Military Leaders From South Africa

"I see that every white man is an enemy to the black, and every black man an enemy to the white, they do not love each other and never will."

"Dingarn's conduct was worthy of a savage as he is. It was base and treacherous, to say the least of it – the offspring of cowardice and fear. Suspicious of his warlike neighbours, jealous of their power, dreading the neighbourhood of their arms, he felt as every savage would have done in like circumstances that these men were his enemies, and being unable to attack them openly, he massacred them clandestinely."

"Pray to your God to keep me from the power of Dingaan."

"If that is your belief you are of no use to me or to my people; we knew all that before you came to preach to us. I and my people believe there is only one God – I am that God. We believe there is one place to which all good people go; that is Zululand. We believe that there is one place where all bad people go. There (pointing to a rocky hill to the north, the hill of execution). There is hell where all my wicked people go. The chief who lives there is Umatiwane, the head of the Amangwane. I put him to death, and made him the devil chief of all wicked people who die. You see that there are but two chiefs in this country – Matiwane and myself; I am the Great Chief – the God of the living; Umatiwane is the Great Chief of the wicked. I have now told you my belief; I do not want you to trouble me again with the fiction of you English people. You can remain in my country as long as you conduct yourself properly."

"That the new Prime Minister is a man of remarkable originality and force of character, richly endowed with many of the higher qualities which make a great soldier, we learnt to our cost during the war. But until now we have not known that he also has some, at least, of the gifts of a statesman. He may fail, as others with those rare gifts have failed, for want of the much more commonplace but indispensable abilities which are needed for the daily routine of office; but he has proved that he has the largeness of mind which, rising above the trivialities of the day, can discern and grasp the vital factors of the future. No smaller man would have spoken with the daring candour that marks his speech. ... He spoke as the representative of the great united nation. That is the ideal of a statesman – an ideal which throughout the long struggle with General Botha and his gallant countrymen was held up to us constantly as the true goal of our efforts and our sacrifices by the men who were most resolutely bent on overthrowing the old Boer oligarchy as an insuperable barrier to its accomplishment."

"Following the Boer War came a sharp cleavage among the Boers. That great farm-bred soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, accepted the verdict and became the leader of what might be called a reconciled reconstruction. Firm in the belief that the future of South Africa was greater than the smaller and selfish issue of racial pride and prejudice, he rallied his open-minded and far-seeing countrymen around him. Out of this group developed the South African Party which remains the party of the Dutch loyal to British rule. To quote the program of principles, "Its political object is the development of a South African spirit of national unity and self-reliance through the attainment of the lasting union of the various sections of the people." ... In the years immediately following Union the genius of Botha had full play. He wrought a miracle of evolution. Under his influence the land which still bore the scars of war was turned to plenty. He was a farmer and he bent his energy and leadership to the rebuilding of the shattered commonwealths. Their hope lay in the soil. His right arm was Smuts, who became successively Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Defense."

"Dear friends, by the time that you receive this letter I will already be with our Heavenly Father. I will depart at five o'clock [05:00 AM] on an everlasting journey with the trusted guide and friend Jesus. I have much to thank you for. The tree which has been planted and which is wetted with my blood will grow large and bear delightful fruit. Be faithful to your traditions, be faithful to your people, to your religion and to your God, the Lord will guide you. He will show the way that you are to follow. Write on my tombstone: For God and Fatherland. I am young, life is sweet; but thank God that he has released me from everything, I have nothing that bothers me, no Hate and no Love. God will take care of my loved ones, revenge belongs to God. Trusted friends, be assured that I cherish your sympathy and prayers; I am sorry that cannot greet you by handshake, as God has decided otherwise and He has given me the power to submit to His will. These are my final words that I shall put in writing and my admonition to you; Be loyal unto death to your traditions, to your religion, to your language and to your people. God be with you until we meet again. Joseph Johannes Fourie."

"… they were willing to their ability, I testify, yes, beyond their ability."

"Indien de Lieve Heer ons helpen en zegenen wilde, en wij ons land terug zouden krygen, dat den het volk elk jaar daar zouden komen feestvieren, juist by dezelfde steenhoop, en den Heer onze geloften komen betalen. En deze steenhoop is de eeuwige getuie daarvan."

"If the Dear Lord would decide to help and bless us, and we would succeed in recovering our country, that the citizens would annually come to celebrate at this exact cairn, honouring our vow to the Lord. And this cairn serves as the eternal witness to it."

"Wy syn hier gekomen om feest te vieren en gy weet het. Ons en u doel is niets anders dan om meer en meer te doen verstaan den wil des Heeren en om ons te wyzen op zyne leiding, opdat de ouders aan hunne kinderen en kindskinderen tot in het verste nageslacht kunnen verhalen, wat God aan ons gedaan heeft."

"We have arrived here to celebrate as you are well aware. Our aim, as your aim, is no less than to acquire a deeper understanding of the will of the Lord, and to apprise ourselves of his guidance, in order that the parents may convey to their children and grandchildren, and thence to our most distant descendants, what God has bestowed on us."

