HERTZOG, JAMES BARRY MUNNIK ), South African politician, was born at Wellington, Cape Colony, April 3, 1866. Educated at Victoria College, Stellenbosch and Am sterdam university, he became a judge in the Orange Free State in 1895, and served through the South African War of 1899-02. He voted against peace at Vereeniging and, frankly hostile to the British connection, he helped to keep alive this anti-British feeling after the war. On the grant of responsible government in 1907, he became attorney general and minister of education in Fischer's ministry, and forthwith began to undo the work of the Crown Colony Administration. He tried to force upon the schools in the Orange River State a system of compulsory bi lingualism—Dutch and English—which was crude and impractica ble. The director of education resigned, and one of the three in spectors, dismissed without enquiry, won an action for libel against Hertzog in a cause celebre.
In the first Union Cabinet, in 1910, Hertzog became minister of justice under Botha, but his attitude made the position un tenable. Hertzog derided Botha's work at the Imperial Confer ence in London, and repudiated all suggestions of state-aided im migration and of a naval contribution, which Botha was suspected to have favoured. Botha resigned in 1912, took office again, reconstructed his cabinet and left Hertzog out. Hertzog then (Dec. 1913) formed an opposition party with complete independence of Britain as its goal, and his perfervid nationalism made him a power among the old Republican Boers. He made full use of the racial appeal, and fought unremittingly against the Botha-Smuts policy of South African development within the British Empire. His original five supporters in the South African parliament were increased by 1924 to 63, and a working alliance with the Labour party gave Hertzog a majority. Smuts fell, and the Coalition came to power with Hertzog as prime minister. He disclaimed any prac tical application of his republican policy; the British connection did not in fact weigh heavily enough, and Hertzog was not anti British, but pro-South African. In 1926 he pronounced in favour of independent Dominion status, and in 1928 secured the new national flag of South Africa. In 1925 he submitted proposals for settling the native question. In 1933 he formed, in coalition with General Smuts, a National Party which was returned to power. (See also SOUTH AFRICA, UNION OF.)