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Chapter 4

Student during the depression

Early in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, Anton Rupert left the Karoo for Pretoria, the administrative capital of the Union with a burgeoning Afrikaans university. On 26 February he registered for a first-year BSc course at what was popularly known as TUCs1 − the University of Pretoria (UP), his alma mater, of which he would later become chancellor and Alumnus of the Century. The course was designed to serve as an admission qualification to a medical degree at one of the other universities.

His decision to attend the UP instead of the older universities of Stellenbosch or Cape Town was directly related to his love for Afrikaans. When he read in a newspaper report in 1933 that the city council of Pretoria had withdrawn its annual contribution to the UP on account of the university becoming an Afrikaans-language institution, he decided that this was where he wanted to study, as one of the first generation of Cape school children who had been educated fully in Afrikaans.

In Rupert’s first year he was in Sonop men’s residence. The first ten days the newcomers were subjected to a gruelling initiation programme. Most of it happened at night, so they got precious little sleep. They were tossed out of their beds, had to crawl through a stream, which they were told contained hidden barbed wire, and sent on long-distance jogs across the city on senseless errands like counting the steps of the Union Buildings. The young entrepreneur sized up the situation and, on his way to purchase a box of matches for a senior student at the railway station several kilometres away, he stopped off at the house of his former headmaster Dr Eybers, who had moved to Pretoria in the meantime. From him he borrowed enough money to buy a dozen boxes, which he hid on the sports grounds in case he was sent on the same silly errand again. At the end of the ten days two first-year students were in hospital and a third in a psychiatric institution. On 7 March 1934 the rector, Prof. AE du Toit, put a summary end to all initiation in the residences and instituted a committee to investigate the matter. On its recommendation, initiation rituals entailing physical exhaustion and nocturnal activities were declared taboo.

In the midst of this ordeal Rupert for the first time in his life wrote an intelligence test. The result was sufficiently impressive to secure him a bursary of £40 per annum for three years. On his slender budget it was a substantial amount. By then the Depression was affecting student numbers at the UP. In 1930 there had been 1 074 students. By 1934 enrolment was down to 829, including extramural students, plus 25 in Johannesburg. Those on the Pretoria campus knew each other well and Rupert was soon actively involved in student life, where he emerged as a natural leader.

At the end of his first year he was one of two students out of a class of seventeen to qualify for admission to study medicine at the universities of Cape Town or the Witwatersrand. Still unable to afford it, he changed to a straight BSc with chemistry as his major subject. His academic performance suffered a setback in his second year when he incurred inflammation of the middle ear and missed several months’ lectures. There were no antibiotics in those days, and the somewhat primitive treatment left a permanent scar behind his ear.

In his final year Rupert met Huberte Goote, a first-year BA student. He had first heard about her when his close friend Colijn van Bergen sang her praises while they were sitting in a car outside the house of Fritz (FS) Steyn, the university’s propaganda secretary and later a member of parliament, diplomat and judge, where Rupert was staying at the time. Student friends told Huberte about the Afrikaans-Nasionale Studentebond (ANS, Afrikaans National Students’ Association), where she met Rupert. She represented the first-year students on the students’ representative council (SRC), of which he was chairman. Huberte would spend the coming decades at the side of the tall, dark-haired student of whom she said in an interview: ‘Anton was shy, but he had charisma. I was already fascinated by him at the first mass meeting.’

Huberte came from a Western Transvaal family, one that had also experienced hardship. She was the daughter of a Dutch immigrant teacher, Hubertus Johannes Goote, who had died five months before her birth during the 1918 Spanish influenza epidemic, and Johanna Adina Goote, née Bergh. When her grandfather in the Netherlands received a cablegram announcing her birth, he got the impression that he had a grandson and proposed that the baby be given the family name of Hubertus Gerardus, which was duly done. Understandably, the name gave rise to a lot of teasing, also from a good family friend, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Hubert, as she spelled her name initially, objected to Prince Bernhard calling her ‘Hubertus Gerardus’. He suggested she should be Huberta but she refused – Huberta was a hippopotamus, she said. In the end they agreed on Huberte, the French feminine form, which she prefers.

