Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Botha, Louis
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​BOTHA, LOUIS (1862~1919), South African soldier and statesman, was born 27 September 1862 at Honigfontein, near Greytown, Natal. He was the ninth child of a family of six sons and seven daughters born to Louis Botha and his wife Salomina, the youngest daughter of Gerrit Reinier van Rooyen. Both the parents were children of ‘voortrekkers’ from Cape Colony into Natal, and till 1869, when Louis was seven years old, they lived as British subjects on the farm, Onrust, nine miles from Greytown. The family then. migrated to the Orange Free State and finally settled down on a farm near Vrede. Here Louis and the other young children had a limited amount of schooling from neighbouring teachers, but his education chiefly consisted in learning the South African farmer’s craft on a large mixed farm of some 5,000 acres, where ostriches, sheep, cattle, and horses ​were kept and some rough crops raised. On such a farm every member of a large household had to take his share in looking after the cattle and sheep, breaking in the horses, shooting game for the family pot, and supervising the Kaffirs. Here Louis Botha learned to understand and sympathize with the Kaffirs of South Africa and to speak familiarly the two chief native languages, Sesuto and Zulu. Here he acquired that unerring eye for country which served him in such good stead in later years; and here was developed his deep and affectionate appreciation of his own people in the rough and tumble of a large family ruled patriarchally by a notable father and mother who were leaders in their own neighbourhood.

Botha was eighteen years old when he started on his first independent adventure. With a bundle of food and clothes put up by his mother to strap on to his horse, he set forth at the beginning of winter in charge of the family’s sheep and cattle to find better pasture in the warm low-lying lands on the borders of Zululand. It was a long month’s trek across the Drakensberg, a trek not without its perils, and he undertook it every winter for four years. Zululand in those days, owing to the exile of the paramount chief, Cetywayo, and to Sir Garnet Wolseley’s division of the country among several petty chieftains, was in a state of unrest and turmoil, and on one occasion at least all Botha’s presence of mind was needed to avert a serious peril. One of these chieftains, hot from the murder of a missionary, suddenly appeared in Botha’s camp with his impi and truculently demanded some of his flock. Young Botha, who had only one cartridge left, quietly lighted his pipe and then, after reproving them for their unceremonious approach, offered them one sheep on condition that they cleared off at once, which they did in a much chastened mood. During these sojourns on the Zululand border he made the acquaintance of Lukas Meyer, then landrost of Utrecht, and in 1884 was one of the first to respond to Meyer’s call for volunteers to restore Cetywayo’s son, Dinizulu, to his father’s possessions, on promise of a large tract of land in Zululand as a reward for the volunteers. After a short campaign conducted by Meyer with 800 Boers and some 16,000 of Dinizulu’s Zulu adherents, Dinizulu’s chief adversary, Usibepu, was routed and Dinizulu restored to his father’s position. In accordance with the agreement, a large and rich tract of Zululand on the borders of Natal and the Transvaal was assigned to the volunteers, who formed the ‘New Republic’ with Meyer as president. Botha, who had already acquired the confidence of his companions by his presence of mind and resourcefulness, was chosen as one of the commissioners to delimit the farms. He himself obtained Waterval, a farm in the neighbourhood of the new capital, Vryheid, and thither in 1886 he brought his bride, Annie Emmet, eldest daughter of John Cheere Emmet, a descendant of the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet; she was a sister of one of his comrades in the Zulu expedition. Three sons and two daughters were born of the marriage. Botha’s father died in 1885 and his mother in 1887, and he never afterwards lived in the Free State, but settled down to a very happy married life at Waterval, busying himself with his own farm-work and with local affairs. He was made field-cornet of his district and also kept the local post-office in his house. But the New Republic was short-lived. It had difficulties with both its neighbours, the Transvaal and Natal; had been cut off by the British from an approach to the sea at St. Lucia Bay, where Botha had originally laid out the township; and finally in 1888 cast in its lot with the Transvaal.

