Francis William Reitz
Francis William Reitz, Jr. (Swellendam, 5 October 1844 – Cape Town, 27 March 1934) was a South African lawyer, politician, statesman, publicist, and poet who was a member of parliament of the Cape Colony, Chief Justice and fifth State President of the Orange Free State, State Secretary of the South African Republic at the time of the Second Boer War, and the first president of the Senate of the Union of South Africa.[2]
Francis William Reitz
New office
Unknown
Office abolished
New office
5 October 1844
Swellendam, Cape Colony
27 March 1934 (aged 89)
Cape Town, South Africa
Blanka Thesen (1854–1887)
Cornelia Maria Theresa Mulder (1864–1935)
15
Lawyer
Reitz had an extremely varied political and judicial career that lasted for over forty-five years and spanned four separate political entities: the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, the South African Republic, and the Union of South Africa. Trained as a lawyer in Cape Town and London, Reitz started off in law practice and diamond prospecting before being appointed Chief Justice of the Orange Free State.[3] In the Orange Free State Reitz played an important role in the modernisation of the legal system and the state's administrative organisation. At the same time he was also prominent in public life, getting involved in the Afrikaner language and culture movement, and cultural life in general.[4] He was a South African Freemason.[5]
Reitz was a popular personality, both for his politics and his openness. When State President Brand suddenly died in 1888, Reitz won the presidential elections unopposed. After being re-elected in 1895, subsequently making a trip to Europe, Reitz fell seriously ill, and had to retire.[6] In 1898, now recovered, he was appointed State Secretary of the South African Republic, and became a leading Afrikaner political figure during the Second Boer War.[7] Reluctant to shift allegiance to the British, Reitz went into voluntary exile after the war ended.[7] Several years later he returned to South Africa and set up a law practice again, in Pretoria. In the late 1900s he became involved in politics once more, and upon the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, Reitz was chosen the first president of the Senate.[8]
Reitz was an important figure in Afrikaner cultural life during most of his life, especially through his poems and other publications.[9]
Family[edit]
Francis William Reitz, Jr., was born in Swellendam[10] on 5 October 1844, as the son of Francis William Reitz, Sr. MLC,[11] model farmer and politician, and Cornelia Magdalena Deneys. He was the seventh child in a family of twelve. He grew up at Rhenosterfontein, the model farm (Afrikaans: plaas) of his father, situated on the borders of the Breederivier (Broad River) in the Cape Colony.[12]
Reitz married twice. His first marriage (Cape Town 24 June 1874) was to Blanka Thesen (Stavanger, Norway, 15 October 1854 – Bloemfontein, 5 October 1887). She was the sister of Charles Wilhelm Thesen, and the daughter of Arnt Leonard Thesen, tradesman, and Anne Cathrine Margarethe Brandt.[3][13] The Thesen family had settled in Knysna, Cape Colony, from Norway in 1869. The couple had seven sons and one daughter. After the death of his first wife Reitz remarried (Bloemfontein, 11 December 1889) with Cornelia Maria Theresia Mulder (Delft, Netherlands, 25 December 1863[14] – Cape Town 2 January 1935), daughter of Johannes Adrianus Mulder, typesetter, and Engelina Johanna van Hamme. At the time of her marriage Mulder was acting director of the Eunice Ladies' Institute at Bloemfontein. With his second wife he had six sons and one daughter.[4]
Deneys, his son, fought against the British in the Second Boer War,
commanded the First Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers during World War I and served as a Member of the Union Parliament, Cabinet Minister, Deputy Prime Minister (1939–1943), and South African High Commissioner (1944) to the Court of St. James's.[15] His book, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War, has for many years been regarded as one of the best narratives of war and adventure in the English language.[16]
Education[edit]
Reitz received his earliest schooling at home, from a governess, and at a neighbouring farm. When he was nine years old, he went to the Rouwkoop Boarding School in Rondebosch (Cape Town). Here he stood out for his academic achievements and was subsequently elected Queen's Scholar by the Senate of the South African College in Cape Town. In the six years he spent at the College, after arriving in 1857, he received a broad education in arts and sciences, and developed himself into a well-balanced young man with obvious leadership qualities. He graduated from South African College in September 1863 with the equivalent of a modern bachelor's degree in arts and sciences.[12]
By then, Reitz had developed a keen interest in law, and he continued his studies at South African College, reading law with professor F.S. Watermeyer. The latter's death only months after Reitz started working with him, made Reitz decide to continue his studies in London, at the Inner Temple. It was a decision that needed deliberation, as his father was hoping for his son to return to the farm in due time, and the financial situation of the family was not strong. However, Reitz did go to London, and finished his studies successfully. He was called to the bar at Westminster on 11 June 1867. During his time in England Reitz became interested in politics, and regularly attended sessions of the House of Commons. Before returning to South Africa he made a tour of Europe. Back in South Africa, Reitz established himself as a barrister in Cape Town, where he was called to the bar on 23 January 1868.[12]
Early career[edit]