Like her daughter, Huberte’s mother had also been born after the death of her father. Mrs Johanna Adina Goote was orphaned at the age of six when her mother Mrs Bergh (née Riekert) died. Huberte’s grandfather Bergh was a descendant of the Swedish adventurer Olof Bergh, a member of the Political Council at the Cape, who gained fame through exploits such as leading the journey of exploration to Namaqualand in 1682-’83. He had been married to Anna de Koning. After the loss of her mother, Huberte’s mother was raised by her grandparents, Comdt PJ and Mrs Lenie Riekert, on the farm Derdepoort. It was in the same district, near Pilanesberg, that Huberte’s mother met her Dutch father, who was then head of a farm school with three teachers.

One of Huberte’s clearest memories, one that she has carried with her since childhood is the story of the infamous murders on Derdepoort on 25 November 1899, a few weeks after the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War. Her great-grandfather Comdt Riekert owned the large farm Derdepoort along the Marico River on the border between Marico-Bushveld and the then Bechuanaland. An attack on a Boer settlement of about thirteen families on the farm was the first in which the British forces used black people and in which Boer women and children were victims.2

In later years when Huberte told her grandchildren about the wartime suffering, she also cautioned them to remember the kindness and humanity of those who had helped her ancestors: ‘You should always keep a balanced view, because wars are not caused by people; the cause is greed. Wars are always about greed.’

Huberte was born in 1919 in Pres. Paul Kruger’s official residence in Church Street, Pretoria, at a time when the house was rented by the Moedersbond maternity hospital before it became the Kruger House museum. Until the age of seven, she lived with her mother and older sister Bets at Rustenburg. The widow supported her daughters by sewing dresses for friends. She had inherited the family farm but derived no income from it: ‘just firewood and beetroot,’ Huberte recalls. As her husband had died so soon after starting to teach in South Africa, Mrs Goote only qualified for a tiny pension. ‘That is why I have respect for people who can make the most of their talents and can survive. I detest handouts; you have to retain your independence and honour,’ Huberte relates.

In 1927 Huberte’s mother remarried. Her new husband, Piet Wessels, was also a teacher and eventually became headmaster of Krugersdorp’s Monument High School, which Huberte attended. A clever child, she did her first three standards in one year and matriculated at a young age. Her interest in all forms of the arts dates from the time she first went to school. She acted in plays, sang leading roles in operettas and was a member of the choir, while also playing basketball and hockey. After matriculating she worked as children’s librarian at Krugersdorp for a year. Then, with the aid of three interest-bearing loans, she proceeded to university in Pretoria.

Huberte registered for a BA with Afrikaans-Nederlands and Afrikaans cultural history as major subjects. When her cultural history lecturer Kotie Roodt-Coetzee, who had become a good friend, learned about her library experience, she organised a post for Huberte in the university library and her tuition fees were waived. This lucky break enabled her to register for a diploma course in librarianship concurrently with the BA, which was permitted on condition she worked in the library two nights a week. With all that on her plate, she still found time for the SRC as well as her many other interests, mainly the arts. She was a member of the Castalides art committee and on the editorial board of its journal, Castalia. She belonged to a small group that met regularly to discuss art exhibitions. Intensely musical like the father she had never known, she was part of a group of music lovers that met on Sunday nights to listen to records. On top of that she chaired the ANS drama group and acted in productions at the Volksteater along with well-known actresses like the passionate Anna Neethling-Pohl. (In later years, whenever Huberte became somewhat agitated, Rupert would admonish her: ‘Don’t be like Anna Neethling-Pohl!’) Even with all her extramural interests, however, Huberte completed both her BA and the librarianship diploma successfully.

Rupert, who has often acknowledged his gratitude to Huberte for her support throughout his career, paid tribute to his wife in his chairman’s address at the 1996 AGM of Rembrandt Beherende Beleggings (Rembrandt Controlling Investments): ‘She has been my most loyal and faithful supporter and also my greatest critic. I think that is how it ought to be.’ On the same occasion he called to mind their student years, stressing that they were both children of the Depression, when about a third of Afrikaans-speaking whites were unemployed. ‘I think it leaves a mark on one and maybe makes one look at capital in a different way. Those who had cars – three out of UP’s total of 820 students – did not do well.’ Both of them had to borrow to pay for their studies. They knew money could do a lot of good but it could also be the cause of great evil. ‘It is like a rope: it can be used as a lifeline to save a drowning person, or as a noose to hang someone. That is money. It talks.’