P. J. Joubert, the commandant-general, came down to Vryheid to take over the new province, and made Botha’s acquaintance. Five years later, during the great contest for the presidency, Botha and his friend Meyer enthusiastically supported Joubert against Kruger. Otherwise the even tenor of Botha’s happy farm life was undisturbed till in 1895, when the government of Swaziland had been handed over to the Transvaal, he was appointed a native commissioner. Here he distinguished himself by his energetic fight against the scandalous liquor traffic with the natives; but he resigned the appointment after six months and returned to his more congenial duties as field-cornet and native commissioner at Vryheid. At the end of that year, when (Sir) Leander Starr Jameson [q.v.] invaded the Transvaal, he was called upon to mobilize the burgher force of his frontier district; and, though strongly opposed to Kruger’s illiberal Uitlander policy, the main cause of the projected rising in Johannesburg, he is stated to have strongly urged the shooting of Jameson; it is also on record that in later years, when this advice was reported to him, Jameson remarked, ‘Yes, Botha was always right’.

In 1897 Botha entered political life as member for his district in the first volksraad, appearing at the head of the poll ​in opposition to a Kruger candidate. In the volksraad he distinguished himself as a supporter of Joubert’s liberal views on the Uitlander franchise, and vigorously opposed the corrupt concessions of the Kruger régime, especially the Pretoria water concession and the dynamite monopoly, which he was called upon to investigate as a member of the volksraad committee. But though against the president’s policy, and one of the minority of seven who voted against the ultimatum of 9 October 1899, he cast all doubts aside when war was declared (11 October 1899), and went off to muster his commando at Vryheid.

The war soon proved the mettle of this quiet, wise man. As a simple field-cornet he accompanied Lukas Meyer’s commandos for the invasion of Natal, but from the outset showed a dash and an understanding of aggressive action which brought him to the front. He led the first reconnoitring party across the Buffalo river, distinguished himself at the battle of Dundee, and on 30 October, when Lukas Meyer fell sick, was promoted to be assistant-general. Shortly afterwards he was put in command of the southern force investing Ladysmith. But Botha was not content to sit quietly before Ladysmith; with some of the other younger Boers he was always pressing Joubert, the commander-in-chief, to push on and possibly even reach the sea before the British reinforcements arrived. Thus urged, Joubert crossed the Tugela in November, sweeping round Estcourt with two columns, and during this advance Botha ambushed an armoured train near Chievely and took prisoner Mr. Winston Churchill. However, as British reinforcements began to arrive, Joubert re-crossed the river, and, being invalided himself, left Botha in command of the Tugela defences. Sir Redvers Buller [q.v.], on taking over command of the British forces in Natal at the end of November, decided to reach Ladysmith by a frontal attack on the Boer centre opposite Colenso. Botha, with that rare instinct for reading his opponent’s mind, one of his most remarkable characteristics as a general, divined that Buller would choose this course and, weakening his widely extended flanks, concentrated nearly all his strength on his centre. In this position, on a semi-circle of hills north of the Tugela, he had dug himseif in so securely and so imperceptibly that the advancing British troops were at his mercy. To make assurance doubly sure he gave orders that not a shot should be fired by his men until the enemy were actually crossing the Tugela. The Boers, however, when the British guns under Colonel Charles James Long came forward into action in an exposed position just south of the Tugela, could no longer restrain themselves and, besides putting the battery out of action, so clearly revealed the enormous strength of their position that Buller gave up his intended frontal attack.

Botha seems at once to have realized the crushing effect of this reverse on Buller, and once more urged an immediate advance, but he was overruled by the elder Boers. Unfortunately for the Boer people Botha was not yet master of their military decisions, and the Boer force facing Buller was divided into independent commands with no single general supreme. However, when it came to actual fighting, Botha’s clear vision and practical resource enabled him to impose his will on his colleagues. At Tabanyama, his prompt call for volunteers saved the Boer right flank. Again, when the British force had climbed Spion Kop on 24 January 1900 and many of the burghers had begun a panic-stricken retreat, Botha brought up guns to shell the British detachment, rallied his men, and directed the succession of counter-attacks which finally dislodged the British. He showed once more the same spirit during the last desperate fighting before Ladysmith in February, when Buller was working round on the eastern flank. At Vaalkrantz his energy forced Buller to retire, though it could not induce his burghers to follow up the success; and though for a moment he despaired as the British advanced, he soon returned to his normal attitude and telegraphed to Kruger after a Boer success, ‘With the help of the Lord, I expect that if only the spirit of the burghers keeps up as it did to-day, the enemy will suffer a great reverse. But in the last stage Botha was constantly hampered by Meyer, who had returned to the field and was in nominal command; and after Pieter’s Hill (27 February) his attempts to rally the burghers for one more stand were frustrated by Joubert himself, who gave the signal for a general retreat.

