The Order of Good Hope (Part 1)

SOUTH AFRICA

The Order of Good Hope

Deon Fourie

Professor in Strategic Studies (Retd)

and Professor Extraordinarius

of the

University of South Africa

Department of Political Sciences

PO Box 392

Pretoria

0003 South Africa

Abstract  

Past South African governments already felt the need for honours as instruments of diplomacy in the 1930s, but only instituted the Order of Good Hope in 1973.  Inherited British attitudes to honours, the cessation in 1925 of the award of honours bearing titles, and long periods in which civilian honours were not awarded contributed to its frugal use.  Wishing to recognize foreign assistance to the liberation movements, from 1994 President Mandela frequently put the Order to use, freely awarding leaders of foreign governments.  However, restraint returned after the initial surge.  Since instituting new orders in 2003, President Mbeki has emphasised substantial merit as the key to admission.

The Order of Good Hope^[i]

 “Yes, I should have given more praise”. The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, became Commander-in-Chief and later Prime Minister of Great Britain, when asked whether there was anything in his life that he could have done better.

Introduction

In the high drama that surrounds the professions of arms and of diplomacy many features decide the significance of honours in the sociology of the two callings.  Symbolism, though secondary to their main functions, plays an important role.  Ceremony, formal compliments like guards of honour and gun salutes, the display of flags and coats of arms or badges and conferring honours are all important attributes of their professional life.  They share particular values about symbolism, but the variations in emphasis have special pragmatic significance for each. Especially regarding honours, some critical differences distinguish the profession of arms from the profession of diplomacy.

Military values determine that compliments, flags and colours, ceremony and honours should encourage the armed forces to be courageous, determined and steadfast and self-sacrificial.   Honours in particular are meant to recognise and express the nation's gratitude for courage, for leadership, for devotion to duty and for merit beyond the call of duty.  Even when it comes to recognising courage, honours are often conferred on military personnel quite sparsely.  For example, since its institution in 1855, the Victoria Cross has been awarded for signal gallantry in the face of an enemy only 1356 times (including Iraq and Afghanistan 2003).  Moreover, increasingly since the Second World War it has been awarded posthumously.  Admittedly not all honours for bravery have been awarded so sparingly - but then circumstances, politics and changed values often influence awards radically.^[ii]

Although diplomats and soldiers see themselves very differently, diplomats do have so much to do with war - its avoidance, its prevention, its termination, its causes and its occurrence - that an inextricable connection remains.  For diplomats merit and devotion to duty also require recognition and encouragement although the emphasis is not on physical courage and the sacrifice of life.  For example, it is almost entirely unknown for honours to be conferred posthumously on diplomats. ^[iii]

On the other hand, together with ceremonial and paying formal compliments, the bestowal of honours is used frequently for improving relations between governments and for encouraging the friendship and favour of foreigners.  In the pursuit of favour and political affection, some European governments annually generously bestow the junior classes of one or other appropriate order on foreigners who have taught their language and culture, promoted their trade, advanced political relations and in other ways benefited the interests of countries making the awards.

The usage as instruments of diplomacy immediately raises the question of how prudently, perhaps frugally, or how extravagantly, honours should be used for establishing or cementing relations with foreign governments or even securing the loyalty of their citizens.  The answers to the problem may be found in differing attitudes to honours and their differing importance in different countries.  The values of particular societies decide the importance of honours.   Different values in different countries are what make them significant, dignified, respected or merely unimportant adornments of no particular concern except perhaps to trophy hunters.  In some countries, perhaps more especially in the old monarchies, though not only there, where honours are seen as flowing from heads of state for significant acts, they are valued as signs of exclusive recognition.  In others where they are passed out freely by subordinate politicians or officials they are no more than cheap rewards.

