Louis Botha was the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. He was an Afrikaner who was born in Greytown, Natal (now Kwazulu-Natal) in 1862, one of 13 children. In 1869, his parents Louis Botha and Salomina van Rooyen left Natal with their children and settled near Vrede in the Orange Free State. The young Louis was educated at the local German Mission School and remained with his parents until he was 22.
He became involved in politics at a young age when he moved to the Transvaal and in 1895 he was sent, on behalf of the South African Republic as their representative to Swaziland. In 1897 he was elected to the “Volksraad” Transvaal Parliament after it had become apparent that he was a man of excellent and extraordinary abilities.
At the outbreak of the second Boer War in 1899 Louis Botha volunteered for the Vryheid commandos under General Lukas Meyer in Northern Natal, later becoming a general, distinguishing himself fighting in the battles of Ladysmith, Colenso and Spioen Kop and was made Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal Boers. During the Ambush of a British Train in November 1899, Botha was the man who captured Winston Churchill. Churchill was not aware of the identity of the man who captured him until after the war when, in 1902, Botha travelled to London with the intention of obtaining loans for the reconstruction of his country and he and Churchill met at a private luncheon.
In 1904 the political party Het Volk was formed and eventually self Government was granted. In 1907 elections were held and Louis Botha became the Prime Minister of the Transvaal Colony. When the Union of South Africa was established in 1910, Louis Botha became the first Prime Minister. In 1911 he, together with his second in Command, Jan Christiaan Smuts formed the South African Party.
When the first world war broke out a difficult decision had to be made, due to the fact that the wounds of the Second Boer War had not yet healed and there still existed a lot of antagonism on the part of the Afrikaners of South Africa against the British and memories of the British concentration camps were still very raw. As a result, Botha and Smuts’ decision to take South Africa into the war on the side of Britain by sending troops to invade German ruled South West Africa was extremely controversial and resulted in a major revolt by the Boers. This was put down by mid 1915 and in elections of that year Botha’s party won by a very narrow majority.
Botha led the attack on German South West Africa and succeeded in conquering the territory. In 1919 he travelled to Versailles to take part in the Peace Conference where he was treated with great respect and was one of the signatories to the final treaty on behalf of the Union of South Africa. By that time his health was already failing and he died on August 27th 1919 in Pretoria at the early age of 57.
Winston Churchill once wrote of Botha, “The three most famous generals I have known in my life won no great battles over a foreign foe. Yet their names, which all begin with a ‘B”, are household words. They are General Booth, General Botha and General Baden-Powell…”
An equestrian statue of Louis Botha by sculptor Raffaello Romanelli stands outside Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa.