Albert Blake’s ‘Jopie Fourie ‘n Besinning’ (a reflection) is certainly an excellent study of a young army officer who rebelled against the Union of South Africa’s government in 1914. Without resigning from the army he joined the rebels and then entered armed conflict with his former comrades. He was soon reduced to a small commando of about fifty men operating in the area between Pretoria and Warmbad (now Bela Bela) and captured by the government’s forces. Military law required that he face trial by court martial which took place in Pretoria in December 1914. They found him guilty of treason and sentenced him to death – military law would demand nothing less for desertion and then armed rebellion. He was shot by firing squad in Pretoria Central prison the day after being found guilty. Fearful of civil unrest, certain measures were taken by the government of Botha and Smuts. The body was buried secretly and only returned to his family some years later. Publication of the letters, a good many of them, written in the hours he spent in the death cell was suppressed. Nonetheless, they were transcribed and published and the text is freely available today.
Albert Blake has written a sympathetic account of the man and his aspirations. Jopie’s performance in the Anglo Boer War is not well documented, apart from his wounding and capture near Onderstepoort. He was seriously wounded in the thigh and it was several months before he was able to be mobile again. He walked thereafter with a limp. Jopie Fourie was an unsuccessful farmer and a minor state servant, a cattle inspector. He worked for Louis Botha in the 1910 general election when Botha lost his bid to represent Pretoria West, beaten by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. Jopie seems to have been involved a number of times in the political unrest in Pretoria but was not an extreme Afrikaner nationalist, being a supporter of General Louis Botha until he lost confidence in him with his decision to support the British request to invade German South West Africa (Namibia) in 1914. Jopie became involved in the rebellion which was doomed from the start. Prime movers were Generals Christiaan de Wet, Christiaan Beyers and Koos de la Rey. De la Rey was shot at a road-block In Johannesburg during a search for some bank robbers. De Wet was soon rounded up as his horsemen could not outlast the Defence Force’s motor vehicles; Beyers was pursued through the Free State and was drowned trying to cross the Vaal River. The rebellion was effectively at an end except for Jopie’s small band north of Pretoria.
Albert Blake’s book is very readable (provided you are able to read Afrikaans) and thoroughly researched. He has written a number of other books about prominent Afrikaner nationalist figures, Robey Leibbrandt and Hans van Rensburg, for example. He certainly lavishes praise on Jopie and his aspirations and gives a lot of attention to his trial. Jopie’s final address to the court was incriminating in that he did not deny his guilt, nor ask for mercy for himself but only for his brother. The book is of course written from the point of view that Jopie was the hero and that Botha and Smuts were the traitors. This viewpoint is not acceptable to many of South Africa’s population groups. It will do little to change an adverse opinion of a man beloved of the right-wing extremists – after all, Eugene Terre’Blanche complained that Smuts ‘shot Jopie down like a dog’.
Robin Smith
Howick, KZN
4 December 2024