Ouma Smuts: The First Lady of South Africa

A few miles out of Pretoria on the stoep of an old, rambling homestead, a little woman sits knitting. She is in the setting she loves, because first and last she is a farmer's wife. The laughter of children fills the house, the garden and the veld, for she is a 'Pied Piper' to all children, and the music which attracts and holds them is the deep well of a kind heart, the light in the big, far-apart blue-grey eyes, the smile on the open face. Yet now and again you can catch a wistfulness in the eyes. You may find her there dressed like the wife of a veld farmer, in an overall and in canvas shoes, and yet she is the First Lady of South Africa, Mrs. Jan Christiaan Smuts, now known to everybody in the land as 'Ouma' (Grandmother), the name she loves best. She has even been called the little Grandmother of the World.