Perhaps when the right to award honours was the prerogative of the monarchs to do with as freely they pleased it was easier to give them to foreigners.  A well-known exception to the casual disposal of honours was that of the Czarist Order of St George.   It was so strictly controlled so that the last four Czars allowed themselves to become members only after having served in campaigns as the regulations required of ordinary Russians.^[iv]   Although the Royal prerogative became attenuated in Britain in the nineteenth century as cabinet government was strengthened, the British monarchs retained some authority.  Lord Melbourne, referring to the right Queen Victoria retained to award membership of the Order of the Garter to her friends, once remarked A I like the Garter.  There is no damned merit about it.@^[v] 

Before General Charles De Gaulle’s presidency, twentieth century France had many orders and opened their ranks rather lavishly.  De Gaulle abolished fourteen orders and made contemporary France more circumspect about granting honours.  Perhaps republics in general are more nationalistic and jealous of extending the symbols of citizenship to foreigners.  Perhaps there is a sense in modern democracies that honours should be awarded for bravery or eminent devotion to duty or merit rather than for diplomatic visits or even for lengthy periods of diplomatic representation abroad.  Although a kingdom with a rather unnecessarily large number of honours available for distribution (about 2 000 are awarded each year), Britain has been very chary about diplomatic honours.  During the First World War, King George V was frequently irritated by his generals wearing >foreign baubles=, e.g., honours from France, Belgium and other Allies.  Strictly interpreted, wearing foreign honours implied a tacit transfer or, at the least, a division of allegiance.  So the rule against accepting and wearing them continued to be firmly applied for British subjects, especially those holding official appointments.  Only in the course of state visits and during the two World Wars have British honours been 'exchanged' for foreign honours.  Diplomats are not given honours as a matter of course on ending a term of representation at the Court of St James.

South Africa herself went through the process of having to solve the problem of what to do about recognizing foreign friendship and merit by way of the award of honours.  As a dominion with imprecise status in the British Empire from 1910 and, then from 1934, as a clearly independent dominion, i.e., a kingdom in the Commonwealth, the South African government followed the British practice of not recommending the award of honours to diplomats on their departure after a term of accreditation to Pretoria.^[vi]  South African diplomats were not permitted to accept and wear foreign honours almost automatically awarded on departure from some foreign stations. 

Honours were not exchanged during the few state visits to South Africa between 1910 and 1961 because the head of state was the British sovereign, not the Governor-General.  The visit of the British Royal Family in 1947 was indeed marked by the admission to the Royal Victorian Order of several officials and officers who had been involved in the arrangements.^[vii]  Of course, King George VI was not on a foreign visit, but visiting one of his realms.  The investiture of soldiers at the South African Military College and also the King’s investiture of Field Marshal JC Smuts, the Prime Minister, as one of the  twenty-four members of the Order of Merit, were for services during the Second World War.^[viii]  Besides, all of those invested or decorated were British subjects.  Thus the King’s actions still accorded with the principles pertaining to officials of other states since he was not a foreign head of state but the King of South Africa.

When the President of Portugal visited South Africa in 1956, and the Governor-General visited Portugal (and Spain) soon afterwards, no exchange of honours took place.  The South African government would have had to ask the Queen to bestow British honours on the Portuguese and Spanish since that was all that was available.  There were no exclusively South African honours appropriate to the occasion.  There may have been no problem in principle in awarding imperial honours as far as Queen Elizabeth II was concerned.  Certainly, there were enough British orders to mark Portuguese state visits to and from several Commonwealth countries.  However, for the Governor-General to invest the foreign visitors with, say, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the Queen=s name would, perhaps, not have gone down very well at the party congresses of the National Party government, committed to creating a republic.^[ix]

It was a droll comment on political principle that the South African medal lists reveal that some politicians, irrespective of their professed republican sentiments, accepted the King George V Jubilee Medal (1935), the Coronation Medal awarded by King George VI in 1937 and the Coronation Medal awarded by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.^[x]   The irony of this was emphasized by the fact that both Dr DF Malan’s successor as Prime Minister, JG Strijdom, and the Foreign Minister, EH Louw, took care never to wear the British medals both had earned serving as soldiers in 1914-1915 in the campaign in German South West Africa (Namibia) in the First World War.  Nor did they accept the Coronation or the Coronation Jubilee Medals.  As far as diplomats were concerned, only a few senior officers were recipients of the Coronation or Coronation Jubilee Medals awarded to officials of Commonwealth countries.^[xi]    Even that was relatively rare since so few were allocated.  Besides, there were still not many senior South African diplomats to receive them when few missions existed in the 1950s.

After South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961, diplomats who had been stationed in countries where the practice of decorating departing diplomats was customary often complained of being embarrassed by their inability to earn foreigners= friendship and a degree of loyalty to South Africa through the reciprocal award of honours.  Indeed, occasionally foreign ministries sometimes enquired officially why there was no South African reciprocity.  Moreover, all of the younger diplomats had cause to complain that only the older South Africans who had the Jubilee or Coronation Medals or perhaps decorations and medals for Second World War service, could wear decorations on ceremonial occasions.

The problem was not entirely new.  During the closing years of the South African Republic, President Paul Kruger had attempted to introduce an order - to be known either as ADe Orde van Verdienste der Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (the Order of Merit of the South African Republic) or else as De Orde van de Gouden Adelaar (the Order of the Golden Eagle).  The order was intended for citizens of the South African Republic as well as for foreigners who had performed distinguished service to the Republic or to society in general.^[xii]  Among other considerations, Kruger probably was himself concerned that he was unable to respond to foreign honours despite his having been made an honorary Knight Grand Cross of various European orders - the Portuguese Ordem da Imaculada Conceição de Vila Viçosa (1884), the Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw (1890), the Prussian Rote-Adler-Orden (1893), the Belgian Ordre de Léopold (1895) and the Monegasque Ordre de Saint-Charles the Holy (1900).  He was also made a Commander (1886) and in 1896 a Grand Officer of the French Ordre de la Légion d=Honneur.  However logical his reasons, the Volksraad defeated Kruger's proposal by the expedient of referring it to the Transvaal voters to comment upon by way of petitions, called memories, customarily used for sounding public opinion on policy.^[xiii]  The quality of responses was akin to that of modern television 'telephone-in' programmes.^[xiv]

Similar problems of reciprocity were considered in 1938, when the office of the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa prepared a proposal for an Order of Merit with a view to recognizing Adistinguished service to country and people ” by South African citizens and foreigners.  Indeed, the proposal mentioned that ASouth Africa is continually embarrassed by the inability to reward or honour our citizens ... and ... foreigners.”^[xv]  It is not clear from files what became of the proposal.   It may have been overtaken by the events leading up to outbreak of war.  It is not unlikely that it failed to gain British official support.  At about the same time the chief British herald, Garter King of Arms, as Inspector of Regimental Colours, clearly a blissful political innocent, was expressing his disapproval of the introduction of a colour of a South African pattern to replace the British Great Union Flag (the Union Jack) as the King’s Colour for South African regiments.  His arguments that the Union Jack was 'the King's personal flag' took no account of the nationalism developing in the Dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as in South Africa, after their participation in the slaughter of the First World War.

            In 1961, when the Union became the Republic of South Africa outside the Commonwealth, the head of state still had no honours available for diplomatic purposes.  The military honours instituted in 1953 were open only to foreigners who were members of allied armed forces actually fighting alongside South African forces in military operations.^[xvi] On an official visit to Portugal in April 1967 the Minister of Defence had no means of responding to being made a Knight Grand Cross of the Ordem Militar de Christo.  Clearly the introduction of non-military honours was necessary.  Yet from 1961 each republican constitution made it clear that the President was the fount of honours with the prerogatives to institute and bestow honours, although the Constitution, 1996 seems less clear about the prerogative.^[xvii]

[i] Sincere thanks are due for help and advice from retired Ambassadors Jeremy B Shearar and Tom Wheeler and Mr CJ Muller, Archivist of the Department of Foreign Affairs, to Miss Louise Jooste, Director, and Mr Steve de Agrela, Archivist, Documentation Services, Department of Defence, and to other former members of the South African Foreign Service who gave valuable advice. 

