General Jan Smuts and his First World War in Africa, 1914–1917

Incorporating His German South West and East Africa Campaigns

David Brock Katz

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2022
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781636240183
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

A new assessment of Jan Smuts's military leadership through examination of his World War I campaigning, demonstrating that he was a gifted general, conversant with the craft of maneuver warfare, and a command style steeped in the experiences of his time as a Boer general.
World War I ushered in a renewed scramble for Africa. At its helm, Jan Smuts grabbed the opportunity to realize his ambition of a Greater South Africa. He set his sights upon the vast German colonies of South-West Africa and East Africa – the demise of which would end the Kaiser's grandiose schemes for Mittelafrika. As part of his strategy to shift South Africa's borders inexorably northward, Smuts even cast an eye toward Portuguese and Belgian African possessions. Smuts, his abilities as a general much denigrated by both his contemporary and then later modern historians, was no armchair soldier. This cabinet minister and statesman donned a uniform and led his men into battle. He learned his soldiery craft under General Koos De la Rey's tutelage, and another soldier-statesman, General Louis Botha during the South African War 1899–1902. He emerged from that war, immersed in the Boer maneuver doctrine he devastatingly waged in the guerrilla phase of that conflict. His daring and epic invasion of the Cape at the head of his commando remains legendary. The first phase of the German South West African campaign and the Afrikaner Rebellion in 1914 placed his abilities as a sound strategic thinker and a bold operational planner on display. Champing at the bit, he finally had the opportunity to command the Southern Forces in the second phase of the German South West African campaign. Placed in command of the Allied forces in East Africa in 1916, he led a mixed bag of South Africans and Imperial troops against the legendary Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and his Shutztruppe. Using his penchant for Boer maneuver warfare together with mounted infantry led and manned by Boer Republican veterans, he proceeded to free the vast German territory from Lettow-Vorbeck's grip. Often leading from the front, his operational concepts were an enigma to the British under his command, remaining so to modern-day historians. Although unable to bring the elusive and wily Lettow-Vorbeck to a final decisive battle, Smuts conquered most of the territory by the end of his tenure in February 1917. General Jan Smuts and His First World War in Africa makes use of multiple archival sources and the official accounts of all the participants to provide a long-overdue reassessment of Smuts's generalship and his role in furthering the strategic aims of South Africa and the British Empire in Africa during World War I.

CHAPTER 1

Smuts Emerges: From Scholar to Intellectual—From Adversity to Reconciliation, 1870–1910

Early Years, 1870–1895

Smuts was born on the family farm, Bovenplaats, near Riebeeck West in the Cape Colony on 24 May 1870. He shared his birth year with a future adversary, the commander of the Schutztruppe in German East Africa, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (1870–1964). He was the second son of Jacobus Abraham Smuts (1845–1914) and Catharina Smuts (1847–1901). The Smuts family were typical Cape farmers who had inhabited the land in that area for many generations. One can assume that the Smuts family was relatively satisfied with their lot under British rule. The Cape Dutch settlers lost their colony permanently after succumbing to the British conquest of the Cape during 1806. Despite some friction under the British yoke, most of the early Cape Afrikaners readily or reluctantly accepted British rule. In time, they were prepared to build a unified South Africa under the British banner.¹

Jacobus Smuts took a leading part in the religious, social, and political affairs of the Riebeeck West Valley. He was elected as the Member for Malmesbury in the Cape Parliament in 1898.² His community did not define itself in opposition to the British or the United Kingdom, unlike the Boer Republics to the north.³ The Smuts family remained unmoved and substantially uninfluenced by the nationalism that led to the Great Trek and the formation of the Boer Republics in the northern regions of South Africa.⁴ The majority of Cape Afrikaners stayed loyal to the British Empire despite encouragement from the Boer Republics to rebel and join the Boer cause in the South African War (1899–1902).⁵ Those Cape Afrikaners imbibed British culture and became steadily anglicised despite attempts to retain Dutch as their language. Smuts was born into this contested environment brought about by a clash of Afrikaner cultures. Boer republicans, British colonists and Cape Afrikaners all competed for the soul of the Afrikaner.⁶