On the day of Pieter’s Hill General Piet Cronje surrendered at Paardeberg, and a month later Joubert died, whereupon Botha, the most prominent of the young, eager, and capable Boers, was promoted to be commandant-general of the Transvaal. He at once began to infuse new energy into the fighting forces of his countrymen. He sent a peremptory ​telegram to the landrosts of the eastern districts, bidding them send up all the shirkers to join their commandos: ‘Act on this immediately,’ he concluded, ‘because every minute lost is in itself a wrong which you are doing to your country and kindred;’ and he went himself to see that his orders were obeyed. He also made better use of the many foreign volunteers from Europe, hitherto looked at askance by the burghers, by enrolling them into special corps. Then he took over his reorganized commandos from Natal to the Free State to resist Lord Roberts’s triumphant march north in May; but, with hardly 10,000 men to oppose to Roberts’s 100,000, he had successively to abandon the positions taken up at Zand river and elsewhere, making his last stand for Johannesburg and Pretoria at Doornkop. Just before this battle (29 May 1900) it had been proposed in the volksraad to destroy the mines, but Botha, who was always a clean fighter, threatened to lay down his command if this were done. After the surrender of Pretoria, Botha retired to Diamond Hill, whence Roberts attempted to dislodge him on 12 June. In this, his last engagement with Roberts, he profited from his experience of the field-marshal’s favourite enveloping tactics and, by putting most of his strength on the wings, held up the British attacks long enough to secure for his forces a safe retreat along the line of railway.

After Diamond Hill Botha saw that the only hope left to the Boers was to abandon regular tactics and begin a guerilla war, so as to render the British positions insecure in every district of the country. He sent off the commandos to their own districts, where they could operate to the best advantage, himself remaining in the south-eastern Transvaal, chiefly because it was his own country, but also to keep in touch with the peripatetic government. At Bergendal on 27 August with a few well-entrenched troops he kept Buller long enough on the railway to enable himself to get the government away into the fastnesses of Lydenburg. Though separated during the next eighteen months from his chief subordinates by vast tracts of country, and often also by lines of block-houses and ever tightening cordons of British troops, Botha was rarely out of communication with his scattered commandos, chiefly owing to his excellent system of intelligence by means of natives and hardy Boer messengers. Periodically, too, he held conferences of his chief lieutenants to decide on the main operations for the succeeding few months. One of his chief exploits in the field was his sudden raid to the borders of Natal in September and October 1901. Thither he attracted a great many British troops from other quarters where they were sorely needed, and, after leading them a most exhausting dance, escaped through the only exit they had left open. Immediately after this he suddenly swooped down from a distance of seventy miles, thirty of which he marched in one day, to Bakenlaagte, where he defeated and put out of action Colonel George Elliot Benson’s force, long the terror of the south-eastern Transvaal (30 October). Naturally during these months of constant movement he had several hairbreadth escapes from capture, but he was well served by devoted adherents and not less by his own quickness, due to early training, in noting the slightest sign of danger on the veld.

After the first seven months of the war, Botha, though always the heart and soul of the Boer defence, never lost sight of any opportunity for making peace. Before Diamond Hill, at Middelburg in February 1901, when he had his first interview with Lord Kitchener, and on one or two other occasions he showed himself willing to discuss terms. His chief aim was of course to preserve his people’s threatened independence, but he also had a secondary object, that if independence proved impossible, the struggle should not be allowed to drift on till there were no people left to maintain a national identity even in a state of dependence. Accordingly in March 1902, when the Transvaal was almost at its last gasp, he willingly seized the olive branch offered by Kitchener. He was convinced by that time that the Boers could not win, and he realized better than any that, short of winning, they could not hope to retain their independence. At the Vereeniging conference of May 1902, when delegates from all the commandos still fighting in the Transvaal and the Free State met to discuss terms, he clinched the matter by his sane utterance: ‘Terms may still be secured which will save the language, customs, and ideals of the people. The fatal thing is to secure no terms at all and yet be forced to surrender. We are slipping back; we must save the nation.’ ‘We must save the nation!’—that was his main idea in all the negotiations with Kitchener and Lord Milner, when he fought with success, after the great points of the language and eventual self-government had been granted, for the £8,000,000 to be devoted to restoring the burghers to ​their farms; and with the same idea, when it looked as if the chief Free Staters might stand aloof from the majority in favour of peace, he and General J. H. De La Rey persuaded the irreconcilable Free State leader, Christian De Wet, to bring in his people too for the sake of national unity.