[ii] The American Medal of Honor (1862), at first lavishly awarded, is now less freely awarded, with only one posthumous award during the campaign in Iraq (2003).  Total awards number 3,459 (plus nine to 'Unknown Soldiers' of various countries).  Initially sparingly granted, during the two World Wars the German Eiserne Kreuz (Iron Cross) instituted in 1813 for bravery was awarded to more than eight million soldiers.  Crook, M  The Evolution of the Victoria Cross, a Study in Administrative History, Midas Books, Tunbridge Wells, 1975, passim.  Hütte, WO Die Geschichte der Eisernen Kreuzes, Rheinishe Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, Bonn, 1968, passim. Kerrigan, E, American Medals and Decorations, Mallard Press, New York, 1990; http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor.

[iii] One exception known to the writer was that of the South African ambassador, Archibald Gardner Dunn.  He did not offer his life in some venture that put him at risk but was abducted in El Salvador.  However, characteristically, the rather hard bitten ‘Eddie’ Dunn, a Second World War veteran of the SA Air Force, was overheard defiantly saying to his abductors as they tried to make him prisoner “You can go to hell!”  His fate remains unknown and the Grand Cross of the Order of Good Hope was conferred on him posthumously.

[iv] Werlich R Russian Orders, Decorations and Medals: Imperial Russia, the Provisional Government & the Soviet Union, Quaker Press, Washington, DC, 1968, p.10.

[v] De la Bere, Sir Ivan, The Queen=s Orders of Chivalry, Spring Books, London, 1964, p. 89.

[vi] In 1931 the Statute of Westminster made it clear that the Commonwealth Dominions were equal in status to the United Kingdom.  The British parliament could not legislate for South Africa and the legally separate Crown in South Africa was confirmed. The King of South Africa was represented by the Governor-General, no longer regarded as the agent of the British government. Statute of Westminster 1931. Act 22 & 23 Geo. V c. 4, December 11, 1931 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

[vii] For example, the Commissioner of the South African Police, Major-General RJ Palmer, DSO, was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order, as were other police officers, for the police's role in the security of the Royal Family.  The Royal Victorian Order is conferred as the Monarch chooses and it is not controlled by the British Prime Minister's office.

[viii] The Order of Merit, although of very high precedence, was a British order with no rank or title. Since the South African Parliament's request in 1925 to the Monarch not to grant titles to South Africans resident in South Africa, the OM was very appropriate for granting the highest honour to South Africans.  Hence, the admission of President Nelson Mandela to the OM was almost inevitable.  When South Africa became a republic, admission to orders bearing titles was no longer a problem.  Since only associate membership of orders is granted to persons not subjects of the Monarch, the titles are not used. Hieronymussen, P, Orders, Medals and Decorations of Britain and Europe, Blandford Press, London, 1975.

[ix] During the Colonial and Dominion periods, the only 'South African' honours were a limited range of colonial versions of British military medals for bravery and merit for non-commissioned officers and men and long service medals.  In 1953, Royal Warrants (i.e., instruments equivalent to Executive Orders under the Monarch's signature) for a series of military decorations and medals for bravery, merit, and long service were approved by Queen Elizabeth II.  This was one of a variety of steps by the Minister of Defence, FC Erasmus, to divorce the Defence Force from any British complexion.  Honours were the head of state=s prerogative and since 1960 this has been expressly mentioned in the republican constitutions.

[x] A random selection of 'republican' politicians who applied for the medal in 1953, included Avril Malan, the governing party's Leader of the House of Assembly, Nicolaas Diedericks (later a Minister and then President), JF Naudé (Minister of Finance), Dr DF Malan (Prime Minister) and Dr AL Geyer, the High Commissioner in London during the Coronation – both of whom attended the Coronation.  Owen, CR, The South African Medal Role of the 1935 Jubilee Medal, 1937 Coronation Medal, 1953 Coronation Medal, Chimperie Press, Benoni, 1982, passim.

