Manie Maritz

Manie Maritz (26 July 1876 – 20 December 1940), also known as Gerrit Maritz, was a Boer officer during the Second Boer War. He was also a participant in the Herero and Nama genocide and later a leading participant in the pro-German Maritz rebellion in 1914. In the 1930s, Maritz became an outspoken Nazi sympathizer and supporter of Nazi Germany.

Early years Maritz was born in Kimberley, Northern Cape then in the British colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and as such, was a British subject. He was christened Salomon Gerhardus Maritz. When he turned 19 he went to Johannesburg and was employed as a cab driver by his uncle. During the Jameson Raid he volunteered as a guard of the Johannesburg fort. This entitled him to become a citizen of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR). This, in turn, permitted him to join the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek Politie (ZARP), the police force in Johannesburg.

Second Boer War Maritz joined the Boksburg Commando and proceeded to the Natal front. If Smuts had appointed Maritz as a fighting general, Reitz would have known about it.

Near the end of the war Maritz ordered the killing of 35 Coloured (Khoikhoi) in what became known as the Leliefontein massacre. The massacre was a retaliation for an attack against Maritz and his party, when he went to interview European missionaries in Leilefontein. Gideon Scheepers and Breaker Morant were court-martialled and shot for similar crimes. When peace was made, the burghers of the erstwhile republics were obliged to lay down their arms and sign an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. Instead, Maritz slipped over the border to German South West Africa. In his autobiography, he did not explain why he did so. During his time in Madagascar he also helped Deneys Reitz tame oxen for a transportation enterprise. He subsequently returned via Europe to South Africa, where he farmed horses in the Cape and is believed to have helped the Germans during the Herero and Nama genocide. When Maritz returned, he went to the Transvaal, but was arrested for entering the colony, not having signed the oath of allegiance. He departed for the Cape. When the Free State received responsible government, he went there and later joined the police in the Transvaal.

On 23 September 1914 Maritz was ordered to advance in the direction of the German border, to support the Union's invasion in the vicinity of Sandfontein, where a portion of Lieutenant-Colonel Lukin's force was stranded. He was buried in the Pretoria West Cemetery.

In popular culture The character General Manie Roosa, in James Rollins and Grant Blackwood's novel The Kill Switch (2014), is "very loosely based on the real-life Boer leader Manie Maritz.

Maritz is referred to many times in John Buchan's Greenmantle (1916) in which the heroes, who are British spies, masquerade as veterans of Maritz's rebellion in order to infiltrate among German strategists.