At the end of 1936 Rupert obtained his BSc, majoring in chemistry with second-year courses in physics and mathematics. The next year he registered for an MSc in chemistry. He would be studying part-time, for he had to start earning a living. Jobs were scarce, but he was fortunate to get a post at the Pretoria Technical College lecturing to part-time pharmaceutical students. Their average age was 28. He was twenty.

It dawned on him even then that he was training Afrikaners to work for ‘the English’ − the language divide, reinforced by economic inequality, ran deep. Over the next few years he became increasingly convinced that Afrikaners would have to fight for their own niche in the business world and in public life, a view he shared with other Afrikaner intellectuals. Ever since Lord Milner’s ‘Kindergarten’ − the British team imported from Oxford after the Anglo-Boer War to run the administration − the civil service had been predominantly English speaking. In 1925 nearly a third of all public servants were unilingual; the lingua franca at the office was English. In the business world, too, Afrikaners had to relinquish their ethnic ties and communicate in English if they wanted to become part of the business elite. Many Afrikaners sensed that English speakers condescendingly looked down on them and considered their language and culture inferior. A considerable number of English-speakers still harboured feelings that had been rife during the Anglo-Boer War, when the English press in South Africa was predominantly imperialist and anti-Boer. Some of the worst jingoism was displayed in the area around Graaff-Reinet.3

In the anti-Afrikaans atmosphere, which would increase as a result of divisions after South Africa’s entry into the Second World War in 1939, Dr HJ van Eck, a brilliant chemical engineer and father of the South African industrial revolution, was refused membership of the prestigious Rand Club. (In 1945 Rupert cited this as his reason for declining nomination for membership, which, given his English name, might well have been granted by the club, considered the canteen of the mining fraternity.)

In 1937, the year Rupert started lecturing, a new Afrikaans morning paper, Die Transvaler, was launched in Johannesburg. He applied for a position at the paper and was interviewed by the editor, Dr HF Verwoerd, who offered him a job on the editorial staff. Since it would have meant furthering his study by correspondence, however, Rupert turned down the offer: he recalls his decision to return to the university and concentrate on his postgraduate studies as one of the most important in his early life. Besides, he had not been favourably impressed by Verwoerd, who came across as ‘restless, rather autocratic and opinionated’ during the interview − impressions that were confirmed in later life, when he and Verwoerd crossed swords on various occasions.

The centenary of the Great Trek took place in 1938. There was a huge upsurge of Afrikaner nationalism throughout the country, also on the UP campus. The Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging (ATKV, Afrikaans Language and Culture Society) organised a symbolic ox-wagon trek to remind the trekkers’ descendants of the arduous journey and many tribulations their forebears had endured on their way into the interior. The symbol was apposite and stirred up great emotion among the vast majority of Afrikaners.

Rupert, in 1938 already a lecturer in chemistry, chaired both the extramural SRC and the extramural students’ branch of the ANS, precursor of the later Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB). He was also on the national executive of the ANS, at that time chaired by Dr Nic Diederichs, a future minister of finance. By that time Rupert was a supporter of Dr DF Malan’s Purified National Party, the opposition to the ruling United Party of Hertzog and Smuts that had been formed through the fusion of the NP and the SAP in 1934.

Rupert and Huberte were among the ringleaders of the centenary celebrations on the UP campus, where Afrikaner ardour was opposed by members of the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), the dominant organisation on English-language campuses. Huberte was incensed by their snide comments on the Voortrekker costume that was widely worn by Afrikaners in that centenary year. She organised a special day when she and her friends would attend classes en masse wearing long Voortrekker dresses and traditional bonnets. They borrowed costumes from the Volksteater with the aid of Huberte’s actress friend Anna Neethling-Pohl. The appointed day happened to be 14 September, which, someone pointed out, was the anniversary of the day when Afrikaans became the official teaching medium at the university. They decided to celebrate this event and it became the first ‘Spring Day’, as the annual commemoration of the day at the UP came to be called.

