305pp., illus., paperback, Penguin Books, Cape Town, 2025

ISBN: 9781776391998

Bongani Ngqulunga discusses the role South African military officer, statesman and philosopher Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950) played in the 1902 Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the Anglo-Boer War and in the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, and his approach to the ‘Native question’ as a minister under Louis Botha, as Prime Minister from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, and in opposition to and then coalition with J.B.M. Hertzog’s National Party.

Ngqulunga demonstrates how Smuts' thinking and policies affected his approach to the franchise, segregation and suppression of dissent and how the reforms he introduced in the 1940s after recognising that segregation had failed were too little too late. In his argument he includes how African leaders such as Sol Plaatje, D.D.T. Jabavu, Z.K. Matthews, A.B. Xuma, Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela viewed Smuts and his policies.

Bongani Ngqulunga is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg. Previously, he served as Director of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, at the same university. He also directs the African Biographies Project. He is the author of The Man Who Founded the ANC: A biography of Pixley ka Isaka Seme, winner of the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Prize, and co-editor of Reappraising the Life and Legacy of Jan C. Smuts.

UNDER SMUTS'S RULE, Jan Smuts and his impact on black South Africans

: Ngqulunga (B.)

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