Francis William Reitz

Francis William Reitz Jr. (5 October 1844 – 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.

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. 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. He was a South African Freemason.

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. 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. Reluctant to shift allegiance to the British, Reitz went into voluntary exile after the war ended.

Reitz was an important figure in Afrikaner cultural life during most of his life, especially through his poems and other publications.

Family Francis William Reitz, Jr., was born in Swellendam on 5 October 1844, as the son of Francis William Reitz, Sr. MLC, 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 of his father, situated on the borders of the Breederivier (Broad River) in the Cape Colony.

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. 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 – 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. 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.

Education 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. Reitz became the first president of the Supreme court and consequently also the first Chief Justice of the Orange Free State. Right from the beginning Reitz showed himself to be a fighter, opposing the Volksraad on more than one occasion, tackling deeply ingrained political traditions that stood in the way of the modernisation of the judicial system, but also fighting hard to get the salaries and pensions of state officials improved. As a colonial – he was born in the Cape Colony after all – he had to win the confidence of the Boer population to have his ideas accepted. This he did by travelling with the Circuit Court through the country for over ten years, acquiring insight into and empathy for their way of life and their often conservative and always God-fearing beliefs. It helped that Reitz himself was a religious person and that he had started out in life in the Afrikaans speaking countryside of the Cape Colony. Eventually he became the symbol of Afrikanerdom for many Orange Free Staters.

The trip to Europe was far from just a family holiday. In Britain Reitz made some strong public statements, defending the republican system of government in South Africa and opposing British intervention in 'Bantu affairs'. On the continent Reitz was received by several heads of state and political leaders. In October 1894 he returned in Bloemfontein. Soon after Reitz was diagnosed with hepatitis, which moreover affected his already strained nerves and led to sleeplessness. The situation was so serious that he eventually had to resign the presidency. The Volksraad accepted his resignation on 11 December 1895. 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.

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.

Cultural figure 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.

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.