[xi] Examples of senior diplomats listed by Owen as recipients of the 1953 Coronation Medal were GP Jooste High Commissioner in London from April 1954 and later head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and Ambassadors Anthony Hamilton and Robert Kirsten and also CH Torrance a senior Treasury official who was head of administration at South Africa House, London.  Owen, op. cit., passim.

[xii] The Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (South African Republic), also known as the Transvaal, was the official title of the republic established in the interior of South Africa, between the Vaal and the Limpopo Rivers, in the mid-nineteenth century by Cape Boer trekkers. It existed until annexed at the end of the Anglo-Boer War on 31 May 1902.

[xiii] Similar precedents were relied on in later years by Ambassador RH Coaton to sustain an argument for an order.  He mentioned that in his brief presidency the tragic figure President Thomas Burgers became a Knight of the Portuguese Ordem Militar da Torre e Espada, a Knight Grand Cross of the Belgian Ordre de Léopold and of the Orde de Nederlanse Leeuw.  In the Orange Free State, President Jan Brand was admitted to the Portuguese Ordem Militar de Christo (1876) and became a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George  in 1883.  He was thereafter known as Sir John Brand.  Although born a British subject, he was president of a foreign state.  President Paul Kruger refused the GCMG because he believed he would have to use the title ‘Sir’.  Both presidents Reitz and Steyn of the OFS refused to be Knights Grand Cross of the Orde de Nederlandse Leeuw although no title was appended to that order.  Esterhuysen, M,  Gedenkpennings ter Ere van President SJP Kruger, Nasionale Kultuurhistoriese Museum, Pretoria, 1973, pp. 7 to 19.  On 18 May 2000 President Thabo Mbeki was admitted to the Order of Michael and St George as an honorary Knight Grand Cross and did not have to call himself Sir Thabo.

[xiv] Notulen van den Eersten Volksraad der ZA Republiek, 1894, Artikel 204, ‘Voorstel van Wet op het instellen eener Ridderorde voor de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek’, pp. 311-312, and Artikel 719.  In her biography of WJ Leyds, Kruger's State Secretary, LE van Niekerk unquestioningly accepts the allegations by the editor of the Pretoria newspaper Land en Volk, Jan Cilliers, who worked to scupper the institution of an order.  Cilliers opposed Kruger's presidency, particularly for his use of young intellectuals from the Netherlands as senior officials.  In a leading article he maliciously accused Kruger of intending to introduce the titles of duke, count, marques and the like. See 'Voorstel van Wet op het Instellen van een Adelstand voor de ZAR',(ie 'Bill to Introduce Nobility in the ZAR'), Land en Volk, 6 September 1894.)  There were no such provisions in the Bill.  See the minutes of the Volksraad.  The article was clearly an attempt to ridicule Leyds, another one of Kruger’s young Hollanders appointed as State Secretary and only 35 years old to boot.  Van Niekerk, LE  Kruger se Regterhand - Biografie van Dr WJ Leyds, JL van Schaik, Pretoria, 1985, pp.184 -185.

[xv] Referred to in a memorandum 'Proposed South African Decoration for Citizens of Foreign Countries', 113/35/4 dated 25 November 1970, signed by RH Coaton.

[xvi] See Alexander, EGM et al.  South African Orders, Decorations and Medals, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1986, for a full description of the honours eventually adopted.  One of the Royal Warrants for eleven decorations and medals instituted in 1953 by the new Queen Elizabeth II, on the advice of her South African government continued in force until the introduction by President Mbeki of new decorations and medals in 2003.  See 'President's Minute No. 243' and attached Presidential Warrants dated 16 April 2003, Government Gazette, No. 25213 dated 25 July 2003.  The Governor-General, as the Queen=s representative had no authority to institute honours, the prerogative solely of the Monarch.   

[xvii] The various provisions in the South African constitutions only date from the institution of the republic, since the prerogatives were previously the Monarch's (the King or the Queen of South Africa), not the Governor-General's.  Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1961 and the Constitution Act of 1983. Section 84(2)(k) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act No. 108 of 1996) now prevails.