Some weeks later on 4 October 1938, Rupert’s birthday, he and Wouter le Roux went to Bloemfontein as SRC delegates to attend a tribute to Ds JD Kestell, a revered Afrikaner church leader known as Father Kestell. Rupert was deeply moved by the venerable old man’s message: ‘A nation saves itself.’ Kestell’s message, reinforced by later experiences that turned him away from a career in politics, played a crucial role in Rupert’s decision to enter the business world. It strengthened his conviction that Afrikaners should be self-sufficient and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps – in his own case, that he should venture into small business. Kestell, who had accompanied the Boer commandos on horseback as field chaplain throughout the Anglo-Boer War, had been a driving force in the Helpmekaar movement and provided the inspiration for the Reddingsdaadbond, an association formed to promote the economic advancement of the Afrikaner people. On the train journey back to Pretoria, Le Roux proposed that they celebrate. Only then, on such a decisive day in his life, Rupert remembered it was his birthday, and they toasted the occasion with a glass of white wine.

Rupert participated actively in the Ox-wagon Trek of 1938. As part of the celebrations a lighted torch had been carried all the way from Jan van Riebeeck’s statue in Cape Town to the uncompleted foundations of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, and it was also kept burning on the university campus. Rupert’s younger brother Jan, a member of the Voortrekker youth movement, was on a visit from Graaff-Reinet at the time. Rupert recalled that Jan had to hold the torch while he drove his open car carefully so the flame would not go out.

On 10 October Rupert and Fritz Steyn, as representatives of the UP community, had travelled to Bulhoek to commemorate Pres. Paul Kruger’s birthday in the company of the Trek party. On this occasion they had requested the leader of the Ox-wagon Trek to donate a wagon that could serve as a lasting inspiration to students at their university. On 14 December − two days before the centenary reached its climax on the Day of the Covenant, the commemoration of the Voortrekker victory over the Zulu at Blood River − it was announced at a mass rally on Monument Hill that the wagon of Louis Trichardt was to be entrusted to the students of the University of Pretoria for safekeeping. On 17 December students pulled it to the university campus.4 It became traditional for every outgoing chairman of the SRC to formally hand over custody of the wagon to his successor, as Rupert duly did to Hans Nel in 1938.

At the peak of the Ox-wagon Trek celebrations Rupert edited and published a newspaper, De Oude Emigrant, with the historian Gustav Preller as honorary editor-in-chief. He consulted the news editor of Die Transvaler, Piet Meiring, also from Graaff-Reinet and later head of the South African Information Service. Rupert worked night and day on the four editions of the jubilee paper that appeared on 13, 14, 15 and 16 December, writing the editorial, collating copy − articles and news about the Ox-wagon Trek and the centenary celebrations of the Great Trek − and getting each edition printed by morning. But he failed to get a distribution network going and after the celebrations thousands of unsold copies had to be burnt. ‘I learnt a valuable lesson there,’ Rupert was to say later. ‘Your product could be good, and still be a failure if your sales organisation and distribution aren’t good.’

Afrikaner nationalism swept the Pretoria campus after the centenary, so much so that the UP was unofficially called the Voortrekker University for a while. Emotions ran high and UP students pelted the screen with eggs filled with ink when ‘God Save the King’ was played in cinemas, as was customary in those years. At a mass rally on 10 April 1939 Rupert proposed that 14 September (the day when, seven years earlier, the university became an Afrikaans-medium institution) be celebrated annually at a student function, its nature to be determined by the SRC. The proposal was adopted unanimously. In fact, the date was one day out: 13 September in due course became Commemoration Day, or Spring Day. Initially it took the form of a morning gathering on the campus, at which the Louis Trichardt wagon, Voortrekker apparel and national flags featured prominently. In the afternoon there were sporting events and in the evening a ball. This continued until 1944 when, on the proposal of the then SRC chairman, it was declared an annual university holiday.

