MAKING OF A DRUG
WARRIOR - CANNABIS EXPERT JAN SMUTS
Jan Smuts came from a traditional religious Dutch
Afrikaaner background. Not for him the fleshpots of his prospective Victoria
College, Stellenbosch, to whom he wrote aged sixteen:
"...such a place where a large puerile element exists,
affords fair scope for moral, and what is more important, religious temptation,
which, if yielded to, will eclipse alike the expectations of my parents and the
intentions of myself ... For of what use will a mind, enlarged and refined in
all possible ways, be to me, if my religion be a deserted pilot and morality a
wreck? To avoid temptation and to make the proper use of my precious time, I
purposely refuse to enter a public boarding department, as that of Mr de Kock,
but shall board privately (most likely at Mr N. Ackermann's) which will, in
addition, accord with my private and reserved nature." [3966]
An outstanding scholar, Smuts' marks were the third
highest in the Cape Colony in 1887, and he came top at Greek after learning a
year's worth in the six days before the exam.
Smuts thought big. A year later this fat-headed,
unpopular and insufferable-sounding teenager was welcoming, as leader of the
debating society, a visiting
Cecil Rhodes.
Smuts gave a speech on pan-African unity, a political
philosophy very much to Rhodes' liking, showing a talent for flattery which was
to resurface in later diplomatic adventures among various "puerile elements".
At University in England Smuts was, again, a loner who
did not want to have fun:
"Smuts came to Cambridge at the age of twenty-one,
three or more years older than the typical university undergraduate. He was
isolated from the other men of his year by a different social background,
different upbringing, and different attitudes. Smuts's disdain for frivolity and
laxity combined with his lack of interest in sports and his decision to take up
lodgings outside the college, did much to divide him from the other students." [3966]
"After setting up a law practice in Cape Town, the
Anglophile Smuts was drawn to the charismatic Cecil Rhodes. After the Jameson
Raid, he felt betrayed, and moved to the South African Republic. Transforming
himself into a hard-line Anglophobe, Smuts found himself office at the heart of
Paul Kruger's government. As confrontation with the British Empire loomed, Smuts
played a crucial role in the failed peace talks." [3969]
The practical problem in the homeland - i.e. someone
else's homeland that the Dutch and British had taken over - was whether the
whites should stick together in the face of a vastly numerically superior black
and coloured population, as proposed by Rhodes or, as in fact happened, end up
warring between themselves.
Things fell apart after the Jameson Raid, an attempted
armed invasion of the Transvaal initiated by Rhodes. The action was a failure.
Smuts felt betrayed, and moved to the Transvaal in search of opportunities. He
found some, got married, and fathered twins, who died in infancy.
Following some police brutality and treatment
considered unfair by the uitlanders (British) Smuts managed to start the
(second) Boer War. [3969]
"In fact, many western cape nationalist Afrikaners
supported the British. Smuts decided to establish a headquarters and command as
if he were the head of an army." [3969]
Though it turned out the Afrikaaners were not such
great fans of his proposed warfare, Smuts did his best to keep it going, trying
to blow up gold mines (overruled by a judge) and then the copper mining centre
of Oklep with a train full of explosives, which also failed.
After various last stands and glorious defeats the
undefeated British became conciliatory. Smuts ended up dominating the peace
negotiations with Lord Kitchener, largely because of his command of English.
"1902 – The second round of peace talks at Vereeniging
end the South African War on 31 May 1902. Joseph Chamberlain insisted the issue
of the Colour Blind qualified franchise for the two former Boer Republics is
included, however this turns into a deal breaker for the Boers. The British
attempt to strike a compromise and the initial draft of the Vereeniging Peace
treaty includes the following phrase:
"‘The Franchise will not be given to NATIVES until
after the Introduction of Self-Government’.
"This meant it would be given to them as part of the
future self-government package. The Boer delegation even reject this concept,
General Jan Smuts in his capacity as a lawyer convinces the British that the
Boers will address the matter ‘in the future’ after self governance is granted
(here Smuts is looking to the future South African ‘Union’) and the phase [sic]
is changed again to read:
"‘The question of granting the franchise to Natives
will not be decided until after the introduction of self-government.’
