Piet Joubert

Petrus Jacobus Joubert (20 January 1834 – 28 March 1900), better known as Piet Joubert, was Commandant-General of the South African Republic from 1880 to 1900.

Early life

Joubert was born in the district of Prince Albert, British Cape Colony, a descendant of a French Huguenot who fled to South Africa soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. Left an orphan at an early age, Joubert migrated to the Transvaal, where he settled in the Wakkerstroom district near Laing's Nek and the north-east angle of the Colony of Natal. There he not only farmed with great success, but turned his attention to the study of the law.

Political career

The esteem in which his shrewdness in both farming and legal affairs was held led to his election to the Volksraad as member for Wakkerstroom early in the sixties, Marthinus Pretorius being then in his second term of office as president. In 1870 Joubert was again elected, and the use to which he put his slender stock of legal knowledge secured him the appointment of attorney-general of the republic, while in 1875 he acted as president during the absence of T. F. Burgers in Europe.