In the beginning Reitz found it hard to make a living, as competition among lawyers in Cape Town was quite severe at this time. Nevertheless, he succeeded in making a name for himself, due to his sharp legal mind and his social intelligence. Being part of the western Circuit Court of the Cape Colony gave him a lot of experience in a very short time. At the same time, Reitz nurtured his political interests by writing lead articles for the Cape Argus newspaper, for which he also reported on the proceedings of the Cape Parliament and acted as deputy editor. In 1870 Reitz moved his legal practice to Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State. The discovery of diamonds on the banks of the Vaal River, Reitz thought, would lead to a growth of legal work and enable him to set up a thriving practice. This was not to be, however, and after a few months Reitz left Bloemfontein to set up as a diamond prospector in Griqualand West, where he bought a small claim near Pniel from the Berlin Missionary Society. This enterprise also proved unsuccessful, and again after only a few months Reitz returned to Cape Town. This time, his Cape Town law practice was successful, ironically because of the British annexation of the Orange Free State diamondfields (1871) and the economic prosperity this emanated for the Cape Colony.[3]
In 1873 Reitz was asked to represent the district of Beaufort West in the Cape Parliament. The day he took his seat, 30 May, his father, who was the representative for Swellendam, announced his retirement from the Assembly. As so many of Reitz's activities up to that point, his parliamentary career was short-lived. Only two months later, President Johannes Brand of the Orange Free State offered Reitz the position of chairman of the newly formed Appellate court of the Orange Free State, despite the fact that Reitz was not fully qualified (inter alia too young). Reitz refused the offer for this reason, but when another candidate also refused, Brand insisted on the nomination of Reitz, and convinced the Volksraad to appoint him.[3]
Self-chosen exile and return to politics[edit]
Although instrumental in drafting the Treaty of Vereeniging, Reitz personally did not want to swear allegiance to the British government and chose to go into exile. On 4 July 1902, he left South Africa and joined his wife and children in the Netherlands. To alleviate his financial troubles, Reitz set out on a lecture tour in the United States.[7] A waning interest in the Boer cause since the war was over made the tour fail and forced Reitz to return to the Netherlands. There, his health failed him again, leading to his hospitalisation and an extensive period of convalescing. He was then supported by his friends W.J. Leyds and H.P.N. Muller and the Nederlandsch Zuid-Afrikaansche Vereeniging (Dutch South-African Society).[8]
In 1907, after the old Boer republics received self-government, and in the run-up to the formation of the Union of South Africa, leading Afrikaner politicians J.C. Smuts and L. Botha asked Reitz to return to South Africa and play a role in politics again. Together with his wife, he established himself in Sea Point, Cape Town. In 1910, already sixty-six years old, he was appointed president of the Senate of the newly formed Union of South Africa.[8]
These were no easy years, again, as former Afrikaner compatriots found each other on two sides of the political fence, in a rapidly changing world. As in his earlier life, Reitz remained a man of outspoken convictions, which he aired freely. As such, he came into conflict with the Smuts government, and in 1920 he was not re-appointed as president of the Senate. He did remain a member of that House until 1929, however.[8]
Honours and death[edit]
As an important public figure, Reitz was honoured and remembered in different ways. In 1923, the University of Stellenbosch bestowed on him an honorary doctorate in law for his public services. Already in 1889, a village was named after him in the Orange Free State. In 1894 one also named a village after his second wife, Cornelia. A ship named after him, the President Reitz, sank off Port Elizabeth in 1947.[19] The Jubilee Diamond, found in the Free State village of Jagersfontein in 1895 was originally named the Reitz Diamond, but renamed in honour of the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1897.[20]
When he finally retired from public life, Reitz moved to Gordon's Bay, but returned to Cape Town several years later, where he had a house in Tamboerskloof and was taken care of by his daughter Bessie, a medical doctor. He remained active to the end with writing and translating. Reitz died at his house Botuin on 27 March 1934, and received a state funeral three days later, with a funeral service at the Grote Kerk. He was buried at the Woltemade cemetery at Maitland.[8][21]
Cultural figure[edit]
Reitz was an important figure in Afrikaner cultural life. He was a poet and published many poems in Afrikaans, which made him a progenitor of the development of Afrikaans as a cultural language.[9] As such he sympathised with the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of Real Afrikaners), established in the Cape Colony in 1875. Although he never became a member himself, he was an active contributor to the society's journal, Die Suid-Afrikaansche Patriot.[6] With his literary work, Reitz was solidly anchored in the so-called First Afrikaans Language Movement, although he was less interested in the didactic drive of that movement than in writing in Afrikaans as a purely cultural activity. Much of his work was based on English texts, which he translated, edited, and adapted. In the process he produced completely new works of art.[22]
For Reitz, Afrikaans was predominantly a language of culture, not of government, where he propagated the use of the official language of the Boer republics, Dutch. During his presidency of the Orange Free State, where the use of English was significant among the burghers, he strongly promoted the use of Dutch, against politicians like John G. Fraser and others who were in favour of English.[18]
Institutionally, Reitz promoted the foundation of the Letterkundige en Wetenschappelijke Vereeniging (Literary and Scientific Society) of the Orange Free State, of which he was chairman for a while, the library at Bloemfontein, and the National Museum of the Orange Free State.[23]