A nationalist on the wrong side of history

JBM Hertzog's Afrikaner nationalism and economic policies gained him many allies amongst his people, but his lifelong antipathy towards Britain and sympathy for Germany were ultimately his demise, says Graham Jooste.

- Graham Jooste

James Barry Munnik (known as JBM or Barry) Hertzog was born on the farm Soetendal in the Cape Colony district of Wellington on 6 April 1866. His future political rival, Jan Christian Smuts, was born close by at Riebeek West four years later.

After his schooling, Hertzog studied law at Victoria College, later to become Stellenbosch University, and graduated in 1889. In the same year, he was accepted into the University of Amsterdam and received his doctorate in law in 1892.

Returning to the Cape Colony, he soon became disillusioned with British rule and moved to the Transvaal, where he opened a law practice in Pretoria. It was here that he renewed his acquaintance with Smuts and met President Paul Kruger.

In 1894, he married Wilhelmina Neethling, also of Stellenbosch, and the couple went on to have three sons.

The Hertzogs’ sojourn in Pretoria proved to be short: in 1895, Hertzog was appointed to the Orange Free State (OFS) High Court in Bloemfontein, and became a confidant of President Marthinus Theunis Steyn. When the Anglo-Boer War broke out in October 1899, Steyn sent Hertzog to advise the Boer generals in the Western Transvaal on matters of military law and the Geneva Convention regarding captured prisoners of war.