As invited speaker on Spring Day in 1961, Rupert recalled how in 1938, without official permission, they had taken the principal prisoner, carried him to the old club hall in a huge chair and started celebrating. Compared to the world’s great universities − from Salerno, the oldest of all, dating back to the ninth century, to relative latecomers like Leiden and Harvard − South African universities were young, he said. ‘But we have our own tradition, a tradition we should maintain with pride. We have a tradition of youthful vitality and resilience; a tradition of life instead of bricks and concrete. It is a tradition which should govern our actions, thought and attitudes, because in our country and with our challenges we need to be able to think clearly.’

On the 40th Spring Day in 1978 Rupert presented his alma mater with the hand-embroidered sash of office of Pres. Paul Kruger, taken to England as booty by a British soldier after the Anglo-Boer War, that he had traced and bought back. In an impassioned speech he reminded the students of the importance of symbols like the ox-wagon and the flaming torch to keep them aware of their origins and destiny. ‘The ox-wagon was [for the Voortrekkers] the church, the childbed and the cradle of a new generation. And that is why this small wagon stands here as a symbol and a guard in order that we should never forget how small our beginnings were and how humble and grateful we should remain,’ he said.

Yet even in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the late 1930s Rupert’s patriotic fervour did not overrule his sense of justice. This is evident in his attitude towards an incident involving an English-speaking lecturer, John Agar-Hamilton. It was the upshot of the protracted language struggle that persisted even after Afrikaans was declared the official medium at the university in 1932. That move had been triggered by the tarring and feathering of a French lecturer at the UP, HP Lamont, who was suspected of pseudonymously writing a book entitled War, Wine and Women that contained denigratory comments about Afrikaners. At his assailants’ trial Lamont admitted to writing the controversial book and was dismissed by the university.5

Despite the 1932 decision on the language medium, the UP senate decided that English-speaking lecturers merely had to improve their proficiency in Afrikaans to a level where they could understand the language but not necessarily be able to lecture in it. So John Agar-Hamilton, senior lecturer in history, continued to deliver his lectures in English amid mounting student objections that culminated in a boycott of his classes in April 1939. At the instigation of the chairman of the SRC, Albert Geyser, a protest meeting was held on campus, at which the Vierkleur, flag of the old Transvaal Republic, was hoisted.

Rupert was deeply perturbed by Geyser’s action. Officially Agar-Hamilton was still permitted to lecture in English until the end of the year. At a mass meeting of students he proposed that Agar-Hamilton should receive an apology: as a guest on their campus he ought to be treated hospitably. He also suggested that English-speaking students abstain from voting, since it was the Afrikaners’ honour that was at issue. Although Rupert’s proposal was accepted by an overwhelming majority, Geyser refused to apologise to Agar-Hamilton. At the outbreak of the Second World War the lecturer joined the air force and left the campus for good.

This episode illustrates Rupert’s early awareness of the need for coexistence, but also reveals a conviction that would become a philosophy of life: that Afrikaners should conduct themselves civilly and courteously towards people from other cultures. Geyser was not prepared to accept that. A Hervormde Kerk theology student, he did not have full student support during his chairmanship of the SRC. One of the council members, Ria Hugo (the later history lecturer Dr Maria Hugo), accused him of undermining Rupert, then chairman of the ANS, and proposed a motion of no confidence, which was passed. Geyser and his henchmen then proceeded to assault Rupert supporters, and one night they lay in wait for Rupert himself. He drove a battered red MG convertible, bought second-hand when he became a lecturer. They forced him out of it and led him to a nearby hall. Colijn van Bergen, who was with him in the car, managed to escape and ran to the library where Huberte was on duty. He shouted to her to summon the police, who arrived soon afterwards and came to Rupert’s rescue. He was already being stripped by his assailants, who intended to tar and feather him.

Rupert refused to lay charges against the Geyser group, either with the police or the university authorities. He dismissed their conduct as plain jealousy. One by one his assailants came to him to apologise. Geyser was the very last to do so. That was in 1977, when he represented the University of the Witwatersrand at Anton’s inauguration as chancellor of the University of Port Elizabeth.

