Early life of Jan Smuts

By rural tradition, the eldest son would be the only child to receive a full formal education; however, on the death of his elder brother in 1882, 12-year-old Jan was sent to school for the first time.

With this strong academic background, he applied for, and won, the Ebden scholarship for overseas study, electing to read law at Christ's College, Cambridge.

Jacobus Smuts lived in much the same manner as his forefathers — a hard-working farmer, a pillar of the Church, and one who took a leading part in the social and political affairs of the neighbourhood.

While he remained at the farm, his elder brother, Michiel, was sent to begin his schooling in Riebeek West, destined, like his uncle Boudewyn, for a future as a predikant in the Dutch Reformed Church.

At this time the relations between master and servant, between black and white, were certainly not based on social equality; nevertheless, on these Swartland farms there was little of the rigid segregation which was already emerging elsewhere in South Africa and which was later to have such profound consequences.

Hofmeyr changed the fundamental basis of the organisation, from one preaching Afrikaner separatism to one which combined a pragmatic policy of economic protectionism for Cape farmers and their produce with a call for unity between the English and Dutch-speaking populations and cooperation with the Colonial authorities.

As he wrote in 1902, aged 32: How well I remember the years I spent tending the cattle on the large farm, roaming over all its far expanse of veld, in which every kloof, every valley, every koppie was endeared to me by the most familiar associations.

[citation needed] Within weeks Jan was sent from the familiar surroundings of Klipfontein to a boarding house at Riebeek West, to take his brother's place at the school of Mr TC Stoffberg.

[17] This vocation, though imposed upon him by his parents, was by no means regarded as an imposition by Jan, growing up as he had in an environment where adherence to the Church and piety of deeds counted for a good deal.

Foremost amongst these was his rudimentary grasp of English, at a time when it was the main medium of instruction[20] and crucial for any Afrikaner who wished to play a role in wider Cape society.

One story told of him during this enforced convalescence describes how he used to involve the headmaster's youngest son in his subterfuges, bribing the four-year-old child to bring him books from his father's study.

Embarking upon her deed of kindness she found, to her astonishment, the real reason for Jan's restlessness — underneath his bedclothes he was making a valiant effort to conceal an immense pile of contraband books!

[24]In the event, Smuts's resolution to "make the proper use of my precious time" overcame such moral and religious temptations as a small town like Stellenbosch was capable of providing.

Jan immediately shut himself away in his rooms, spending the next days in total seclusion, working from sunrise to sunset in the attempt to master the grammar and vocabulary upon which he was shortly to be tested.

At that age Jan found himself able to memorise large portions of book simply by reading through them, and though this ability gradually diminished as the years passed, it never entirely disappeared.

At Stellenbosch his facility for memorising was at its peak...[28]With the hurdle of Matriculation behind him the start of the 1887 term finally saw Smuts admitted as a student of Victoria College and enrolled as an undergraduate of the University of the Cape of Good Hope.

Yet, though religion continued to serve in this central role, his studies at Stellenbosch, with their decidedly scientific bias, led Smuts towards a more critical examination of his faith.

[36] The time spent in her company, whether reading poetry and singing together at the piano, or walking together in the mornings and evenings on the journey to and from Victoria College, did much to break down Smuts's social isolation, enabling him to cast some of those protective prejudices which he had harboured of the "puerile element", that is to say his peers.

This intellectual quest was later to develop into his philosophy of Holism, but even at this early undeveloped stage he brought these ideas to bear in shaping his political opinions.

The first of these, entitled South African Customs Union,[39] was written in 1890 in competition for the JB Ebden prize offered by the University of the Cape of Good Hope.

[40] Smuts considered that this estrangement had come about largely as the result of petty jealousies, fostered by politicians interested more in their own parochial concerns than those of South Africa as a whole.

Smuts identified the inhibiting factor as the relations between Briton and Boer - particularly the effect of the influx of British emigrants to the gold mines of the Transvaal on the deeply conservative Afrikaner population.

With its vast mineral wealth the Transvaal was rapidly becoming the most significant economic unit of South Africa, but the sudden tide of primarily British immigrants caused a great deal of unrest, with the established population decrying the immorality and degeneracy they perceived in the new mineworkers.

Smuts, though sympathising with the concerns of the old population, fearful their established ways and traditions would be swamped in a flood of migration, urged the Afrikaners to embrace the new spirit of dynamism which he saw the new migrants injecting.

My mind was simply dazzled and attracted by beauty in all its intellectual forms ... My passion for nature made me spend most of my free time in the mountains, along the streams and in the innumerable winding valleys.

Whereas at the outset of his university career he was content to follow his parents' wishes and be ordained into the Church, as his time at Victoria College came to an end he found himself more and more unwilling to commit to this path.

[54] Yet during this time Smuts had not found himself without social opportunities - as his biographer WK Hancock wrote: ...[H]is fellow ... lodger was a serious and friendly man called John Gregg, who became in later life Archbishop of Armagh.

Early in his first term Smuts received and accepted invitations to join the debating society and to write for the College magazine; but the never followed up the chances of friendship which these activities put in his way.

The sale of Smuts's personal livestock holdings on the family farm had enabled him to pay his sea passage and left him with a small residue to bank, yet despite this there remained a substantial gap between his resources and his essential needs as a student.

[60] Though no longer so reclusive as he had been during his first year, he remained extremely serious and devoted to his work; an attitude which served as a barrier separating him from the English undergraduates, though not from the Fellows at Cambridge, with many of whom he struck up friendships.