JOUBERT,
PETRUS JACOBUS (1834-1900), commandant general of the South African
Republic from 1880 to 1900, was born at Cango, in the district of
Oudtshoorn, Cape Colony, on the 20th of January 1834, a descendant
of a French Huguenot who fled to South Africa soon after the revocation
of the Edict 01 Nantes by Louis XIV. Left an orphan at an early
age, Joubert migrated to the Transvaal, where he settled in the
Wakkerstroom district near Laings Nek and the northeast angle of
Natal. There he not only farmed with great success, but turned his
attention to the study of the law. 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, Marthneus
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. During the first
British annexation of the Transvaal, Joubert earned for himself
the reputation of a consistent irreconcilable by refusing to hold
office under the government, as Paul Kruger and other prominent
Boers were doing. Instead of accepting the lucrative post offered
him, he took a leading part in creating and directing the agitation
which led to the war of 1880-1881, eventually becoming, as commandant-general
of the Boer forces, a member of the triumvirate that administered
the provisional Boer government set up in December 1880 at Heidelberg.
He was in command of the Boer forces at Laings Nek, Ingogo, and
Majuba Hill, subsequently conducting the earlier peace negotiations
that led to the conclusion of the Pretoria Convention. In 1883 he
was a candidate for the presidency of the Transvaal, but received
only 1171 votes as against 3431 cast for Kruger. In 1893 he again
opposed Kruger in the contest for the presidency, standing as the
representative of the comparatively progressive section of the Boers,
who wished in some measure to redress the grievances of the Uitlander
population that had grown up on the Rand. The poll (though there
is good reason for believing that the voting lists had been manipulated
by Kruger’s agents) was declared to have resulted in 79i1
votes being cast for Kruger and 7246 for Joubert. After a protest
Joubert acquiesced in Kruger’s continued presidency. He stood
again in 1898, but the Jameson raid had occurred meantime and the
voting was 12,858 for Kruger and 2001 for Joubert. Joubert’s
position had then become much weakened by accusations of treachery
and of sympathy with the Uitlander agitation. He took little part
in the negotiations that culminated in the ultimatum sent to Great
Britain by Kruger in 1899, and though he immediately assumed nominal
command of the operations on the outbreak of hostilities, he gave
up to others the chief share in the direction of the war, through
his inability or neglect to impose upon them his own will. His cautious
nature, which had in early life gained him the sobriquet of Slim
Piet, joined to a lack of determination and assertiveness that characterized
his whole career, led him to act mainly on the defensive; and the
strategically offensive movements of the Boer forces, such as Elandslaagte
and Willow Grange, appear to have been neither planned nor executed
by him. As the war went on, physical weakness led to Joubert’s
virtual retirement, and, though two days earlier he was still reported
as being in supreme command, he died at Pretoria from peritonitis
on the 28th of March 1900. Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith,
summed up Joubert’s character when he called him a soldier
and a gentleman, and a brave and honorable opponent
