25/05/2026
This is a story about a farmer’s son, but more importantly he was the farmer’s second son, and as was the custom in many farming families in the Cape Colony at the time, it meant that he would be expected to remain on the farm whilst his eldest brother was sent away to be formally educated. But fate was to intervene when the elder son died suddenly. This changed everything.
The younger son I speak of was Jan Christian Smuts born on 24 May 1870 on the farm Bovenplaats near Riebeeck West in the Cape Colony.
Much has been written about his life and of his influence in global military and political spheres, so it won’t be the focus of this post. There are many other sides to this extraordinary man that I have always found fascinating, starting with his intellectual abilities.
When Jan’s elder brother Michiel was sent away to be educated, Jan stayed on the farm and received basic home schooling when his chores permitted. After Michiel’s death, Jan, now aged 12, suddenly found himself in boarding school having to catch up to his peers. Not only did he catch up, but within 4 years, and aged just 16, he was admitted to Victoria College in Stellenbosch (later to become Stellenbosch University)
By the age of 18 he had already been awarded a B.A degree and won the Ebden Scholarship to Cambridge University where he chose to read law. Within 2 years, he became the first ever student there to sit for both parts of a law degree in a single year and received first class honours for both. And if this was not enough of an achievement in one’s undergraduate years, he also wrote a book entitled “Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of the Personality” in his spare time.
It has been said that in the now almost 600-year history of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Smuts is one of its three most outstanding students – the others were John Milton and Charles Darwin. Many years later in 1948, Smuts would become Chancellor of Cambridge University.
After being admitted to the Bar in England, Smuts returned to South Africa where in 1897 he married the love of his life, Sibella Margaretha Krige whom he had met at Victoria College. But his life thereafter was destined to be turbulent, for he became embroiled in a succession of wars — first the Boer War (1899–1902), during which he rode commando against the British forces, and later the First and Second World Wars, when he led South Africa in joining Britain and the Allies against Germany.
But for all his prominence in world affairs, there is another aspect of Smut’s life that is often brushed over but which I find most fascinating. This was his lifelong love of nature – particularly botany. Although he never studied in this field, his accumulated knowledge from observing and understanding his natural environment was astounding.
There is a lovely anecdote of when Smuts accompanied a group of international botanists on a field trip in South Africa in 1920. One of them, a botanist from America, asked a professor in the group to identify a certain grass and instead of answering he referred the question to Smuts. Smuts obliged by giving an in-depth description of the grass’s ecology and distribution, at which the lady botanist from America, being quite taken aback, said to Smuts: “How is it that I am learning all of this, not from the Professor but from a General?” And he said, “But my dear lady, I am only a General in my spare time.” He was particularly knowledgeable about grasses and identified one that was unknown to botanists and which in 1924 was named Digitaria smutsii (Smuts Finger Grass).
Smuts was physically very active until just before his death in 1950 aged 80 and would hike up Table Mountain regularly until well into his seventies. There is a trail named after him starting at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens which goes all the way to Maclear’s Beacon on the summit. To him the mountain was a spiritual place.
In his own words: “This is my cathedral. I come here for rest, relaxation, happiness and meditation. Who would deny me? Give me the open spaces, a hard bed, plain food, the stars above me, the flowers, the birds and the wind in the trees.”
He also said: “When I want a rest, I turn my face to Nature and the Mountains for silence and solitude. It is one of the great sources of spiritual wealth, this great country of wild, untamed natural things, undamaged and untarnished by the touch of man…..it is our duty to see that the stream is uncontaminated.”
For all his fame as a statesman, as the architect of the League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations), and as the man who helped shape the British Commonwealth, he never lost his love of learning and his deep connection to nature, or the sense of renewal he found in solitude and reflection while walking its trails and climbing its mountains.
The farm boy never forgot his roots, and it is intriguing to imagine what his parents might have thought had they known just how far their second son was destined to rise.
Acknowledgments:
• One Man in his Time – Phyllis Scarnell Lean
• The Thoughts of General Smuts – Compiled by P B Blanckenberg (Smuts’ Private Secretary)
• Brochure of the Jan Smuts Memorial Committee (Cape) published on the unveiling of the Smuts statue 1964
• FamilySearch
SA Genealogy
Heritage Chronicle SA Weskus Heritage Riebeek Kasteel Heritage Walk Heritage SA Riebeek Valley Tourism Swartland Tourism
