F. W. Reitz

A Century of Wrong (Dodo Press) F. W. Reitz

Francis William Reitz, Jr. (1844-1934) was a South African lawyer, politician, statesman, publicist and poet. Trained as a lawyer in Cape Town and London, Reitz started off in law practice and diamond prospecting before being appointed Chief Justice of the Orange Free State. He played an important role in the modernisation of the legal system and the state's administrative organisation. When State President Brand suddenly died in 1888, Reitz won the presidential elections unopposed. After being re-elected in 1895, subsequently making a trip to Europe, Reitz fell seriously ill, and had to retire. In 1898, now recovered, he was appointed State Secretary of the South African Republic, and became a leading Afrikaner political figure during the Second Boer War. Reluctant to shift allegiance to the British, Reitz went into voluntary exile after the war ended. Several years later he returned to South Africa and set up a law practice again, in Pretoria. In the late 1900s he became involved in politics once more, and upon the declaration of the Union of South Africa in 1910, Reitz was chosen the first president of the Senate.