Totius (poet)
Jacob Daniël du Toit, known by the pseudonym Totius, was a South African Afrikaner poet, minister, theologian, translator and professor.
Life
Jacob Daniël du Toit was born on the 21 February 1877 in Paarl, Cape Colony to Elizabeth Jacoba Joubert and Stephanus Jacobus du Toit, the leader of the First Afrikaans language movement.The poet D.J. Opperman compiled brief biographical notes in Afrikaans about Du Toit. Du Toit began his education at the Huguenot Memorial School at Daljosafat in the Cape. He then moved to a German mission school named Morgensonne near Rustenburg from 1888 to 1890 before returning, between 1890 and 1894, to his original school at Daljosafat. Later he attended a theological college at Burgersdorp before becoming a military chaplain with the Boer Commandos during the Second Boer War.
After the war, he studied at the Free University in Amsterdam and received a Doctor of Theology degree. He became an ordained minister of the Reformed Church of South Africa and from 1911 he was a professor at the Theological College of this Reformed Church in Potchefstroom. On the celebration of his sixtieth birthday, Totius was honoured throughout South Africa. On the behalf of the nation, the FAK presented him with a Van Wouw-statuette as a token of gratitude for his work as a poet, Bible translator, cultural leader and academic. He also received a travel grant which enabled him and his wife to visit the Biblical countries and Europe. His impressions of these visits to foreign lands are included in the collection Skemering.. In the same year, he also received honorary doctorates upon him by the University of Stellenbosch and the Gemeentelike Universiteit, Amsterdam.
Du Toit was a deeply religious man and a conservative one in most senses. His small son died of an infection and his young daughter, Wilhelmina, was killed by lightning, falling into his arms dead as she ran towards him. Du Toit recorded this calamity in the poem "O die pyn-gedagte".
Du Toit was responsible for much of the translation of the Bible into Afrikaans, finishing what his father Stephanus Jacobus du Toit had begun. He also put a huge amount of work into producing poetic versions of the Psalms in Afrikaans. His poetry was in the main lyrical and dealt, inter alia, with faith and with nature, as well as more political themes such as British imperialism and the Afrikaner nation. He left behind many collections of poems, including Trekkerswee, Passieblomme, "Uit donker Afrika" as well as a volume of poetry rhymed Psalms were published.
He was on the committee that founded Potchefstroom Gimnasium in 1907 and chancellor of the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, from 1951-1953.
Poetry
One of the poems from Skemering was translated by C.J.D Harvey as follows:Another poem, from Passieblomme, translated by J.W. Marchant:
Honors and recognition
Du Toit appeared on a South African postage stamp in 1977.In 1977, a statue of Totius by the sculptor Jo Roos was placed in the Totius Garden of Remembrance, in Potchefstroom. The statue was restored by Roos in 2009, and moved to the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University. It was removed in 2015 at the request of the Reformed Churches of South Africa, after consultation with the Du Toit family, with the intention of instead displaying it on RCSA property.The request came after a group called ReformPUK didn't want the statue on the grounds of the university because they see him as a figure of apartheid.
Personal life
In 1903, Totius married, the daughter of Dirk Postma, the first minister of the Reformed Churches in South Africa, and. Together Totius and Marie had 6 children including the Reformed Churches in South Africa Minister and academic.On 1 July 1953, Totius died in Pretoria, Union of South Africa aged 76.