‘We are good friends now,’ said Kitchener on 31 May 1902, as he shook hands with the general whom he had learned to respect as a formidable and straight antagonist. Kitchener’s countrymen very soon came to the same opinion. Botha’s great purpose for the remainder of his life was doubtless to ‘save his nation’; but by that he meant not merely to restore its material prosperity and to preserve its national consciousness, but also to observe faithfully the troth plighted at Vereeniging, when it agreed to become a member of the British Empire. Nothing confirmed this resolution of Botha so much as his kindly and informal reception by King Edward (17 August 1902), when he went over to England to plead for the Boer orphans and widows. Botha then acquired a respect and devotion to the king who showed such courtesy to a recent foe, and also to the nation whom this king represented. But this mission, undertaken with De Wet and De La Rey, failed in its principal object of obtaining through charity large funds for his country’s needs. On his return to South Africa he abandoned his Vryheid farm, Waterval, which had been destroyed during the war, and bought another at Rusthof, near Standerton; but he spent most of his time in his house at Pretoria, where he was accessible at all hours to his people, listening to their complaints and giving them advice and more material help for the restoration of their farm life. His attitude towards Crown Colony government was one of reserve: he consistently refused to give any formal advice or accept a seat on the legislative council, on the ground that the imperial government should take full responsibility for its actions; on the other hand he did not stay apart in sullen resentment. When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain [q.v.] came out, he met him socially and was never backward in making representations to him or to Lord Milner on what he considered grievances of his countrymen (principally the question of Dutch teaching in the schools), and on the question of assistance to the returned burghers. In January 1905, on the eve of the promulgation of the Lyttelton constitution, with other leading Boers he founded ‘Het Volk’, an organization intended to keep up the national feeling of the Boers and to secure their effective co-operation. In this organization he brought together for the first time the ‘hands up’ and ‘bitter end’ sections of his countrymen. At the inaugural meeting Botha once more emphasized the fact that the flag question had been irrevocably settled, but he demanded in return enough trust from the imperial government to give them responsible government at once.

Within two years this had been granted by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s government (31 July 1906), and Botha found himself not only with a majority in the new parliament but called upon to form a ministry under the British Crown. One of his first actions was a striking illustration of the attitude he intended to adopt towards the mother-country. In 1907 on behalf of the Transvaal he presented to Queen Alexandra the Cullinan diamond, the largest hitherto found, to be incorporated in the crown jewels. In domestic politics also he showed his determination to govern not merely as the leader of the Boers but as the responsible minister for both the white races in the Transvaal. Though he sent home the Chinese labourers on the Rand, whose importation he had opposed from the outset, he repatriated them gradually, so as to cause as little disorganization as possible in the industry, and helped to secure a more plentiful supply of native labour. But his main achievement during his ministry was to persuade the Transvaal to go whole-heartedly into the movement for closer union. At the Union Convention of 1908-1909 he naturally headed the Transvaal delegation, which was far better equipped with information and more decided on its policy than any of the other three. In this Convention the strength of the combination of Botha with his chief lieutenant, General Johannes Smuts, first showed its force in South African politics. To this remarkable combination Smuts contributed intellectual range, ingenuity of resource, suppleness of demeanour, and considerable sympathy with the English no less than the Boer mind; Botha for his part was no scholar and relied much on the knowledge of ‘Jan’, as he called the younger man; many of the problems of civil administration with which he had to deal were strange to him at the outset; and, though he could speak English in private talk, he nearly always made his public speeches in Dutch; on the other hand, he had a ​great gift of piercing to the core of a problem when the facts had been presented to him, and it would have been almost as true to say of him as of Chatham: ‘The first time I come to him about any matter I find him extremely ignorant; the second time I come to him I find him completely informed upon it.’ He had also the gift of inspiring confidence, largely because he himself had so generous a belief and love for his fellow men, and thereby drew out the best from all with whom he was thrown into contact; but with this gentle quality he had the power of hitting hard when necessary, and no one took liberties with him twice.

