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The greatest South Africans?
Native Africans, English, and Afrikaners would undoubtedly have varying views on the issue. Here are some views from an American interested in South African history:
Jan Smuts: the most diverse and brilliant of all of the South Africans, Smuts served Kruger in the pre-war years, fought valiantly for the Afrikaner cause in the Boer War, and skillfully negotiated a peace in the wake of defeat that all but ensured the Afrikaner renaissance that ensued. Smuts calculated that Afrikaner greatness would be best served by a reconciliation with the British following the Boer War -- an attitude that drew the ire of "bitterenders" and their progeny, the Nationalists. However, Smuts' political aptitude would render South Africa a staunch ally of Great Britain during the two World Wars and would place South Africa on the morally correct -- and victorious -- side of the battle against Nazism. Charming and brilliant, Smuts was a respected statesman across the globe, highly thought of by world leaders such Churchill and Roosevelt. After his political downfall in 1948 and his death in 1950, Smuts' successors would not be viewed with similar favor by the world community.
Paul Kruger: the towering figure of Afrikaner nationalism, Kruger was the ultimate patriot of his people. Kruger was in his youth a consummately skilled frontiersman, hardened by his childhood participation in the Great Trek, whereby numerous Afrikaners traveled north into southern Africa's interior in order to escape British rule. The Trek forged the Afrikaner consciousness, including Kruger's. Kruger held to the firm conviction that South Africa was not just to be a white man's country, but was to be, first and foremost, the Afrikaner's country. British imperialism was not to be tolerated, and anyone with a different viewpoint on the matter could hardly be considered to be a friend. Kruger was a man of simple ideas, but of powerful convictions. His leadership in the first freedom war against the British -- which reversed the British's annexation of the Transvaal -- mythologized Kruger. His conviction, his fortitude, his life on the frontier, and his rise to political preeminence all leave him as the rough equivalent of the Americans' own mythological figure, Andrew Jackson. And Kruger is Jackson's parallel in one other less appealing but historically significant way -- he was quite willing to kill men of a different color than his own. Neither Kruger nor Jackson created the racial conflicts in which they found themselves, but they both survived them -- sometimes because they were aggressors. The fact that they were trapped in the mindset of their times -- viewing the natives of their respective countries as inherently inferior -- no doubt rendered them less troubled by their actions.
Nelson Mandela: those familiar with Mandela's unique combination of keen intellect and ferocious endurance would not be surprised to learn that Mandela was trained, in his youth, in two highly disparate crafts: the law and boxing. Mandela eventually, however, would answer to a higher calling, when he became a member of the African National Congress and a freedom fighter in the native Africans' struggle against the Nationalist government's policy of apartheid. Mandela was part of a younger, less patient group of native Africans who embraced violence as a means of reversing the racial sins that had historically plagued his country. Of course, in terms of sheer strength, the ANC was at the time severely overmatched by the Nationalists' apartheid machine, and Mandela was as a result captured and jailed for 27 years. However, in terms of patriotism and endurance, Mandela would prove to be the African equal of Kruger, the great Afrikaner who led the struggle against British policies that were oppressive to the Afrikaner some 100 years before. By the 1980s, Mandela's captivity had become a flashpoint not just in South Africa but, indeed, across the globe. And when Mandela was released, he would not only rise to the top of South Africa's political spectrum, but would become one of the most revered persons on the globe. As the leader of a new South Africa, Mandela served as a model in his effort to heal the country's racial wounds, a truly extraordinary effort considering that he had just emerged from a captivity imposed upon him by his political enemies.
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