Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr (20 March 1894 – 3 December 1948) was a South African politician and intellectual in the years preceding apartheid.

In his lifetime he was regarded as one of the cleverest men in the country, and it was widely expected that he would eventually become Prime Minister of South Africa.

[2] Later in his life he would be known to many as "Hoffie", this diminutive form of his surname even being used in cartoons of Hofmeyr published in South African newspapers.

He was raised by his widowed mother Deborah, a cousin to Christiaan Beyers, after his father Andries Brink Hofmeyr died when Jan was three years old.

This strong relationship was probably formed when Jan fell ill with hydrocephaly at age two; he soon recovered and according to the medical wisdom of the day it was felt that he would either become a genius or an idiot.

[5] Apart from his studies, Hofmeyr also became active in the university's Debating Society (succeeding Oliver Schreiner as its president), worked as treasurer in its college magazine, and volunteered in its Students' Christian Association.

[6] In September 1913, Hofmeyr sailed from Cape Town and finally went to Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Once he had finished with his studies at Oxford, Hofmeyr considered joining the YMCA as a non-combatant, which would have meant serving the South African troops that were stationed in East Africa.

[10] He would hold this commitment to voluntary youth service throughout his life, attending Student Christian Association camps back home in South Africa, even when he was the Administrator of the Transvaal Province, at one time even donating to the society a camp site which was located in Anerley, in Natal and is still running to this day.

On his return from Oxford in June 1916, Hofmeyr was appointed to lecture Classics at his alma mater, the South African College, Cape Town.

Hofmeyr's own line was that the two need not have been mutually exclusive, that Afrikaners could have a national identity without separating their country from the British Empire as the republicanists were clamouring to do.

The School of Mines was disappointed to lose him so soon and their Council decided in March 1919 to offer him the principalship of their fledgling university, after the previous Principal had died.

The principal was given the enormous task of expanding the university which then only had 301 students, a corps that could easily have been 10 times bigger in a city as big as Johannesburg.

The situation reached an impasse when Council and Senate of the university disagreed on Hofmeyr's (apparently unfair) dismissal of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

Malan had approached the young Hofmeyr, trying to sway him to join the South African Party as its Chief Organising Secretary.

Hofmeyr did not have to campaign in an election to get this job, the position of provincial administrator was strictly acquired through appointment by a sitting Prime Minister, who at that time was Jan Smuts.

He began working as Transvaal administrator on 1 March 1924 yet, due to contractual obligations, remained on as principal of the University of the Witwatersand for another five months.

[21] This was nothing new to Hofmeyr; his uncle Onze Jan had been active in this sphere throughout his career and had always had sympathy with English as language medium, and with the British Empire.

Hofmeyr chose to oppose the government of the day and entered parliament in 1929 as the South African Party's member for Johannesburg North.

The National Party was already espousing antisemitic policies that would eventually make them sympathetic to Adolf Hitler and to Nazi Germany.

[citation needed] Though delivered from memory Hofmeyr's speech was not a success; he was too long-winded and too academic, so that even though he championed the rights of his many Jewish constituents he appeared to be fence-sitting.

[25] During the 1930s the South African parliament spent an enormous effort in legislating various issues surrounding what was called the Native Problem.

A notable blemish on his record is his silence regarding the Native Laws Amendment Bill, which proposed to control the migration of black workers from rural areas into cities and towns, and also to control where the black workers inside cities and towns were allowed to live.

When Malan introduced his Higher Education Control Bill into parliament, hoping to gain for himself a rigid control of university appointments and budgets throughout the nation, Hofmeyr attacked the Bill as a curtailment of academic freedom, saying that Malan was hoping to become "the Grand Inquisitor of institutions of higher education".

So when other cabinet members leant over backwards in the interests of staying in government, Hofmeyr stood alone to oppose destructive legislation such as the laws aimed at removing the black franchise.

[31] Later he also left the party caucus because of his opposition to the Asiatics Bill, which restricted Indians from buying land except in defined areas.

Governor General Sir Patrick Duncan asked Parliament to vote on the issue and—after a convincing show of support for Britain—Hertzog resigned, leaving Smuts to become Prime Minister once more.

In cabinet he could at times handle six or seven ministerial portfolios simultaneously, even while acting as prime minister in Smuts's absence.

[34] General Jan Smuts paid tribute to Hofmeyr both at the graveside, and on the evening before in a national radio broadcast.

Of Hofmeyr he said:[35]He has passed on, but his service and the high spirit in which he sought to serve his country and his fellow-men of all races remain our abiding possessions.