At the Union Convention the determination of Botha and the Transvaal delegation to make a real union and not merely a loose confederation carried the day. As Sir George Herbert Farrar, one of the English delegates, said, ‘British and Boer had been brought together by the wise and tolerant action of General Botha and General Smuts, and to-day they stood together asking to join in a union of South Africa.’ This tendency was marvellously strengthened by the alliance struck up at the Convention between Botha and Dr. Jameson, whom Botha had once wanted to shoot. Both instinctively felt that they were struggling towards the same end—the reconciliation of the races on the common ground of their interest in South Africa. Botha had not always an easy task with some of his own countrymen during the discussions, and even when the language and the native questions had been settled satisfactorily to Boer aspirations, the question of the capital might have wrecked everything had not Botha finally taken aside the Transvaal supporters of Pretoria, and appealing to the trust reposed in their statesmanship by King Edward and the British people, persuaded them to accept the compromise of two capitals.

Botha was chosen as first prime minister of the Union of South Africa (10 May 1910) and held that office till his death. He and Jameson had discussed the feasibility of a coalition ministry of their two parties; but it was found impossible, and Botha formed a purely party ministry. Yet when the care of all South Africa was committed to him he had no more idea of governing solely in the interests of the Dutch section than before in the Transvaal. When his colleague, General J. B. M. Hertzog, went about the country stirring up strife by his speeches against the British element of the population and Botha’s proposals for naval defence, Botha re-formed his ministry in December 1912, excluding Hertzog, and in the following year won a striking victory over him and his ally, De Wet, at the congress of the South African party. The two most serious difficulties with which Botha’s ministry had to deal before the European War were the question of Indian immigrants and the unrest on the Rand. Indians originally brought to Natal as indentured labourers claimed the right, through their spokesman, M. K. Gandhi, to settle in the country as citizens when their periods of indenture were completed. Smuts, who took over the chief management of this question, had some difficult passages with the able Indian leader, and also had to deal with the opposition of the Indian government; but a satisfactory compromise was reached in 1914, and Gandhi returned to his own country, declaring himself satisfied. The unrest on the Rand was an even more serious matter. In July 1913 there was a general strike of the white miners and considerable fear of a native rising also; while, owing to the pending reorganization of the Union forces, imperial troops alone were available. After a collision between them and the Johannesburg mob, Botha and Smuts, much against their will, felt bound to sign an inconclusive agreement with the strikers; and in the following January another still more serious strike paralysed the railways. This time Botha and Smuts were well prepared. Martial law was proclaimed, the burgher force to the number of 60,000 was called out, nine of the labour leaders were seized and deported from the country without trial, and the strike collapsed. These drastic and arbitrary measures, and especially the deportations, aroused much criticism both in England and in South Africa. But the South African parliament was satisfied that the right course had been taken, if not in the best way, and passed the Indemnity Act brought in by the government.

On the declaration of war against Germany in August 1914, many of the Dutch who followed the banner of Hertzog were disposed to take up the attitude that it was none of their business, and that South Africa should remain neutral. But Botha never had any hesitation as to the right course to pursue. He at once suggested to the imperial government that, as they needed all their troops in Europe, the imperial garrison should be withdrawn from South Africa and the Union left to look after its own defence. ​This offer was gladly accepted, and it was conveyed to Botha that the best help the Union could give would be to invade German South-West Africa. This also Botha agreed to do; but it is characteristic of his cautious and deliberate methods that for some weeks the English in South Africa were left in suspense, as no public announcement of his intentions was issued. From the outset he had seen that he would have to: tread warily with his own people; and before he could deal with the Germans he was suddenly faced by a serious revolt. Christian Frederick Beyers, the commandant-general of the burgher forces, De Wet in the Free State, and Solomon G. Maritz, commanding on the German frontier, took up arms against the policy of active intervention in the war, some of them in concert with the Germans. Botha’s own distress at this revolt of his own people, many of whom had recently been his trusted companions in arms, and his unflinching determination to do his duty are plain from his answer to a deputation from Pretoria: ‘For myself I am willing to submit to any personal humiliation if this is necessary rather than take arms against my own people, many of whom fought with me through the war. But I will not betray my trust, and if, after I have tried every method of negotiation, they still refuse to come in, I will move out against them with the commandos that I know will stand by me.’ It was characteristic too of Botha that, when he did take the field against the rebels, he called out the commandos' almost exclusively from the Dutch districts, to avoid the danger of renewing a racial conflict. On 28 October he smote Beyers’s main force near Rustenberg so effectually that it never recovered. The leader, after wandering about with small detachments, was drowned in the Vaal on 8 December. A week earlier De Wet was captured after a long flight through the desert, his forces in the Free State having been scattered by Botha on 11 November. By the end of February 1915 the last rebels had surrendered. In dealing with the delinquents Botha showed clemency; a few of those who had broken their military oath were shot, the other leaders, including De Wet, were given comparatively short terms of imprisonment, while the rank and file were dismissed to their homes.

