Smuts and Mandela

South Africa has produced two leaders who achieved global recognition and renown in their respective eras: Jan Christian Smuts (Prime Minister, 1919–24 and 1939–48) and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (President, 1994–99). The former was much celebrated for playing a significant role in re-constructing international architecture after both world wars; the latter remains globally admired for his leading part in drawing South Africa back from racial war and becoming a democracy. As a result, both have attracted multiple biographies. Today, however, whereas Mandela remains a much-admired global icon, Smuts’ reputation is much diminished, with contemporary historians citing his racism and role in constructing the foundations of apartheid South Africa. In this controversial book, Roger Southall provides a re-evaluation of Smuts’s hugely contradictory career by proposing fascinating parallels with the life and political trajectory of Mandela. Both came to maturity as political leaders as freedom fighters, Smuts against the British and Mandela against the apartheid regime. Both played a pre-eminent role in founding a ‘new South Africa’, the first made for whites at Union in 1910 and the second for all South Africans in 1994. Both aspired to be nation-builders, but while Smuts’s hoped-for South African nation was white, Mandela aspired to bring all South Africa’s people together. Both came into stride on the international stage, albeit in very different ways and for various reasons. Smuts’s career failed, and he was ejected from office. Mandela retired gracefully from office and continued to be lauded for his well-earned retirement, yet South Africa’s contemporary travails reveal his hopes and policies as unfulfilled. This book makes the case that we cannot fully understand Mandela without first understanding Smuts and how South Africa continues to struggle with the legacy he left behind.

Roger Southall has taught in Uganda, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa, where he was a professor of Political Studies from 1990 to 2001, Executive Director/Distinguished Research Fellow Human Sciences Research Council from 2001–2007, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007–2013. He now lives in Cape Town, continues to write and walks dogs.