General Barry Hertzog, former South African Prime Minister, dies

James Barry Munnick Hertzog was born into a German immigrant family in 1866. He attended school in Kimberly and Stellenbosch, and completed a Bachelor's degree in England, as well as degree in law at the University of Amsterdam. He became increasingly disillusioned by the treatment of Afrikaners by the British colonial government and attempted to challenge this injustice through the study of law. Upon his return to South Africa, he worked as an advocate in Pretoria. By 1895, he had been appointed as the judge of the Orange Free State (OFS), and at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899, served as a legal advisor to the forces of the OFS. Hertzog became active in politics in 1904 and emerged as the Minister of Education in the OFS. He was responsible for implementing a policy bilingualism, in which equal recognition would be given to English and Afrikaans. This was one of the ways in which Hertzog championed the Afrikaners cause. Another was the speech made at Smithfield, in which he called for a pro-Afrikaner form of South African nationalism. Hertzog became the Prime Minister after the defeat of General Jan Smuts and his South African Party (SAP). He was instrumental in bringing about the Balfour Declaration (1926), which was one of the first steps to South Africa's eventual emergence as a republic. In 1933, Hertzog's National Party (NP) and the SAP fused to form the United Party (UP). This caused the future Prime Minister, D.F. Malan, to break away and to later form the party that would serve as the forerunner of the apartheid-led National Party. His refusal to support South Africa's involvement in the Second World War led to Hertzog's fall. He retired from politics in 1940 and on 21 November 1942, he died in Pretoria, at age of 76.