"This meant that the all white parliaments of the
Transvaal and Orange Free State would independently decide the colour blind
qualified franchise on their own, only after self-government is granted them,
and even in that instance they may or may not decide to implement it." [3965]
After downplaying the 20th century's "first massacre
of innocents" at Leliefontein (31 Jan to 1 Feb 1902) [3965],
running three of South Africa's nine ministries (from 1910) [3230],
massacring some striking miners (1913), restricting black land ownership (1913)
[3975],
militarily besieging striking railway workers then imprisoning and deporting
their leaders without warrant or trial (1914), passing an Indemnity and
Undesirables Special Importation Bill that retrospectively made his actions
legal, clearing Smuts and the government of any wrongdoings (1914), putting down
the Maritz Rebellion of pro-German Boers (1914), leading troops in the East
African campaign (1916), joining the Imperial War Cabinet in London (1917-19),
settling turf wars between British army and navy air services (1917) [3972],
wanting, following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918), to give Ukraine to
Austria and Constantinople to Bulgaria [3984],
asserting American Commander-in-Chief John J Pershing was "very commonplace" and
asking Lloyd George to put him in charge of the US Army instead (1918)...
"Not surprisingly, Lloyd George kept this unrealistic,
even arrogant, proposal to himself." [3984]
Smuts enjoined with Canada to slag off the British
generals, failed to impress the French, yet continued to try to intercede
between the civilian authorities and the military. Thus Smuts' military
influence declined towards the war's end. After a good offensive in 1917 he
declared victory - but agreed with Wilson in 1918 that victory would not be
possible until 1919 and maybe 1920.
"Given the strength of nationalism, his attempts to
redraw the map of Europe were anachronistic, belonging more to the Metternichian
than the Wilsonian era." [3984].
But he was soon back, playing a leading role at the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919, advocating for the creation of the League of
Nations, securing South African control over the former German South-West
Africa, fixing Ireland (1921) [3968], using air power to scare
"tribal peoples", and bombarding yet more striking miners from the air (1922) [3971],
and telling the League of Nations to order the world to stop smoking that weed
(1923 and 1924)[1530,
1919,
2074,
2101]. General Jan Smuts went on to predict in an interview (1930) that
there would be no more world wars, thanks to...poison gas [3963].
After losing the 1924 election:
"...Smuts decided to accept invitations to make
speeches in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. On the November
1929 first leg, he presented three Rhodes Memorial Lectures at Oxford
University, spelling out his views on white settlement in Africa and 'native
policy' and lending support to the British 'civilizing mission' from a
first-hand perspective. Not surprisingly, he took an unabashedly racist view of
'natives,' caricaturing them as 'happy-go-lucky,' 'child-like with a child
psychology,' 'good-tempered,' and 'care-free' people who loved 'wine and song'
and who had no original religious beliefs, literature or art, or desire to
improve themselves."
W.E.B. Du Bois and other officials of the National
Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), made their feelings
known:
"It was not surprising that Du Bois expressed a strong
opinion about Smuts, for he had a long-standing interest in South Africa. While
teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio during the mid-1890s, he had been
initially exposed to conditions in South Africa through a group of black South
Africans students, and he had kept up on South Africa in subsequent decades. In
a 1925 essay that appeared in Alain Locke’s The New Negro, he lambasted Smuts
for serving as a tool of British imperialism:
"Liberal England, wanting world peace and fearing
French militarism, backed by the English thrift that is interested in the
restored economic equilibrium, found as one of its most prominent spokesmen Jan
Smuts of South Africa, and Jan Smuts stands for the suppressing of the blacks.
Jan Smuts is to-day, in his world aspects the greatest protagonist of the white
race ... he is fighting to insure the continued and eternal subordination of
black to white in Africa."
...
"Despite being forewarned by [New York Times
correspondent John] Harding and foreshadowed by [Harry] Dean, Smuts’s words at
the Civic Forum soon became a lightning rod. His incendiary 'Negro has the
patience of an ass' comment immediately aroused great attention and revulsion
from blacks in the audience. Tuskegee Institute Principal Dr. Robert R. Moton,
who was taken aback that someone he considered to be 'one of the most
progressive of Boers on the race question' could have made such a hurtful
statement labeling 'us docile animals:'
"'It cut like a two-edged sword through the heart of
every Negro in the audience and also through some of the white people. General
Smuts, you are a cultured and refined gentleman, but I would like to ask you
about those words.'