After the Ox-wagon Trek Rupert and his good friend Colijn van Bergen, then in charge of the ANS Film Bureau, went on tour with a film show that included a film made of the Trek, together with films on the sculptor Anton van Wouw and the Afrikaans literary figures Jan FE Celliers, DF Malherbe and Totius. The only music they had was a recording of the national anthem, ‘Die Stem van Suid-Afrika’ (The Call of South Africa). In Rupert’s second car, a DKW convertible, they set out for Graaff-Reinet from Pretoria around six in the evening, loaded with equipment. On a dirt road near Trompsburg in the Free State the car overturned. Since they were travelling at low speed, neither suffered more than slight injuries, but the record with the national anthem broke in half. Undeterred, they went ahead with the tour and drew big audiences wherever they went, even though at half a crown per ticket admission was not cheap. The film, which had considerable historical value, disappeared during the war years.

Van Bergen often stayed with the Ruperts at Graaff-Reinet. He remembers Anton’s mother as a ‘wonderful woman’ who was very hospitable and made people feel at home. And the first of the local attractions that the young Rupert pointed out to his friends was the statue of Gideon Scheepers.

Towards the end of his student career Rupert was given a lecturership in the Department of Chemistry at the UP. At the end of 1939 he obtained an MSc in applied chemistry. In 1939 and 1940 he also completed courses in law and commerce at the University of South Africa, and embarked on a doctorate in spectroscopy at the UP.

In 1939, while war clouds were gathering in Europe, Rupert chaired the on-campus committee of the ANS, of which Huberte was a member. He was also a member of the executive committee of the ANS and on the editorial board of the movement’s official publication, Wapenskou, which published its freedom manifesto that reflected the strong feelings prevalent among Afrikaans students in the tension-filled late 1930s. In this document the ANS demanded that the Union of South Africa, a member of the British Commonwealth under the British crown, should be converted into a republic with an authoritative government. White population growth should be encouraged, including a considered immigration policy with assimilability as a requirement. ‘Indigenous non-whites’ should be under state tutelage. ‘By means of a differentiation policy parallel development according to their own traditional cultural beliefs and equality through apartheid should be made possible for them.’ Natural and production resources should be used equitably for the benefit of the entire community, in which regard the state should not hesitate to infringe on vested interests. As for language, it was proposed that Afrikaans should be the official language, with English enjoying full rights as a second language.

Several of the ideas in the manifesto were not to survive the overheated atmosphere of the war years; the proposed ideas also included some with which Rupert would differ increasingly explicitly in key respects in years to come.

In 1939 the ANS took a militant stand in favour of neutrality with regard to the war, but its protest meetings were to no avail. In parliament Gen. Hertzog’s neutrality motion was defeated by 80 votes to 67 and when Governor-General Patrick Duncan turned down his request for a general election, he resigned as head of government. Gen. Jan Smuts became prime minister and on 6 September 1939 South Africa entered the Second World War. The war was to last till 1945, and once again divided the country.6

Shortly after the outbreak of war Rupert was invited for sundowners at the house of physics professor JS van der Lingen, who had worked under Albert Einstein in Europe. To Rupert’s amazement he declared categorically that Germany would lose the war. He argued that for all its technological expertise, Germany did not understand mass production. When the USA entered the war Germany would be flattened by bombardment from the air. Besides, said Van Lingen, the Germans always wanted to improve a product instead of mass-producing the armaments required in a war situation. This far-sighted view was confirmed many years later by Dr Joachim Zahn, chairman of Daimler-Benz in the 1970s, who was astounded by the South African’s insight when Rupert told him about Van Lingen’s prediction. Zahn himself had worked on an intercontinental ballistic missile during the war, a sophisticated version of the V1 and V2 rockets that rained death and destruction on British cities during the blitz. The war was over and lost before the new missile was ready.

