Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950) and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918-2013) belonged to and were shaped by two different epochs in South Africa, yet left an indelible mark on its history. Sociologist Roger Southall has brought them together, so to speak, in a book, Smuts & Mandela, The Men Who Made South Africa. Among the many parallels he draws between the two men – one a racist white supremacist and the other a non-racialist and African nationalist – is that they were both nation-builders. Smuts made the state which Mandela fought to transform. We asked the author to explain.
What do you want readers to take away from this book?
The dustcover says it all:
This book makes the case that we cannot fully understand Mandela without first understanding Smuts and how South Africa continues to struggle with the legacy he left behind.
This begs the question: why I have chosen to compare the lives and legacies of Jan Smuts, a white supremacist leader of South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, the black nationalist leader of the liberation movement which led the country to democracy?
There will certainly be those who will query the moral and historical legitimacy of this comparison. But I believe it is simultaneously challenging and informative. It forces us to grapple with the disjuncture with the past that took place in 1994, when South Africa became a democracy, as well as with the continuities.
The present had to build upon the past, because the past cannot be wished away. We must seek to understand it, in part in its own terms (how did the makers of that past themselves see their present and justify their actions?), and partly from our own vantage point (what have been the consequences of that past and the actions of those who made it?).
My subtitle to the book, The Men Who Made South Africa, is obviously hyperbole. No individual ever makes history on their own. It is always a collective product. Nonetheless, there are always those individuals whose actions are more consequential than others’. And in broad terms, I want to drive home the message that the character of the freedom struggle waged by Mandela and the anti-apartheid African National Congress was unavoidably shaped by the nature of the state which Smuts helped construct with the negotiation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Who was Jan Smuts?
Smuts is widely credited as the major figure who shaped the making of the Union of South Africa in 1909-10. It brought together two former Boer republics, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, with the longstanding colonies of the Cape and Natal into a single country in the wake of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 (South African War). The war had resulted in the British bringing an end to Boer independence. However, the state created by the union was primarily based on white male suffrage. Its primary characteristic was its denial of the vote to the “new South Africa’s” black majority.
Following the union, Smuts played a major role in the erection of segregation (whereby passage of key laws like the Natives Land Act of 1913 entrenched white supremacy) before becoming prime minister for the first time in 1919-24. He became prime minister again between 1939 and 1948, leading South Africa into and out of the second world war.
Throughout this period, Smuts became an international statesman, playing highly significant roles in the formation of the League of Nations after the first world war and the United Nations after the second world war.
Read more: Anglo-Boer War: how a bloody conflict 125 years ago still shapes South Africa
Smuts has been largely forgotten in popular memory. There are two reasons for this. In South Africa, after ejecting him from power in 1948, his opponents in the National Party sought to erase him from the history books. For reasons I explore in the book, they regarded him as a traitor to the Afrikaner people, the descendants of largely Dutch and French migrants to South Africa who had resented coming under British rule and influence since the mid-19th century.
Beyond South Africa, because Smuts had been one of the architects of segregation, it became convenient to forget the praise which had been heaped upon him by the western world.
It does not follow that we should continue to forget the role that Smuts played in South African and world history if we want to understand South Africa today.
Who was Nelson Mandela?
Mandela’s life has become a triumphant morality tale.
As the telling goes, it begins during the 1950s when he played a leading role in the mass campaigns against apartheid, rising in the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) and then deftly promoting the cause of freedom in the 1956-1961 Treason Trial and 1963-64 Rivonia Trial. This was followed by 27 years in jail on account of his beliefs.
During the 1980s Mandela prodded a recalcitrant apartheid regime towards the negotiating table, and led the ANC during the negotiations which brought South Africa to democracy. He then achieved global recognition when, as president, his efforts to promote national reconciliation transformed South Africa and consolidated democracy.
Read more: What happened to Nelson Mandela's South Africa? A new podcast series marks 30 years of post-apartheid democracy
Whereas Smuts was to be largely forgotten after his defeat in the 1948 election, Mandela became an international icon.
But history is always changing, and as I argue in the book, interest in Smuts is now reviving. I argue that this is because of the need for a more careful, more critical assessment of Mandela. Smuts was the man who, above all others, made the racist South Africa of 1910. This required Mandela, the man who above all others made the non-racial South Africa of 1994, to build on the foundations Smuts had laid.
How does comparing them help us understand the country’s history?
My book traces the history of 20th century South Africa through the two lives of Smuts and Mandela. I trace parallels in their lives: they were freedom fighters, state makers, nation builders and global statesmen.
I explore how it was that these particular leaders of a relatively unimportant country managed to become major figures in the global imagination.
A focus on individuals is only ever just one way to study history. Nonetheless, it is a valid one, and the popularity of biographies suggests that it is a highly attractive way for many non-historians to read their history. I wanted to write something that spoke to a readership beyond the academy.
I also wanted to stress that although 1994 brought a massive change to the South African state and economy, there are numerous continuities with the past. Smuts made the state which Mandela fought to transform.
Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
