria, Transvaal, Union of South Africa (now in South Africa)

During the Boer War, Botha fought valiantly to preserve the independence of the Transvaal. When the war was lost, he worked successfully for a united South Africa under the British crown and became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa.

Early Life

Louis Botha (lew-EE BOH-tah) was born in the territory that was later to become the Union of South Africa, which consisted of four distinct entities: two British possessions, Cape Colony and Natal, and two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Botha was born in Natal but grew up in the Orange Free State and was associated during his public life with the Transvaal. Reared on an isolated farm in a typically large Boer family, he received little formal schooling but learned much about human nature, white and black. When only eighteen, he was entrusted with the sheep and cattle that the family pastured on the borders of Zululand. After his father’s death, he joined a party of Boers who were taking part in a civil war among the Zulus and was rewarded with a farm in the district of Vryheid; he took part in the government of the small republic that was organized there, and, when Vryheid was merged with the Transvaal, he became active in this larger sphere. Farming remained his chief interest, however, and he rapidly expanded his holdings in land and livestock. In 1888, he married Annie Emmett, a relative of the Irish patriot Robert Emmett, and lived happily with her until his death.

In the meantime, tension between the Boer republics and the British Empire was growing. The discovery of gold on the Rand had brought a stream of immigrants, chiefly British, into the Transvaal; The Boers called them “Uitlanders,” and, although they brought prosperity with them, the government of President Paul Kruger was careless of their rights, taxing them heavily and denying them the franchise. They in turn were supported by Sir Alfred Milner, the governor of Cape Colony, who pressed the Boers to recognize British suzerainty. Botha, now a member of the Volksraad, or legislature, favored concessions to the Uitlanders, as did Jan Christian Smuts, who later became Botha’s loyal ally in peace and war. Both Kruger and Milner were stubborn, however, and Kruger precipitated a war on October 11, 1899.

Life’s Work

The war began with a Boer invasion of Natal, intended to overwhelm the British troops there before reinforcements could arrive. Initially the invasion was a success; the British were cut off at Ladysmith, while the commandos mounted infantry organized into regional units swept around them and far into Natal, at one point capturing Winston Churchill, who was covering the war as a journalist. Botha at first served as a simple field cornet a local commander under Petrus Joubert, but his natural aggressiveness and the illness of his superiors made him practically second in command on the Natal front; later he became commander, and finally, after the death of Joubert, commandant general of the Transvaal. As British reinforcements poured in, the Boers found it expedient to retreat to the Tugela River, where they could block any British advance into the Transvaal while still keeping the Ladysmith garrison under siege. Botha fortified the line with a series of nearly invisible trenches, hoping to lure the British into a trap. Sir Redvers Buller was repulsed at the Battle of Colenso but evaded the trap. On his second try, at Spion Kop, he was foiled only by a heroic counterattack organized by Botha himself. At Pieter’s Hill (February 27, 1900), Buller finally broke through and relieved Ladysmith. On the same day, Boer resistance on their other front in the west collapsed. Botha, now in supreme command, could only fight delaying actions before Johannesburg and Pretoria were occupied and the Transvaal government fled eastward toward the Mozambique border.

Some thought the war had ended, but Botha simply shifted to a guerrilla campaign, in which the Boers won many small victories and even penetrated the Cape Colony. Lord Kitchener, now the British commander, responded ruthlessly, devastating Boer farms and herding women and children into concentration camps. By May, 1902, Botha and Smuts were ready to make peace and to dissuade those among the Boers who wished to fight to the death. The Boer republics became British colonies, but otherwise the terms were mild.

Following the peace, Botha and two other generals went to Europe to try to raise money for the relief of Boers impoverished by the war. They got little from private sources but did get an appropriation of eight million pounds from Parliament after Botha had argued the case in a magazine article. Back in Africa, Botha, having skillfully repaired his own shattered fortunes, returned to politics. His main objects were to effect a reconciliation between Boers and Britons (and also between the “bitter-enders” and the “hand-suppers,” the patriots and the quislings among the Boers) and to obtain self-government within the Empire for the former republics, perhaps eventually as part of a unified South Africa. He began by founding Het Volk (the people), an association through which the Boers could assert themselves and recover their self-confidence. The Transvaal attained self-government in 1907, and Botha became its first prime minister. Among other problems with which he had to deal were the related problems of language and education. The peace treaty had guaranteed equality for English and Afrikaans, the Boers’ Dutch dialect. Many English speakers expected Dutch to die out, while some Boers expected the English to learn Dutch; Botha and Smuts simply wished children to be instructed in the language they already knew. Botha naturally was very interested in farming; he established a land bank, and he hoped to make the Boers’ somewhat primitive farming methods more scientific, even if it meant keeping on English-speaking experts originally appointed by Milner. Already popular in England, he reaffirmed that popularity by presenting King Edward with a typical South African product, the largest diamond in the world, for the crown jewels.

