Please be aware of muggles - there are farm labourers who live close by and are always inquisitive of visitors.
This cairn on the farm Honeyfontein marks the spot where in 1862 Louis Botha was born, the 8th of 13 children. The Heine Spruit was in flood and his mother couldn't make it back to Greytown to the family farm Onrust! So Louis was born here. He attended the Hermannsburg Mission School and left the district at the age of about 12. Louis was to become Commandant-General of Transvaal forces after distinguishing himself at Ladysmith, Colenso and Spioenkop during the South Africa War. Later in 1910 he became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa and in 1919 he attended the peace Conference in Versailles.
The Durban airport used to be called Louis Botha up until 1995. The local High school still has "Botha" as one of their sports houses too.
Louis Botha (27 September 1862 – 27 August 1919) was the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa the forerunner of the modern South African state. A Boer war hero during the Second Boer War where he commanded troops in Colenso, the Siege of Ladysmith and the decisive battle of Spionkop
He was born at this spot as one of 13 children born to Louis Botha Senior (26 March 1827 – 5 July 1883) and Salomina Adriana van Rooyen (31 March 1829 – 9 January 1886). He briefly attended the school at Hermannsburg before his family relocated to the Orange Free State.
Botha led "Dinuzulu's Volunteers", a group of Boers that supported Zibhebhu in 1884. He later became a member of the parliament of Transvaal in 1897, representing the district of < Vryheid.
In 1899, Botha fought in the Second Boer War, initially under Lucas Meyer in Northern Natal, and later as a general commanding and fighting with impressive capability at the Battles of Colenso and Spioen kop.
On the death of Gen P. J. Joubert, he was made commander-in-chief of the Transvaal (Z.A.R.) Boers, where he demonstrated his abilities again at Belfast-Dalmanutha. After the battle at the Tugela, Botha granted a twenty-four hour armistice to General Buller to enable him to bury his dead.
Winston Churchill revealed that General Botha was the man who captured him at the ambush of a British armoured train on 15 November 1899. Churchill was not aware of the man's identity until 1902, when Botha traveled to London seeking loans to assist his country's reconstruction, and the two met at a private luncheon. The incident is also mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle's book, The Great Boer War, published in 1902. But more recent sources claim that Field-Cornet Sarel Oosthuizen was in fact the Boer-soldier who, at gunpoint, captured Churchill.