General Jannie Smuts looking at us from above. He was active in the Anglo Boer War, then in capturing German South West Africa, the First World war and Second World War in the British War cabinet.
He was the founder of the League of Nations that became the United Nations.
Oom Jannie, born in Riebeeck West, studied languages, philosophy and law, graduated from Cambridge to join Paul Kruger as state attorney in De Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek.
He was also a world renowned botanist making him next to Eugene Marais our country's only true universal geniuses being the master of diverse disciplines.
(Marais studied law and medicine, was a poet as none other with "Winternag". His work on ants, "Die siel van die Mier" was plagiarized by a Dutch speaking Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck who understood Afrikaans and then just translated it word by word in French to win the Nobel prize.)
Winternag
O koud is die
windjie en skraal.
En blink in die
dof-lig en kaal,
so wyd as die Heer
se genade,
le die velde in
sterlig en skade
En hoog in die
rande,
versprei in die
brande,
is die grassaad
aan roere
soos winkende
hande.
O treurig die
wysie
op die ooswind se
maat,
soos die lied van
‘n meisie
in haar liefde
verlaat.
In elk’ grashalm
se vou
blink ‘n druppel
van dou,
en vinnig verbleek
dit
tot ryp in die
kou!
Comments
Post a Comment