The book ventilates the greatness of Jan Smuts amid resistance by Boer nationalists during World wars
Title: Unafraid of Greatness
Author: Richard Steyn
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Reviewer: Giyani Baloi
First, I must give credit to Richard Steyn for a well written, researched, and balanced book on one of South Africa’s leaders of yore.
I enjoy reading books across racial, colour, cultural, religious, ethnic or tribal lines. It’s important to me because I tend to understand humans beyond my own assumptions and speculative biases.
South Africa has a penchant of punching above its weight. You talk about the richest man on the planet, it’s Elon Musk, a South African born Canadian American. You talk about the most successful rugby World Cup teams it’s the South African Springbok and the New Zealand All Blacks. You go to England, Parliament Square in London, there are eleven statues of greatest people. Four of them are non-Britons, and two of those are Nelson Mandela and Jun Smuts, the South Africans.
Jan Christian Smuts was born on 24 May 1870 in Cape Town. He grew up on a farm as a Christian. The 18th century may be referred to as formative years of terror, plunder, civil wars, the years of World War 1 and World War 2. It’s also the error of civilization and human advancement. Jan Smuts attended his primary school at Die Ark Primary and his secondary school at Stellenbosch. From there, he did his first degree at Victoria College before going to Cambridge University in England to study law.
His exposure to the outside world, his general intelligence, curiosity, and love of reading developed him to think out of the box.
When he came back to South Africa after completing his law degree in England, his philosophies, world view, and political visions were now different from his fellow Afrikaner nationalists. Jan Smuts became very instrumental on the Uncle Boer War as a prominent leader and army general. After the war, which ended in the Boers losing to the English under the British Empire, Jan Smuts became one of the advocates of the Union between Afrikaners and the English under the British Empire to the chagrin of his fellow Boer Nationalists who were still very bitter after the loss and the humiliation they suffered in the war at the hands of the English. They called Jun Smuts a number one sell-out the Boers. His open-mindedness, a bigger vision about world politics, unity, and forming alliances on the global stage politically then, made him a lot of friends and foes both local and international.
Internationally, he became one of the most influential people of both World War One and World War Two. On the other hand, he was seen as a betrayer of the Boer nation at home by the boer nationalists who were only seeing things with a narrower Boer lens. That came at a political cost to Jan Smuts as he lost political power here at home because of that labeling. That’s talking about “a Prophet without honor in his country”.