SMUTS AND HERTZOG

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 9, 5 October 1940, Page 8

SMUTS AND HERTZOG

Political Personalities In South Africa

RIVAL LEADERS

Interesting word-portraits of South African political personalities were given by Professor J. Y. T. Greig, M.A., D.Litt (Glasgow), professor of English in the University of Witwatersraud, South Africa, iu the course of a public lecture at Victoria University College on "South Africa Today.” “I know General Smuts,” he said, "but only slightly. I have iiad the privilege on two occasions of spending a couple of hours with him in his study at. the farm outside Pretoria which he likes to retire to when he can; and a remarkable study it is, a true expression of its owner: a very huge room, with an enormous Hat-topped stinkwood desk at one end, rather battered and not very comfortable chairs scattered about, every wall crammed to the roof with books in English, Afrikaans, Nederland#, French, German, Latin and Greek, and windows iu the ceiling rather like the skylights on the deck of a ship giving light to a saloon two decks below. One cannot talk there in a whisper, partly because of the size of the room, but partly also because your host always keeps the skylights open and swarms of bees are buzzing iu and out the whole time. Though lie’s often being stung and keeps a little bottle of some antidote standing on his desk, be won't have the bees excluded. Well-Stocked Mind. “An hour or two in that study is a very interesting experience. Your host won’t talk South African politics if he can help it. but he’ll talk about almost anything else: international affairs, metaphysics, literature, East

Africa, botany, the quantum theory, law, or his grandchildren. And he’ll make the impression of having a greater amount of exact information at his command on a greater variety of subjects than one would think possible even for a man who had devoted all his life to study, let alone one who, for some fifty years of it, had been a soldier, lawyer and active politician. His range and his grasp of essentials, whether the topic be South African grasses, the geology of Tanganyika, the campaigns of Robert E. Lee, or the philosophy of Heraclitus, are astounding. And you realize withal, after only a few minutes’ conversation, that here is a man capable of great physical endurance for all his 70 years, and capable, too, if he is crossed, of ruthlessness. The title of Armstrong’s book about him is aptly chosen—‘Grey Steel.’ “There isn’t a shadow of a doubt that General Smuts is wholly sincere in hig belief that only by remaining and co-operatiug within the British Commonwealth can South Africans,

never mind what their language and traditions may be, enjoy the full and free life they desire. Most of the Afrikaners distrust him for this reason: he has sold himself, they say, to the English, and without the Englishspeaking South Africans behind him would be nobody. They call him ‘Slim Dannie,’ ‘slim’ meaning ‘crooked, not to be trusted.’ I don’t know whether he cares very much, but he must be used to it by now. At all events, the main lines of his policy have not altered during more than 30 years. “Between 1933 and 1939, when he act-

ed as second-in-command to has former and present political opponent, General Hertzog, in the Coalition Government, it must have cost him many a severe effort to subordinate his own very strong personality to that of his chief for the time being and to compromise on certain issues in order to keep the United Party together. He is not, one fancies, a num who gives way easily, even, on small questions.” A Marked Contrast. General Hertzog, with whom he had had only one short conversation and whom he could not therefore claim to know at all, offered a marked contrast, continued the lecturer/ He was famous for his exceeding charm of manner. Men followed General Smuts because they thought he was right and would submit to his rather brusque manner because they respected him and wished his policy to prevail. Men followed General Hertzog from an overmastering affection, even when, in their cooler moments out of his presence, they

thought him headstrong and perverse. “I know Afrikaners,” said Professor Greig, “who disagree with him on radical issues and yet cannot bring themselves to leave the party that he leads.” The “Purified Nationalists.” Dr. Malan. leader of the “Purified Nationalists,” had grown more and more truculent and waspish as debater and electioneer. When in office, as Minister of the Interior up to 1933, he had proved himself a good administrator, ready to behave justly and reasonably. To a friend of the lecturer’s he had once remarked: “Never mind what I say; watch what I do.” The remark was significant. It often seemed as if Dr. Malan himself did not mind what he said on the political platform or in the House of Assembly; if it pleased and inflamed his supporters, good; if it contradicted something he had said not long before, or exacerbated racial feeling, no matter for that.

“He began public life as a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church,” added the lecturer, “and may be regarded as the most notable of our predikaant—politicians—a class of men with whom we sometimes think wo are overstocked in South Africa. At the moment he has to work in equal but uneasy partnership with General Hertzog, whom he dislikes and who dislikes him; Jnit neither will give way to the other as Leader of the Opposition. A Future Prime Minister?

“Balancing Dr. Malan on the other side of the House is Mr. Jan Ilofmcyer, one of the most remarkable men in tlie country and almost certainly a future Prime Minister. Still well under 50, he has always shown himself extraordinarily precocious. He graduated at Cape Town in his teens, won a Rhodes Scholarship, and was back from Oxford and professor of classics in Johannesburg in his early twenties. Thereafter, lie has gone from one pub-

lic office to another, and made ids mark in. all. His powers of work are prodigious: lie is tlie sort, of man who undertakes tlie work of three or four ministries and in bis spare time reads for

tlie Bar. 1 should say lie was the best public sjieaker in the Union. “Nor does lie lack courage. lie resigned from tlie Coalition Government, much to tlie annoyance of General Smuts, because he disapproved of the Government’s native policy. It was commonly said at tlie time that he had ruined his political career; and it looked very like it. But as things have fallen out, he hasn’t. He is back in office with Smuts. Indeed, he is combining the duties of three ministries—finance, education and mines.”