Cape Afrikaners, over time, formed alliances with the British and were represented by organisations such as the Afrikaner Bond (hereafter the Bond) under Jan Hofmeyr (1845–1909), ‘Onze Jan’.⁷ The Bond was formed 11 years after Smuts’s birth, as an association of all Afrikanders or people who considered their fatherland as Africa.⁸ Jacobus Smuts, member of the Cape legislature, pledged his support to Hofmeyr and the Bond. After the Cape had received self-government in 1872, there was an incentive to work toward a united South Africa, undivided by nationality. Initially mildly anti-imperialist, the Bond grew more inclined to cohabit with indirect British rule.⁹ However, a nationalistic strain in Cape Afrikanerdom began to take root especially after the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 and the First Anglo-Boer War of 1880/1.¹⁰ Cape Afrikaners experienced a complicated and ambiguous material relationship with British rule and a sentimental and ethnic link to the Afrikaners in the republics. We can assume that Smuts and his family were not immune to the political atmosphere and harboured many of these political and sentimental ambiguities.¹¹

In 1882, the 12-year-old Smuts, second son of the family, attended school for the first time owing to the death of his brother, who as the eldest son, was the only child designated to receive a formal education. Smuts, a late starter, made exceptional progress, completed his schooling, and gained admission to Victoria College in Stellenbosch in 1886. A letter to his professor, C. Murray, revealed his seriousness when he referred to himself as “retired and reserved”. He displayed none of the flippancies typically evident in an 18-year-old youth.¹² Smuts met his future 16-year-old wife Sybella (‘Isie’) Krige (1870–1954) on his way to class. Isie was as serious and formal as Smuts, and, like him, enjoyed poetry. The two seldom mixed with other students, and neither enjoyed sporting activities. This marked the beginning of a 53-year marriage which saw them exchange romantic poetry and immerse themselves in languages and literature. Smuts expressed a weakness for women which he described as an “inner affinity and appeal”. Smuts would strike up enduring friendships with many women during his lifetime, and he described his female friends as “more interesting”.¹³

Smuts first made acquaintance with Rhodes in 1888, when the mining magnate and politician was on the verge of becoming Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Hofmeyr had by then forged strong ties with Rhodes and shared the vision of expanding ‘white civilisation’ into the vast expanses of Africa, under the banner of a unified South Africa. It was not a straightforward alliance and reflected the complexities of Cape Afrikaner politics. Bond members tended to seek a united South Africa under one flag, just as Rhodes did, but under British rule.¹⁴ The links between the Bond and Rhodes, at first tenuous and distrustful, strengthened as time passed, with their goals seemingly congruent on the surface. Smuts, as leader of the debating society, delivered the welcoming address on the theme of pan-Africanism. He was developing a political outlook typical of his time at Stellenbosch. His moderate political upbringing in Riebeeck West, his family’s close ties with the Afrikaner Bond and rejection of Afrikaner exclusivism, and his philosophical pursuit of the embodiment of unity that would develop into his philosophy of holism, shaped his outspokenness as a supporter of South African unity.¹⁵ Two essays he produced during his time at Stellenbosch reveal his penchant for a unified South Africa.¹⁶

His departure from a path of studying divinity marked a pivotal moment in his intellectual development. The years at Victoria College broadened his mind to other intellectual possibilities. His membership of the Victoria College Volunteer Rifle Corps is of some significance. There he received military training and wore a British uniform and received his first exposure to military structure and discipline.¹⁷ Smuts graduated in 1891 with first-class honours in literature and science. His strong academic record gained him the Ebden scholarship through which he studied law at Christ’s College Cambridge in Britain. An early indicator of Smuts’s penchant for expansionism was his interest in Delagoa Bay. In an essay written in 1891 on the ‘South African Customs Union’ where he referred to Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo, the capital of Mozambique) as the “finest natural harbour in South Africa” and the possibility that it may become part of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR, or South African Republic) should they join the customs union.¹⁸ Smuts attributes the writing of this essay to his early political awakening and his realisation that he was a member of the “great South African community”.¹⁹ He graduated in 1894 with double first-class honours and was in the process the recipient of many prestigious academic awards. After graduating, Smuts passed the examinations for the Inns of Court and entered the Middle Temple. His academic performance was lauded in 1970 by Lord Todd, Master of Christ’s College, who placed him among John Milton and Charles Darwin.²⁰

In June 1895, despite the prospect of a bright future in the United Kingdom, a homesick Smuts journeyed back to the Cape Colony. His return coincided with the heyday of the Bond and Rhodes’s tenure as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.²¹ He attempted to build a law practice but received few briefs and sought other means to supplement his meagre income. He involved himself in politics and journalism to make ends meet and soon acquired a taste for it. His association with the Afrikaner Bond drew him closer to the ideals of Rhodes.