Botha’s campaign against German South-West Africa, in which he himself took the chief command, was one of the prettiest pieces of strategy in the war. He himself advanced from Swakopmund against the main German forces at Windhoek, while three columns under Smuts entered the country from south, east, and west and drove all opposing force towards Botha at Windhoek. The actual fighting was not serious, but the country with its sand-storms, its villainous tracks, and its vast desert spaces in which many of the wells had been poisoned by the Germans, was & more serious obstacle than the enemy. Botha’s careful arrangements and the fine marching and fighting qualities called out among the South African troops, this time drawn from both races, by the confidence felt in their commander, surmounted all difficulties. The campaign, which had begun in March 1915, was concluded in the following July by the unconditional surrender of the German forces and of their colony. Botha gave generous terms to the Germans, both military and civilians, and signalized the moment of victory by issuing a proclamation in which he deprecated some anti-German rioting at Johannesburg, and stated that the war was being waged against the German government, but not against individual Germans, and that it was unworthy of the nation to forget its dignity.

To the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 Botha went with Smuts as delegates for South Africa. Though under continuous medical treatment, Botha attended assiduously both the full meetings and the committees, and took a firm line in supporting the rights of the Dominions. He impressed all the delegates as one of the most commanding figures of the Conference, and whenever he spoke his opinion carried great weight. His hearers were, indeed, deeply moved by a speech from Botha pleading for compromise and lenient terms, in which he reminded them that ‘he also came from a conquered nation’. After signing the treaty he returned as quickly as he could to South Africa. But he was already a dying man. Shortly after reaching Pretoria he died, on 27 August, within a month of completing his fifty-seventh year.

Botha visited England several times after the Boer War, in 1902 in a private capacity, in 1907 when he had just assumed office in the Transvaal, in 1909 with the scheme for South African union, in 1911 for imperial conferences, and lastly at the time of the Peace of Versailles. Whenever he was in London his chief preoccupation was to guard the interests of South Africa. In 1907 he secured an advantageous loan from the imperial government; and in 1911 ​he worked out with Viscount Haldane the scheme for a South African defence force, which proved so valuable both to South Africa and to the Empire a few years later. The more he came to London the more surely he won the regard of Englishmen. His few brief speeches, always given in Dutch, sounded a note of sincerity and gallant courtesy and of convincing loyalty to the Crown. In his own country the verdict of the immense majority of both English and Dutch was the same. Some of those who, like Hertzog, parted company with him, thought him too deferential to the English element in the population: but all felt him to be essentially a simple God-fearing man, with an attractive nature, not clever, but of great wisdom, patience, and loving-kindness. He was at his best and certainly happiest in his own beautiful farm, where he lived a patriarchal life with his family, entertaining simply and always the best of hosts. Smuts, the colleague most unlike him in most ways but the one who knew and loved him best, said at his graveside: ‘His was the largest, most beautiful, sweetest soul of all my land and days.’

A portrait of Botha is included in J. S. Sargent’s picture ‘Some General Officers of the Great War’, painted in 1922, in the National Portrait Gallery. Another portrait, painted by J. Blair Leighton from photographs and information supplied by relations and friends, was presented to the House of Commons by Sir W. Mitchell Cotts in 1925.