"Smuts quickly responded that he had not meant to
demean anyone. 'Far from wanting to insult the natives of Africa or any negroes
... I was expressing my admiration for the natives.' Another audience member
directed a barbed question at the Field Marshal. “Can the negro continue to sing
and dance while the white man gathers diamonds, copper, and rubber?' 'Yes,'
replied Smuts. 'It is wrong ... to make an inferior European of the native, who
is justly proud to be an African. Leave them to their villages, their dancing,
and their songs.'"
https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files/the_most_patient_of_animals_next_to_the_ass_jan_smuts_howard_university_and_african_american_leadership_1930.pdf
[3973]
Some key moments in
South Africa's chemical warfare:
"1896
South Africa's chemical industry is officially
established, although earlier discoveries of diamond, gold, and coalfields had
already led to a "rapidly growing demand for explosives." — G. C. Gerrans,
"Historical Overview of the South African Chemical Industry, 1896-1998,"
Chemistry International 21:3 (May 1999), p. 71." [3967]
"1915
South African leaders become aware of the tangible
threat posed to their own troops by CW after battlefield use of chemical agents
by the Germans on the Western Front. — Ian van der Waag, review of The Rollback
of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program, Journal of
Military History (January 2002), p. 272." [3967]
As Tilman Dedering explains in "South Africa’s Secret
Chemical Weapons Project, 1933-1945":
"Popular opinion in post-war Britain was fired by a
vigorous anti-war mood. A broad consensus on the immorality of chemical weapons
seeped into the Western public domain in the interwar period, despite some
‘gas-tolerant’ observers who insisted that the defensive and offensive uses of
chemical weapons were quite manageable. The proponents of chemical weapons
argued that gas had become an inevitable feature of modern warfare. One of the
early theorists of aerial warfare, Giulio Douhet, reasoned that the use of
chemical and biological weapons was a natural corollary of air power. Douhet
predicted that weapons of mass destruction were instrumental in breaking the
will of the enemy population. The emphasis was not merely on physical
destruction but on the psychological aspects of terrorising whole populations.
The military writer Basil Liddell Hart claimed in 1925 that ‘gas may well prove
the salvation of civilisation’ because the dreadfulness of chemical weapons
constituted a potent deterrent for any power to start another world war. Pirow’s
colleague in the Fusion cabinet, Jan Smuts, seemed to have thought along similar
lines when he claimed in an interview with American journalists in 1930 that
another world war was unlikely but that future conflicts would be decided by
‘poison gases concentrated in sweeping attacks on civilian populations’."
"1936
Jan Smuts predicts the broad [future] use of CBW
[chemical and biological weapons] after he and other air theorists take note of
the Italian use of [mustard] in Ethiopia. — Ian van der Waag, review of The
Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program,
Journal of Military History (January 2002), p. 272."
https://www.nti.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/south_africa_chemical.pdf
[3967]
With these cheery thoughts in mind, Smuts returned to
government in 1939.
https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/91863/Dedering_South_2022.pdf?sequence=1
[3963]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Jan_Smuts [3966]
"1941-1945
CW agents are manufactured by South Africa at the
Klipfontein and Firgrove factories in response to a request by the British
Ministry of Supply. The two factories have 1,697 employees and are capable of
producing 250 tons of different chemical warfare agents each month. The
Klipfontein Organic Products plant produces phosgene and mustard. The production
of chemical agents and associated weapons is supervised by Brigadier General Van
der Bijl, Director General War Supplies, and Brigadier General Van der Spuy,
Director General Technical Services. After the war, the production focus is
shifted to DDT and other insecticides. — Ian van der Waag, review of The
Rollback of South Africa's Chemical and [sic] Biological Warfare Program,
Journal of Military History (January 2002), p. 272; G. C. Gerrans, "Historical
Overview of the South African Chemical Industry, 1896-1998," Chemistry
International 21:3 (May 1999), p. 76." [3967]
Smuts' temperate view
on WW1 strategy, at a time when the coalition had become entrenched in opposing
opinions on the conduct of the war, perhaps has resonance for the stalemated war
on CaPs:
"Smuts's firmly held view that wars are largely won or lost in the minds of men
rather than on land and sea helps to explain his position. Under the
circumstances, with Britain's continental allies wavering, the only way to get
the Germans to crack, and keep the will of the Entente strong, was through a
pounding of German defences. Alas, as Smuts readily admitted, ' ... victory in
this kind of warfare is the costliest possible to the victor.'"
http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol054dw.html [3984]
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The Englishman stands
for the rights of everyone disadvantaged, discriminated against, persecuted, and
prosecuted on the false or absent bases of prohibition, and also believes the
victims of these officially-sanctioned prejudices have been appallingly treated
and should be pardoned and compensated.
The Englishman requests the return of his CaPs
and other rightful property, for whose distraint Slovenia has proffered no
credible excuse or cause.
The Benedictions represent both empirical entities as well as beliefs. Beliefs
which the Defence evidence shows may be reasonably and earnestly held about the
positive benefits of CaPs at the population level, in which the good
overwhelmingly outweighs the bad. Below, the latest version of this dynamic
list.
THE BENEDICTIONS
REFERENCES
TIMELINE OF DRUG LAW v. SCIENCE