"... I will bring a curse upon myself if our independence is violated by me, since God has guided us so visibly that the blindest heathen and most unbelieving creature had to admit that it was God's hand that gave us our independence."

"Through the World I thank the people of the United States most sincerely for their sympathy. Last Monday the Republic gave Great Britain forty-eight hours' notice within which to give the Republic an assurance that the present dispute would be settled by arbitration or other peaceful means, and that the troops would be removed from the borders. This expires at five to-day. The British Agent has been recalled. War is certain. The Republics are determined, if they must belong to Great Britain, that a price will have to be paid which will stagger humanity. They have, however, full faith. The sun of liberty will arise in South Africa as it arose in North America."

"Zoekt in het verledene al het goede en schoone, dat daarin te ontdekken valt. Vormt daarnaar uw ideaal en beproeft voor de toekomst dat ideaal te verwezenlijken."

"Seek in the past all that is good and beautiful that can be discovered there. Form your ideal accordingly and try to realize that ideal for the future."

"Or: Search in your past for what is good and beautiful. Build your future from there."

"…van de minste geleerden hunner."

"…of the least learned among them."

"I express to you my sincere congratulations that you and your people, without appealing to the help of friendly powers, have succeeded, by your own energetic action against the armed bands which invaded your country as disturbers of the peace, in restoring peace and in maintaining the independence of the country against attack from without."

"Kruger was the dour, stolid, canny, provincial trader. The only time that his interest ever left the confines of the Transvaal was when he sought an alliance with William Hohenzollern, and that person, I might add, failed him at the critical moment."

"[He epitomized the Boer character] both in its brighter and darker aspects and was […] the greatest man – both morally and intellectually – which the Boer race has so far produced."

"Waarom was de mensche niet doodgeschiet toen hulle bijde eerste laager gekom het?"

"Ze waren begin geweest van den val. Van daar was de roepstem uitgegaan om protectie uit den vreemden. Die Goudvelde waren een bron geweest van ellende voor die Regering. Aan de goudvelden was het te wijten geweest dat het land in oorlog was gewikkeld worden."

"…the real truth. Now, you must have heard that the English – or as they are better known the Englishmen – took away our country, the Transvaal, or, as they say, annexed it. We then talked nicely for four years, and begged for our country. But no; when an Englishman once has your property in his hand, then is he like a monkey that has its hands full of pumpkin-seeds — if you don't beat him to death, he will never let go – and then all our nice talk for four years did not help us at all. Then the English commenced to arrest us because we were dissatisfied, and that caused the shooting and fighting. Then the English first found that it would be better to give us back our country. Now they are gone, and our country is free, …"

"The heart of my soul is bloody with sorrow. … (Nonverbatim: I have done my utmost for peace, despite England pushing the Boers out of their inheritance bit by bit, and taking advantage of us in every conference and native war. My hope till the present war had been for a South African Confederacy under English protection – the Cape, Natal, Free State and Transvaal all having equal rights and local self-government.) … But now we can only leave it to God. If it is His will that the Transvaal perish, we can only do our best."

"I liked Kruger more than I liked Joubert. The latter was Slim Piet and … I saw nothing else. The former [Kruger] has always the idea of a Boer empire, and as far as his lights went was an astute honest peasant. He is as the French peasants were in the Revolution, capable of cruelty but it would only be incidental cruelty, and due to his thinking it either necessary or unavoidable. Joubert on the other hand always strikes me as a cold schemer."

"...gezien hebben dat de bijbel in de Scholen moet gebruikt worden, zooals de wet voorschrijft."

"...de gevaare drygt aan alle kanten om een oorlog met die kaffers."

"But what is relevant here is to understand why a Shaka was possible in Africa in the nineteenth century, before the coming of colonial rule. Had Shaka been a slave to some cotton planter in Mississippi or some sugar planter in Jamaica, he might have had an ear or a hand chopped off for being a “recalcitrant nigger,” or at best he might have distinguished himself in leading a slave revolt. For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor. On a slave plantation, Shaka would not have built a Zulu army and a Zulu state—that much is certain. Nor could any African build anything during the colonial period, however much a genius he may have been. As it was, Shaka was a herdsman and a warrior. As a youth, he tended cattle on the open plains—free to develop his own potential and apply it to his environment."

"Shaka was able to invest his talents and creative energies in a worthwhile endeavor of construction. He was not concerned with fighting for or against slave traders; he was not concerned with the problem of how to resell goods made in Sweden and France. He was concerned with how to develop the Zulu area within the limits imposed by his people’s resources. It must be recognized that things such as military techniques were responses to real needs, that the work of the individual originates in and is backed by the action of society as a whole, and that whatever was achieved by any one leader must have been bounded by historical circumstances and the level of development, which determine the extent to which an individual can first discover, then augment, and then display his potential."

