Dan Pienaar - Death

Death

In 1942, Pienaar was killed in an air crash in Kenya on his way back to South Africa.

Major General Pienaar was arguably one of South Africa's most charismatic and popular military commanders. An infantry regiment, exhibition hall at the South African National Museum of Military History and a suburb of his home town, Bloemfontein, were later named after him.

Sam Brewer, war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, wrote in an obituary that Pienaar was "acknowledged by all the military authorities . . . as one of the best fighting leaders the British have found in this war. He was every inch a soldier and a man, and on top of that had a quality not always found in a tough General--he was loved like a father by his men. . . . More than once he had hard words with higher authorities when he thought insufficient attention was being paid to the safety and comfort of the foot sloggers, who were bearing the brunt of the fight. Two points struck everybody who met Dan Pienaar--first his disregard for personal danger; second his solicitude for his men."

Some had thought of Pienaar as a potential successor to Prime Minister Jan Smuts—a victorious Afrikaner general who could have held back the reactionary forces of Afrikaner nationalism, as Smuts had done for almost half a century. Pienaar's death was thus a very significant loss to South Africa. Had he lived, the country might perhaps have been spared the long agony of the apartheid years.