Doubtless General
Jan Smuts would be glad to meet and question her.
But she was unable to meet them and the Lufthansa airline flew with her to South Africa's
Jan Smuts Airport and the immigration authorities there refused to allow her to leave the transit lounge.
Featured archival photograph of Robert Kennedy's arrival at
Jan Smuts Airport, South Africa, June 5, 1966.
Thakur shows how Indian delegations twice used South African general and diplomat
Jan Smuts' (1870-1950) own words to discredit him in international negotiations.
To this end he tasked General
Jan Smuts to investigate and report on the state of Britain's air power.
NEWCASTLE: 5.15 Desktop (won off 56 down 5lb to 51);
Jan Smuts (7lb); 8.45 Kyllach Me (3lb).
Jan Smuts, a notable Boer leader, later led British forces in East Africa during WWI and was a member of the Imperial War Cabinet in both World Wars.
And a moment of special pathos comes in the form of a pair of leather sandals, handmade by Mahatma Gandhi, who gave them to
Jan Smuts.
The irony is that Stellenbosch University has also produced counter-cultural alumni such as Beyers Naude, the noted theologian and former imprisoned antiapartheid activist; Uys Krige, noted playwright, satirist and bane of Afrikaner politicians; James Leonard Brierley Smith, the renowned ichthyologist involved with the rediscovery of the coelacanth; two former Union of South Africa prime ministers,
Jan Smuts and James Hertzog; and even the erstwhile England cricket international, Jonathan Trott.
Jan Smuts, the South African prime minister venerated with a statue opposite the Houses of Parliament, was censured by the United Nations for his racist policies.
Jan Christian Smuts - South African statesman and soldier (1870-1950)