Louis Botha

Louis Botha was a Boer general and South African statesman who became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa in 1910. He commanded Transvaal forces during the Second Boer War, later helped negotiate peace with Britain and then worked with Jan Smuts to reconcile white Boer and British political interests within a new self-governing dominion.

Botha commanded Boer forces in Natal and later directed guerrilla operations against the British. He played a central role in peace negotiations and subsequently became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa.

Thomas Pakenham’s The Boer War then traces the British advance under Frederick Roberts and Herbert Kitchener, the occupation of the Boer capitals and the prolonged guerrilla war led by commanders including Louis Botha, Christiaan de Wet and Jan Smuts. In Max Hennessy’s Sunset at Sheba, A battle to decide their fate. South Africa, 1914. Diehard Boer generals led a new rebellion against the British-friendly governments of both Jan Smuts and Louis Botha. General Christiaan De Wet's attempt to join up with the Germans in South-West Africa failed, but the threat of the rebel forces was real to all of the men who lived through it.