"It can be noted that Shaka was challenged to create the heavy stabbing when he realized that the throwing spear broke when used as a stabbing weapon. More important still, what Shaka came up with depended upon the collective effort of the Ama-Zulu. Shaka could ask that a better assegai be forged, because the Ama-Ngoni had been working iron for a long time, and specialist black-smiths had arisen within certain clans. It was a tribute to the organizational and agricultural capacity of the society as a whole that it could feed and maintain a standing army of thirty thousand men, re-equip them with iron weapons, and issue each soldier with the full-length Zulu shield made from cattle hide. Because the scientific basis and experimental preconditions were lacking in Zulu society, Shaka could not have devised a firearm—no matter how much genius he possessed. But, he could get his people to forge better weapons, as explained above; and he found them receptive to better selective breeding practices when he set up special royal herds, because the people already had a vast fund of empirical knowledge about cattle and a love of the cattle-herding profession."

"Shaka took up many of the military and political techniques of and greatly improved them. That is development. It is a matter of building upon what is inherited and advancing slowly, provided that no one comes to “civilize” you."

"(Tell us about your ideal adaptation of any book.) Someone needs to make a movie about Shaka, the legendary Zulu king who warred across South Africa forging the modern Zulu nation. There’s battle, conquest, siblings turning on each other and murdering each other — it’s better than “Game of Thrones,” and it’s all true."

"Shaka was the founder-conqueror of the Zulu empire and the creator of the Zulu nation. A military genius of astonishing energy, he was also a vicious, paranoid, vindictive, cruel and self-destructive tyrant."

"At time of his death, Shaka governed over 250,000 people and could raise an army of 50,000. He had built a huge kingdom out of almost nothing, but the price paid by ordinary Africans was vast. Millions had died as a consequence of Shaka’s unbridled ambition."

"The Shaka story … has a Faustian quality. A tale of temptation, it asks what price a person is willing to pay, how far he is willing to go, to obtain power. In revealing Shaka's heart of darkness, it reveals the dangerous consequences of closing a pact with the devil: hubris, violence, death. And it warns of the presence of these destructive forces in all of us. Shaka is himself in this story, but he also represents the darker, shadow side of humankind generally. We see ourselves when we watch him become so obsessed by power that he sacrifices human relationships for what the devil (in the person of malevolent diviners and witchdoctors) can offer him, and when he loses the ability to distinguish between killing for a just cause and wanton killing for killing's sake. The ending is predictable, surely: loneliness and despair. Shaka ends up on a throne of blood, isolated from his fellow human beings, struggling with depression and despondency."

"Women that bear children must exist in Zululand only."

"I need no bodyguard at all, for even the bravest men who approach me get weak at the knees and their hearts turn to water, whilst their heads become giddy and incapable of thinking as the sweat of fear paralyzes them. They know no other will except that of their King, who is something above, and below, this earth."

"Strike an enemy once and for all. Let him cease to exist as a tribe or he will live to fly in your throat again."

"Up! children of Zulu, your day has come. Up! And destroy them all."

"One biographer (a European) had this to say of Shaka"

"His words touched their hearts."

"His memorandum on the League of Nations, drawn up after the Armistice, became in substance the Covenant of the League. … A keen botanist and a profound philosopher, he is the author of an important philosophical work, Holism and Evolution."

"Genl. Smuts en sy aanhangers het sonder enige weifeling al hul veelgeroemde strewe na versoening en die skepping van een volk uit Afrikaans- en Engelssprekendes op die altaar van die Britse Ryk gelê. Helder staan dit uit dat hul strewe nie was om 'n waarlik Suid-Afrikaanse volk te laat ontstaan nie, maar 'n vertakking van die Engelse volk woonagtig in Suid-Afrika. Daarin moes die Afrikanerdom opgelos word. Hierdie oorlogskrisis was nodig om dit vir almal glashelder te stel."

"Genl. Smuts and his followers, without any hesitation, laid all their much-celebrated quest for reconciliation and the creation of one nation of Afrikaans and English speakers on the altar of the British Empire. It is clear that their aim was not to create a truly South African people/volk, but a branch of the English people living in South Africa. And in it Afrikanerdom had to be dissolved. This war crisis was necessary to make that transparent to everyone."

"My faith in Smuts is unbreakable."

"A wonderful clear grasp of all things, coupled with the most exceptionable charm. Interested in all matters, and gifted with the most marvellous judgment."

"At one moment he set out [...] to expound to us his favourite philosophy of holism, based, I understand, on the paradox that the whole is not the sum of, but is greater than, its component parts. It is certainly true enough of the British Empire."

"... during the Great War [Smuts] stood out as the most intellectually alert, and in some respects the most distinguished figure among the array of nation-guiders with whom I talked, and I interviewed them all. I saw him as he sat in the British War Cabinet when the German hosts were sweeping across the Western Front, and when the German submarines were making a shambles of the high seas. I heard him speak with persuasive force on public occasions and he was like a beacon in the gloom. He had come to England in 1917 as the representative of General Botha, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, to attend the Imperial Conference and to remain a comparatively short time. So great was the need of him that he did not go home until after the Peace had been signed. He signed the Treaty under protest because he believed it was uneconomic and it has developed into the irritant that he prophesied it would be."