When Mr Cecil Rhodes appeared on the scene in 1889 as Premier of the Cape Colony under Bond auspices, with a platform of racial conciliation, political consolidation of South Africa and northern expansion, my natural bias as well as the glamour of magnificence which distinguished this policy from the ‘parish pump politics’ of his predecessors, made me a sort of natural convert to his views. I began to dream of a great South Africa in which the English and the Boer peoples would dwell together in happy concord.²²

The Bond laid claim to representing all those who considered Africa to be their home, rather than Europe, and sought the federation of South Africa into one independent state. Rhodes envisioned a fusion of English and Afrikaner culture where white ranks would close against the “majority of prolific barbarism” and a white South African nationhood would be proof against inter-European rivalries.²³ These political views ran like a golden thread through Smuts’s long career and persisted long after Smuts came to despise Rhodes and the jingoes.

Rhodes shared a dream with those of the Bond of a united South Africa where English and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans would govern themselves, free of the British government. His vision extended beyond the borders of South Africa and included the territories right up to Egypt. A statue of Rhodes in Cape Town shows him pointing north with the inscription, “Your hinterland is there”.²⁴ In these formative years, the unified and expansionist ideals of the Bond attracted Smuts over the isolationist policies of Paul Kruger (1825–1904), the third President of the ZAR, one of the independent Boer Republics north of the Vaal River from 1852. He embraced Rhodes and his ideas with vigour, to the point of becoming obsessed.²⁵ Smuts, although blinded with admiration for Rhodes, still harboured some empathy for Kruger and the ZAR. He understood the conflict between the pastoral values of the Boers and the new industrialists installing themselves in Johannesburg; however, he was at odds with the methods employed by Kruger to retain hegemony for the Boers in the ZAR.²⁶ Kruger deployed a strategy of divide and rule which ultimately set the ZAR Boer against the Cape Boer and Englishman against Boers. He was against Kruger dividing the South African nation that he would have preferred to emerge from the disparate factions.²⁷

In October 1895, Hofmeyr approached Smuts, tasking him to speak at a meeting in Kimberley where he would defend Rhodes and his policies. There he defended the government of Rhodes as “progressive”, and stated his support for its aims. Smuts identified the two fundamental issues facing South Africa as the consolidation of the white race (English and Afrikaner) and the relation of the white to the ‘coloured’ community. Smuts pointed out the challenge whites faced in forging their destiny against overwhelming numbers and “lifting up and opening up that vast deadweight of immemorial barbarism and animal savagery to the light and blessing of ordered civilisation”. Faced with this “threat”, Smuts offered white consolidation based on a “great South African nationality and pervading national sentiment” as the answer. Smuts’s ideas on nationality coincided with that of the Bond where national unity was prerequisite to a political union: “There must be a people before there could be a state.” Smuts identified that the new material wealth of the ZAR divided its people into capitalists who owned the mines and Afrikaners who ran the government. Material wealth divided instead of bringing together the people of the ZAR. The relationship of Rhodes representing commercial and territorial interests, and Hofmeyr of the Bond representing a national movement, set the groundwork for future South Africa. Smuts saw the ZAR as dangerously ambitious and increasingly alienated from the Cape through courting European continental support.²⁸

The Kimberley speech provided a deep insight into Smuts’s somewhat paternalistic views on how white South Africans would deal with their black compatriots. Whites had a civilising obligation toward blacks and held a position of guardianship over them. His view was that even where whites and blacks mingled commercially, the latter came off worse than before the encounter. He favoured blacks receiving “more physical and manual than intellectual” education, and he was not beyond discriminatory legislation in the form of “class” differentiation. Smuts was not a firm believer in democracy until people reached a stage of political development which allowed them to be entrusted with the responsibilities of self-government.²⁹ When not contextualis...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Smuts Emerges: From Scholar to Intellectual—From Adversity to Reconciliation, 1870–1910
• 2 South Africa’s Entry into the First World War, 1910–1914
• 3 The German South West African Campaign and the Afrikaner Rebellion, 1914
• 4 The German South West African Campaign, 1915
• 5 Salaita Hill and the Clash of Military Doctrine
• 6 Smuts and the Kilimanjaro Operation in East Africa, March 1916
• 7 Smuts and the Conquest of German East Africa, 1916–1917
• 8 Epilogue: Smuts on the World Stage, 1917–1919
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Chronology of the GSWA campaign
• Endnotes
• Sources