Shortly after the conversation with Van Lingen two incidents occurred that were to change Rupert’s political views profoundly. Both occurred in the company of his student friend Dirk Hertzog, who would become a co-founder of the Rembrandt group. Hertzog was a nephew of General JBM Hertzog, who was living in retirement on his farm Waterval near Witbank.7 He had initially planned to major in political science, but Stephen Leacock’s warning that reconciling electioneering with statecraft was the cardinal problem of the parliamentary system made him turn to law. According to Hertzog, he and Rupert first met as a result of student anti-war activities. At a meeting to protest against the internment of a member of the SRC, first Rupert and then Hertzog spoke: ‘Everybody else kept mum, as there were too many detectives in the audience,’ he related.8 It was Hertzog’s interest in politics that triggered the two incidents in question.

The first was an interview with Gen. Hertzog that his nephew organised shortly after the outbreak of war. Their party comprised six members of the ANS executive, including himself, Rupert and Demps van der Merwe. They wanted the veteran leader to advise them as to where their duty lay in these turbulent times. At first the septuagenarian Boer general was sceptical. Why come to him for counsel after vilifying him all these years, he asked. He pointed out that until recently many students had questioned his Afrikaner identity and loyalty. In the end he wanted an assurance that they would follow whatever advice he gave them. The young men asked leave to deliberate. When they returned Rupert, acting as spokesman, agreed that they would accept his advice unconditionally: for his part, he had requested it because he needed it. They recall Hertzog’s words to them as follows:

‘If you ever want to exercise control, you must first learn to obey. And the true test of obedience is not when you are in agreement but especially when you disagree. Jan Smuts has declared a war that you do not agree with. As you know, I do not agree either. But it was done legally under a constitution that I helped to write, so as law-abiding citizens we are bound by it. Smuts assured me that he would not conscript South Africans for duty beyond our borders. I told him if he introduced conscription or martial law I would personally lead you to the hills [i.e. head a rebellion]. I think he learned a lesson in 1914, he won’t repeat that mistake.

‘Now I am telling you: go back and prepare yourselves to take over. The wheel will turn and the day will come when you have to take the reins, and then you must be ready. Go back to your studies, do your duty and obey the law. And remember, whatever you do unto others will be done unto you.’

The former prime minister then insisted on personally pouring the coffee and slicing the bread.

Rupert was profoundly impressed. He had expected Hertzog to instigate them to rebel against the Smuts government. He decided then and there that he would desist from protest in future and rather engage in positive, practical action. To his mind this was an even more life-changing resolve than his decision to turn down Verwoerd’s offer to join Die Transvaler. Hertzog died two years later in November 1942. His former private secretary, Wennie du Plessis, described him as ‘Boer, Soldier, Statesman, Prince among humans’. Du Plessis eventually became an MP when he defeated Smuts in his stronghold, the Highveld constituency of Standerton, in the watershed election of 1948, which brought to an end the era of the Boer generals who had ruled the Union of South Africa since 1910.

The group of student friends all followed Hertzog’s advice and completed their academic training, except Demps van der Merwe, who was interned during the war. He was a theology student, newly returned from the Netherlands, who eventually headed the Gereformeerde Kerk’s Transvaal training centre for black theology students at Hammanskraal. In Huberte’s opinion it was Hertzog’s ‘wonderful’ advice that inspired Anton to join the Reddingsdaadbond when he was asked to do so.

The other crucial incident that influenced Rupert during the war years took place in 1940, when Dirk Hertzog persuaded Rupert to accompany him to Swartruggens to attend a political meeting at which Oswald Pirow was to speak. In 1939 Pirow, minister of defence in Hertzog’s government, had started a right-wing totalitarian movement, the New Order. Back in Pretoria after the meeting, Rupert was invited to tea by Pirow’s sister Sylva Moerdyk, wife of the well-known architect Gerard Moerdyk and member of a political triumvirate in the Transvaal, together with Adv. JG (Hans) Strijdom, later prime minister, and Prof. LJ (Wicus) du Plessis of Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education.

When he arrived she did not mince words. ‘Anton, why are you throwing away your future like this?’

Surprised, he asked what she meant.

‘Why do you mix with the likes of Oswald Pirow?’

Bewildered, he told her he didn’t understand. She replied: ‘We’re grooming you as leader in our party.’

