Stefanus François Naudé Gie

Stefanus François Naudé Gie combined teaching, historical writing, and university leadership before entering diplomacy. Born in the Western Cape in 1884, he attended Worcester Boys High School and Victoria College in Stellenbosch, qualified as a teacher in Grahamstown, and pursued further studies in Amsterdam and Berlin, where he earned his doctorate. He then taught, inspected schools, and headed the teachers’ training college in Graaff-Reinet. ²

In 1918 Gie became Stellenbosch’s first professor in its newly established chair of South African history. He published Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika, of Ons Verlede, later retitled Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika, 1652–1795, and served as rector in 1925–1926. His cultural work included acting and directing with the Graaff-Reinet literary and theatrical society, which he helped establish in 1915. ²

Gie became secretary for education in 1926. He later represented South Africa in Berlin, The Hague, and Stockholm before taking up the Washington legation in 1944. That year he chaired South Africa’s delegation to the Bretton Woods conference, which negotiated the foundations of the postwar international monetary system. ^{2, 1, 4}

In Washington, Gie challenged an American demand for further payment for military equipment supplied through Britain. In August 1944 he explained to Edward Stettinius that South Africa already paid Britain £1 million a month, alongside its troops’ salaries and allowances, and that British commanders retained control of the equipment. He also argued that South African coastal air patrols chiefly protected Allied shipping. Gie died in Washington in April 1945. ^{3, 2}