As in this century it has become a widely accepted convention for professional politicians to speak well—and indeed flatteringly—of their party opponents when they die it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect obituary judgments to be well balanced and critical. With this in mind we could pass over the exaggerated praise of the work and qualities of the late General Smuts but still demand that those who attempt to assess him should give a recognisable portrait. But to do that the writers need to recognise what part Smuts played and the background against which he played it. In particular they need to see that he was a figure in the world of capitalism, thrown up by class interests and strictly limited in his action by the social system in which he lived and by the forces he represented. Instead many of the writers, including some who might have been expected to have at least some understanding of the reality, try to interpret him as if he had complete freedom of action to behave according to some abstract ideal, and as if therefore his seeming inconsistencies had to be explained as defects of character or courage or as errors of judgment.
A line taken by many who paid tribute to Smuts is that he was a man above class and national prejudices. To Mr. Attlee there was “in his large heart . . . a place for all humanity. His great contribution to the creation of the United Nations is but one example of his breadth of view and world statesmanship." (Daily Herald 12/9/50). The Prime Minister of Canada described him as having “adopted the world as his nation,” and Mr. W. N. Ewer (Daily Herald 12/9/50) credited him with “imaginative genius and liberal instincts . . . His real greatness lay, perhaps, in his imaginative understanding of wider issues.”
These and many similar opinions explain nothing and merely fog the issue. The picture of the errant genius, usually triumphing over obstacles and the stupidity of lesser men, but occasionally falling below his own high ideals is and must be fundamentally false. The real Smuts started as a representative of the Boer farmers in their unsuccessful war against British imperialism and then came to power in South Africa as a capitalist politician, trying, as all administrators of capitalism must do, to reconcile divergent propertied class interests while defending South African capitalism against white workers and the non-white majority of the population. When we are told that he represented “all humanity” we need only remind Mr. Attlee of his own position as a caretaker of British capitalism—there is no room in capitalist administration for a “Minister for the welfare of all humanity.”
Attlee and Ewer cannot have forgotten how the Trade Union Congress condemned Smuts for his part in the crushing of the striking gold miners on the Rand in 1922. Mr. Ewer does in fact refer to it but interprets it (as also Smuts' attitude towards the natives) as “limitations” of his character. “His iron-fisted handling of the great Rand strike . . . cannot be forgotten in any judgment of him. And, though he opposed the ‘native' policies of Herzog and Malan, he was always a rigid up-holder of the idea of ‘white supremacy.' "
The miners on the Rand in 1922 faced an attempt by the owners to force down wages and to undercut their standards by employing more low-paid native workers. In the strikes and rioting that followed it was Smuts who declared martial law and used troops, artillery, tanks and bombing planes to crush what he called a “reign of Red Terror.” Many lives were lost and many workers imprisoned.
The aspect of this that interested the writer of the lengthy tribute in the Manchester Guardian (12/9/50) was the bold way in which Smuts handled it. “Smuts’ personal courage and decision in this emergency are still the subject of talk in South Africa; after proclaiming his intention to impose martial law, he made his way secretly to Johannesburg, took command, and within a few days restored order.”
No noticeable evidence of the much praised love of “all humanity” there!
The Times gets nearer to a recognition of the class nature of Smuts’ activities and interests when it points out how his party was defeated at the election in 1924 and he lost his own seat: —
“Of the many charges brought against Smuts, who had been in power for so long a time, two of the most widely circulated and effective were, based on his use of troops in suppressing the Johannesburg strike in 1922 and his connection with the Chamber of Mines, whose agent he was declared to be.”—(Times, 12/9/50.)
The South African workers had not forgotten how Smuts’ intervention strengthened the hand of the Chamber of Mines in their attack on wages.
It may be that Smuts had what Mr. Ewer calls liberal instincts but a capitalist politician cannot serve two masters, he cannot sacrifice the interests of the class for whom capitalism functions in order to serve the interests of those whom capitalism exploits. His love of all humanity did not include the white workers and the native population when their actions in their own interests clashed with those of the ruling class, and it would not be far wrong to say that a large element in the universal scope of Smuts’ vision was the necessarily world-wide interests of a country the main economic basis of which is the production of gold for world trade. South Africa had grown from a Boer farming community to an expansionist capitalism and Smuts’ horizon expanded with it.
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