Episode 102 - General Smuts enters the Cape and rides straight into a Basutho ambush

The Anglo-Boer War

Spring is upon is in this podcast - so too the long-awaited invasion of the Cape Colony by General Jan Smuts and his commando. It has taken him almost a month of zig-zagging across the Free State from his base in the Eastern Transvaal to arrive at the border. Other Boer leaders had already been busy in the Cape, but they were operating in smaller units and were regarded as less significant at least from the point of view of the British occupying the territory. Smuts’ arrival was a completely different kettle of fish. He was the very symbol of resistance, but also a symbol of the contradictions that many Boers encapsulated as I’ll explain. While he remains literally a giant in the pantheon of South African heroes, he was not an easy man to travel with as Deneys Reitz would find out. Remember last week Reitz had ridden to within sight of the Orange River and its junction with the Calendon River in the southern Free State. That’s when Jan Smuts’ commando rode into view and our youthful narrator was seeking to invade the Cape himself with his new found friends - nine extremely young and radicalised teens who wanted to fight the British inside their own territory. But first a quick look at Smuts and why he was such an enigma in South African early politics. He deserves an entire podcast series himself his life was so rich - from his incredibly brave acts as a youthful Boer leader, all the way through to his involvement in the formation of the Royal Air Force during the First world War, his leadership during the second world war, his diplomatic skills and crucial role in the formation of first the league of Nations and then United Nations, and of course, as South Africa’s prime Minister decades after the Boer war. Strangely, he studied American poet Walt Whitman, and then wrote a book which remained unpublished until 1973 called Walt Whitman: A study in the evolution of personality. But as soon as General Smuts and his commando crossed the Orange River into the Cape Colony, they came under attack by Basotho warriors hired by the British to police the border.