Louis Botha

Louis Botha, before 1915

Louis Botha (born September 27, 1862 in Greytown , Natal colony , † August 27, 1919 in Pretoria ) was a South African politician , general in the Second Boer War and first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa .

Life

Louis Botha circa 1920. Portrait study by James Guthrie for Statesmen of World War I .

Botha was born as one of 13 children of the Boer family of Louis Botha senior and Salomina Adriana van Rooyen. He briefly attended the German School in Hermannsburg . When he was seven years old, the family left Natal and settled near Vrede in the Orange Free State . In 1884 he was one of the Boer volunteers who helped Dinuzulu to win over his rival in the fight for the throne of the Kingdom of Zululand and were compensated with land. In 1886 he settled on his farm east of Vryheid in the Nieuwe Republiek , was appointed Veldkornet von Vryheid and married in the same year. In 1896 he was elected to the Volksraad of the South African Republic as a member of the Vryheid region .

Boer War

Botha and Smuts in uniform during World War I.

Although he always campaigned for the reconciliation of the British and Boers, he joined the army when the Second Boer War broke out in 1899. He fought in the initial invasion of Natal and the siege of Ladysmith and rose quickly in the ranks until he finally took over command of the Boer troops on the Tugela as representative of the injured Piet Joubert . Due to his military successes, including in the Battle of Colenso , he gained such prestige despite his young age that after Joubert's death in March 1900 he was appointed General Commander of the Army of the Transvaal. After the fall of Pretoria in June 1900, Botha, together with Koos de la Rey and Christiaan de Wet , waged the guerrilla war against the British, who suffered heavy losses through carefully prepared ambushes. In early 1901 he led unsuccessful peace negotiations in Middelburg with the British Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener . In the peace negotiations in 1902 Botha was a member of the negotiating commission and a signatory to the Peace of Vereeniging . He then traveled to Europe with De Wet and De la Rey to raise money for reconstruction.

Political career

In 1904, in the new British colony of the Transvaal , he and Jan Christiaan Smuts founded the Het Volk party , which in 1911 became part of the South African Party together with other groups . After the former Boer republics had been granted self-government in 1907, Botha was commissioned by Governor Lord Selbourne to form a government. In the further independence negotiations he represented the Boers. During the negotiations he met Leander Jameson , once leader of the Jameson Raid and now Prime Minister of the Cape Colony , and became friends with him despite his past. In 1910, Louis Botha was elected the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa under the Louis Botha I cabinet and remained in office until his death. Botha's new party, the SAP, originally represented the entire Boer population. Botha and Smuts emerged as advocates of reconciliation between the British and Boers, an attitude that was controversial in the party and in the country. His internal party competitor Barry Hertzog therefore left SAP and founded the National Party in 1914 .

After Great Britain entered World War I in August 1914, Botha immediately offered military support and sent troops to German South West Africa . This measure was unpopular in parts of the South African population and led to the Boer Rebellion of 1914. After suppressing the uprising, Botha led the campaign against South West Africa himself, which led to the surrender of the German troops in 1915. In the parliamentary elections that followed, however, his party already lost noticeably ground to the Boer-oriented National Party. Instead of accepting the post he had been offered in the British War Cabinet , he sent his deputy Smuts to England. South African troops were later also sent to East Africa and the Western Front . When negotiating the Versailles peace treaty , Botha unsuccessfully advocated forbearance with Germany , but signed it anyway. After returning to South Africa in early 1919, he fell ill with influenza and died a little later of a heart attack . Smuts took over his political successor.

Honors

• Louis Botha Airport , the former name of Durban International Airport, which is no longer used for civil purposes
• Naming of the asteroid (1354) Botha

Web links

Commons : Louis Botha  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica / Botha, Louis  - sources and full texts (English)

• Biography on sahistory.org.za (English)
• Newspaper article about Louis Botha in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

predecessor	Office	successor
Theodor Seitz	South African Military Governor of South West Africa July 9, 1915 to July 11, 1915	Percival Scott Beves