Isie Smuts
Sybella "Isie" Margaretha Smuts was the second First Lady of the Union of South Africa, and a teacher, farmer, charity organiser and scrapbooker. She grew up in the British Cape Colony and qualified as a teacher in 1891. She taught for six years before marrying Jan Smuts, who later became the second Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. She was a staunch supporter of Afrikaner nationalist aims to break free of British rule. Smuts eventually supported her husband's efforts to bring reconciliation to the Dutch and English communities and the creation of the self-governing union. During the Second Boer War and World War I she supplied care parcels to inmates and soldiers. When the war ended, she was active in the Suid-Afrikaanse Vrouefederasie, a social welfare service for war widows and orphans.
In 1909, the couple settled on the Doornkloof farm in Irene township outside Pretoria. She raised their six surviving children there and during her husband's extended absences on matters of state, she was the primary administrator of the farm. In the evenings when the family retired, she clipped articles from media sources written about Jan and organised them into scrapbooks. Smuts preferred to remain outside the public sphere and rarely joined her husband in any official capacity until his second term as prime minister began in 1939. She then became a leader in the Women's United Party, an affiliate of the United Party of South Africa. During World War II, she became a public figure. She spoke out against fascism and supported the creation of the Women's International Democratic Federation, an organisation aimed at preventing war and furthering women's rights. She participated in radio broadcasts and wrote articles to urge support for the war effort, accompanied her husband on troop inspection tours, brought soldiers care packages, and wrote letters for them.
In 1940, Smuts founded and chaired the Gifts and Comforts Fund, which raised money to provide servicemen with toiletries, sports equipment, and radios. Over the course of the war, the fund raised over a million pounds. Her war activities made her an icon and she became popularly known as the mother of South Africa. She received an honorary PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1943 and in 1952 the South African Association of University Women created a research scholarship bearing her name. When Smuts died in 1954, her papers and scrapbook collections were donated to the South African State Archives. Microfilm copies of the Smuts Archive, which also includes Jan's records, are housed at the Universities of Cambridge and Cape Town. The Doornkloof farm was designated a National Monument by the Government of South Africa in 1969. A street in Pretoria was named in her honour.
Early life, education and family
Sybella Margaretha Krige, known as Isie, was born on 22 December 1870 in Stellenbosch, in the British Cape Colony, to Susanna Johanna and Jacob Daniël "Japie" Krige. Susanna, known as Sanie, was descended from Johann Christoffel Schabort, a physician who left employment with the Dutch East India Company to immigrate to the Cape in 1714. He practiced medicine until around 1745 and established two wine farms near Durbanville. Japie was a wine and dairy farmer and the brother of Willem Krige, whose son Christman Joel Krige went on to serve as speaker of the People's Council for the Union of South Africa. Many members of the Krige family were politicians. Piet Retief, a Voortrekker leader involved in the Great Trek, who was killed by Zulu warriors during his journey, was Japie's great uncle. The family were Afrikaners of Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, and strongly opposed British rule. Krige was the second of eleven siblings, although only nine would survive. The family lived in a Dutch-style house on the Eerste River at the end of Dorp Street. Krige was encouraged by her parents to study, and was known as a bookworm. She was good at languages and enjoyed reading English, French and German literature and poetry. She also played the piano and enjoyed singing.Krige attended in Stellenbosch. When she was fifteen, Jan Smuts, a farmer's son from Riebeek West, near Malmesbury, moved into the house of W. Ackermann, a neighbour and friend of the Krige family. Jan was a serious student at Victoria College, and the two met while walking to school. They developed a habit that Jan would accompany Krige to school in the morning and back home in the afternoon. The two had much in common: both were shy and reserved, both enjoyed walking and discussing literature and botany, and they liked to sing together. Jan even tutored her in Greek. Krige wanted to become a physician but the family's financial situation did not allow for such a long period of study. Instead, after passing the entrance exam in 1887 for Victoria College, Krige graduated in 1891 and began teaching in a rural school, where she earned £5 a month. Jan graduated in science and literature in 1891 and was awarded the Ebden Scholarship to study law at the University of Cambridge. While he was abroad, they wrote to each other regularly. He passed his bar examination in England in 1894, and after turning down an offer to become a professor, returned to the Cape Colony.