Meanwhile sentiment had been growing for a union, or at least a federation, of the four South African colonies under the Crown, and in 1908 a national convention was called. Botha and Smuts had little difficulty in persuading the other delegates to support a close union rather than a loose federation and to accept English and Afrikaans as equally official languages. More difficult was the question of a capital. In the end, Botha’s compromise was accepted: Pretoria was to be the seat of the executive, Cape Town the meeting place of the Parliament, and Bloemfontein the seat of the supreme court. The constitution was ratified by the British parliament, and Botha was invited to become the first prime minister; he held this post until his death.

The last period of Botha’s life brought for him a whole series of triumphs in peace and war, but it was also a period of almost intolerable emotional strain, caused by the opposition of the bitter-enders, some of whom had been his comrades in the war. Somewhat reluctantly he had taken General Jan Hertzog into his cabinet, but Hertzog was so violently opposed to Botha’s policy of reconciliation and so vocal in expressing his hatred of the British that he had to be maneuvered out again. The outbreak of war in 1914 produced an inevitable crisis. Botha thought that both duty and self-interest obliged South Africa to support Great Britain, but the bitter-enders wished to stay neutral or even to seize the opportunity to restore the republics. An armed rebellion erupted, which Botha put down easily and mercifully. Botha could then answer Great Britain’s request that he occupy German Southwest Africa with South African troops. Like the Boers in 1899, the Germans were vastly outnumbered but had geography on their side. Botha himself led the invasion, moving swiftly and efficiently, and giving the Germans no time to organize a guerrilla campaign. He was also merciful, even letting the German reservists keep their rifles for defense against the natives. Later he sent South African troops under Smuts to fight in German East Africa. At the end of the war, Botha and Smuts participated in the Versailles Conference, where both enjoyed considerable prestige and influence; they were unsuccessful, however, in moderating the terms that were to be imposed on the Germans. Botha, moreover, was in ill health and died on August 27, 1919, soon after his return to South Africa.

Significance

In contemplating Botha’s career, one is struck by the number of fields in which he achieved success without any formal training and sometimes without a meaningful apprenticeship: farming, stock breeding, business speculation, war (regular and guerrilla, including fortification), statecraft, and diplomacy. Smuts spoke of Botha’s intuition, which may be a fair term, for Botha often reached appropriate conclusions in a short time and without communicating the thought processes that led to them. Smuts also spoke of Botha’s sympathy, his ability to place himself in the position of another, whether to win his friendship or defeat him in battle. The great theme that ran through his life was the theme of reconciliation: of Botha with Kitchener, of bitter-enders with hand-suppers, of Boer with Briton, of Germany with the allies. One would like to add “of black with white,” but Botha, though he spoke several African languages and was fair enough in specific dealings, was never willing to share power with the native South Africans.

Basil Williams called Botha “a simple, God-fearing man, not clever, but with the immense wisdom of the patient and loving.” Smuts called him “the greatest, sweetest, cleanest soul of all my days.” These pronouncements may seem extravagant, but they find confirmation in the facts of his life.

Bibliography

Davenport, T. R. H., and Christopher Saunders. South Africa: A Modern History. 5th ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. A highly condensed and detailed history written from a liberal, African point of view. One can trace the events and policies of Botha’s career back to their sources in the past and forward to their often disastrous consequences in the future. Includes a foreword by Desmond Tutu.

Engelenburg, Franz V. General Louis Botha. Introduction by J. C. Smuts. London: George G. Harrap, 1929. Originally written in Afrikaans by a journalist who knew Botha well, the book has much interesting detail. It is better on the politics than on the military aspects.

Garson, Noel G. Louis Botha or John X. Merriman: The Choice of South Africa’s First Prime Minister. London: Athlone Press, 1969. A brief but thorough piece of research. Perhaps the choice of Botha was inevitable, for Merriman’s support came chiefly from the bitter-enders.

Pakenham, Thomas. The Boer War. New York: Random House, 1979. Thoroughly researched, massively annotated and detailed, equally good on the political and military aspects. Pakenham goes beyond previous histories in his coverage of civilian sufferings and of the part played by blacks. Includes a bibliography and illustrations.

Scholtz, Leopold. Why the Boers Lost the War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Scholtz, a South African journalist and historian, analyzes the most important strategic decisions and military theories of both the Boers and the British to determine why Britain emerged victorious.

Warwick, Peter, ed. The South African War. London: Longman, 1980. A well-edited anthology of essays on all aspects of the war: “Women in the War,” “The Poetry of War,” and so forth. Especially relevant to Botha’s career are “Military Aspects of the War” and “Reconstruction in the Transvaal.” The book has extensive bibliographies and lavish illustrations.

Williams, Basil. Botha, Smuts, and South Africa. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946. Written by a distinguished British scholar, this book covers a large body of material in a compact and readable form. Includes maps and a brief bibliography.