A Barbaric Boer had "holism" down

Jan Smuts fought with my great, great grandfather against the English. Using guerilla tactics, the formidable but unfashionable afrikaners took the English imperialists to tea in the early part of the 20th Century.

But gold lust drove the English to desperate measures - a combination scorched earth policy and concentration camp program robbed the Afrikaners of their homes, their livelihood, their wives and their children. Almost 70 000 afrikaners were killed.

Jan Smuts is South Africa's Lester B Pearson, but not really because he was a whole lot more. He was the only signatory to have been both at the forming of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He went from studying in England to fighting against England to being a member of the British Prime Minister's Imperial War Cabinet during World War I. And he also was twice the president of South Africa.

And on top of that, Smuts coined the word "holism" - an idea where the whole is seen as greater than the sum of the parts.

He died on September 11, 1950 at his family's farm in South Africa.