Failing to establish a successful law practice in the Cape Colony, in 1896 Jan moved to the Transvaal Colony. He made trips back to visit his parents and Krige, and on 30 April 1897 in Stellenbosch, he and Krige married. They immediately left to return to Johannesburg and established their home on Twist Street. On 5 March 1898, Smuts gave birth to premature twins, Koosie and Jossie, who lived less than a month. Within three months, the couple moved to Pretoria, when Jan became the State Attorney of the Transvaal. They had another son, Jacobus Abraham, on 16 April 1899, and before the end of the year, Smuts published A Century of Wrong, an English translation of her husband's co-written work Een Eeuw van Onrecht. The book recounted the perceived injustices the Boers had experienced at the hands of the British. Within weeks, the Second Boer War broke out and Jan was one of the defenders of Pretoria when it was captured by the British in June 1900. Jan subsequently went to the front. On 14 August their son died. After her son's death, the British sent Smuts, her younger sister and a friend to Pietermaritzburg, in the Colony of Natal. Despite her wish to be held with other women in the nearby concentration camp, Smuts and her party lived in a house. They frequently visited the camp to console the inmates and bring them items they had knitted. In 1902, at the end of the war the couple reunited in Pretoria and by 1914 had six children.
Politician's wife
At the conclusion of the war, the Treaty of Vereeniging established the supremacy of the British, bringing all White South Africans under The Crown's authority. The treaty established that English would be the official administrative language and the only language used in schools. It also provided that at a future point the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies would be allowed to self-govern, but contained no provisions for native-born people to vote until they became self-governing. Although Jan worked to end the conflict and bring reconciliation to British and Afrikaner settlers, Smuts remained hostile towards the British. She feared that the Dutch would be treated unfairly under British rule and according to the writer Helen Bradford, Smuts preferred annihilation over capitulation. Jan refused to accept a position on the Legislative Council of the Transvaal and along with others continued to press for full self-governance. In 1906, he went to England to try to convince British legislators to grant self-rule and revise the method of allowing only propertied individuals to vote. He was successful in arguing for new voting laws, and in December suffrage was granted to all White European men over the age of twenty-one. Neither non-Europeans nor women were allowed to vote. The election the following year led to a new government with Jan serving as the Colonial Secretary. By 1908, all three British colonies – Cape, Orange River, and the Transvaal – had achieved self-governance, and over the next two years negotiations continued for the formation of the Union of South Africa. The Union was inaugurated on 31 May 1910, and included the three colonies and the Natal Colony. With the creation of the Union, Smuts' hostility towards the British eased as she recognised that the two Dutch colonies of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal would balance the Union with the two British colonies of Cape and Natal.After the Union was created, a period of socio-economic unrest ensued. Smuts publicly endorsed her husband's policies in an effort to reduce the perception that he was against Afrikaner nationalist aims. The historian Suryakanthie Chetty stated that Smuts had become known as "Tante Isie" and was popularly viewed as a plain-spoken, humble country wife, as opposed to a sophisticated city dweller. She became active in the welfare work of the , an organisation founded in 1904 by Annie Botha and Georgiana Solomon to assist destitute widows and war orphans. In 1909, the couple moved to a farm in Irene township, outside Pretoria, covering, where Jan relocated a former military mess hall and renovated it into a home that came to be known as Doornkloof. The house was made of tin to prevent ants from demolishing it, and was modest in comparison with other statesmen's residences. It contained a huge library of around 6,000 books in "Afrikaans, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek", on a wide variety of subjects, including botany, ethics, evolution, and philosophy. When Parliament was in session, Jan lived at Groote Schuur, near Cape Town, but Smuts remained at Doornkloof, preferring to avoid politics and remain in the background. Jan's long absences meant that she was the primary person overseeing the farming activities and tending the bee hives. Doornkloof was where they raised their children, Susanna Johanner, Catharina Petronella, Jacob Daniel, Sybella Margaretha, Jan Christian, Louis Anne de la Rey, and an adopted daughter Kathleen de Villiers. In addition to running the household, Smuts organised a massive collection of articles written about Jan. Her scrapbooking activities frequently took place at night after the family had retired. She also dealt with the hate mail regularly received at the farm from many Afrikaners who felt that Jan had betrayed his own people by reconciling with the British.