He was shocked to hear a sister speak about her brother in such terms. That evening he told Huberte: ‘If that’s what politics is like, I want nothing to do with it. I’m through with politics.’

Rupert’s decision to steer clear of politics differed from that taken by Harry Oppenheimer, heir to an earlier South African family fortune, at about the same time. In 1947 he was elected a United Party MP. After the death of his father, Sir Ernest, in 1958 he became chairman of Anglo American and left politics, no doubt because he sensed a conflict of interests which the dual role as politician and head of a mighty gold, diamond and mineral empire would have entailed.

Dirk Hertzog in his turn received advice that turned him away from politics from his uncle Gen. Hertzog, whom he often visited at Waterval, although he did stand for election once. In his memoirs he records that when he questioned Hertzog about Stephen Leacock’s view of politics, the old man replied: ‘Yes, my boy, Leacock’s right. Smuts and I entered politics with the prestige we had gained over three years during the Anglo-Boer War. We could still achieve something on occasion. But if you have to start from the bottom, you have to kiss so many hands to get to the top that by the time you do, you are powerless. Besides, it’s always difficult to decide whether you should do the popular thing − and it’s never hard to tell what that is − or rather do what your own knowledge and experience tell you is in the public’s long-term interest. If you choose to do what you believe to be right, you must accept that you may become unpopular. And if you want to be popular, you must accept that you will have to act against your own judgment, if not your conscience.’

Rupert retained great respect for Gen. Hertzog, whose stature grew after his death. And he considers the international statesman Gen. Jan Smuts, prime minister from 1939 to 1948, and the poet and naturalist Eugène Marais to have been the two real geniuses that South Africa produced.9

His decision to shun politics was indeed life-changing. Most of his university friends believed he was destined for a political career. Dr Colijn van Bergen expressed a firm view in this regard: ‘If Anton had become prime minister instead of Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa would have been a totally different world.’

During the war years the relationship between Rupert and Huberte was formalised. Rupert duly approached Huberte’s stepfather, Piet Wessels, to ask for her hand in marriage. His future father-in-law responded: ‘I know you can’t support her, but I’m sure you will manage in the end.’

Although far from the war arena, South Africa felt the reverberations. Strict rationing and other wartime measures were introduced and towards the end of the war 200 000 South Africans in uniform took part in the war effort. In the midst of this comparative austerity the young couple were blissfully in love. They went to buy an engagement ring at the Amsterdam Diamond Cutting Works in Johannesburg. The counter staff made such a fuss of them that they quite forgot to pay for the ring. They were nearing Pretoria when Huberte realised the oversight. Horrified, she remembered that they had even been told that when they came for the wedding ring, it would be a present. When they hastened back the next day to settle the bill the staff were unfazed. ‘They said they knew we would come back to pay them, can you believe it?’ Huberte related in 2001.

They announced their engagement on Kruger Day, 10 October 1940. Their photograph appeared prominently on the social page of Die Transvaler, with the caption stating that the engagement was bound to ‘arouse general interest in republican circles’. The same issue contained an article on the heroines of the Anglo-Boer War, with a long quotation from a letter Gen. Smuts wrote to Pres. MT Steyn in 1901, describing the devastation of the country and the abuse of women and children. The article made a lasting impression on Huberte because the quoted letter included a reference praising her great-grandmother Lenie Riekert.10

A year later, on Saturday, 27 September 1941, the couple were married in the Gereformeerde church in Krugersdorp. (Rupert was Dutch Reformed, but Huberte belonged to the smaller sister church popularly known as the Dopperkerk.) The wedding, a major social event in the close-knit Afrikaner community, was covered in great detail in Die Transvaler.

After the reception the couple drove off in Rupert’s battered little DKW, registration number TK 714. The canvas roof leaked so that when it rained Huberte had to open an umbrella to keep dry. They were embarking on a life in which she was to be a constant support at Rupert’s side, having taken to heart the advice given to her before the wedding by Sen. Martin Vermeulen, father of her student friend and bridesmaid Theresa Vermeulen: ‘You are going to marry a leader of people, a man of whom we expect much. Decide early on that you want to be his helpmate. Someone must keep the home fires burning.’