Deneys Reitz

Deneys Reitz was born in 1882 in Bloemfontein to Francis William Reitz, and Blanka Thesen (1854–1887), as the middle child of five sons. His father came from a Cape Dutch family who had seen in South Africa since 1791, while his mother was Norwegian. Reitz spoke both Afrikaans and English at home, and also learnt Dutch, English, French and German. Reitz described his childhood as:

[...] a Tom-Saywerlike existence such as falls to the lot of few boys nowadays. We learned to ride, shoot, and swim almost as soon as we could walk, and there was a string of hard Basuto ponies in the stables, on which we were often away for weeks at a time, riding over the game-covered plains by day, and sleeping under the stars at night, hunting, fishing and camping to our heart's content, and clattering home again when we had had our fill.

Reitz Snr. became State President of the Orange Free State in 1885, and in this capacity toured Europe in 1894, which Reitz accompanied, meeting the Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, the French President, King Leopold II and Sir George Grey. In the Free State, through his father Reitz also met key personalities of the time, including Paul Kruger, Piet Joubert and Cecil Rhodes, who Reitz remembered cracking jokes with him and his brothers.

In 1895 Reitz's father fell ill and the family left the Free State for the Cape Colony, living at Claremont. After recovering, his father he took office as the State Secretary of the South African Republic in 1898, moving Reitz back to Bloemfontein.

Reitz was educated at Wynberg Boys' High School in Cape Town and Grey College in Bloemfontein.

In 1920 Reitz he married Leila Agnes Buissiné Wright (Cape Town, 13 December 1887 - Cape Town, 29 December 1959). She was a social reformer, an outspoken advocate of women's rights and suffrage for women, and the first woman member of the Assembly (representative for Parktown in Johannesburg, 1933–1944). They had two sons:

Jan "John" Deneys Reitz (5 December 1920 - 14 February 2003). He married Helen Winifred Hotson on 3 November 1945, and had issue. As a boy he lost a hand and an eye in an explosives accident.

Claude Michael Deneys Reitz (2 March 1923 - 2 September 1952). Known as Michael, he took a BA at University of Cambridge, and served as a lieutenant in the South African Air Force. He died in a training aircraft collision near Barberton, and is commemorated alongside his parents at Mariepskop.

In 1935 Reitz bought a farm near to Mariepskop, along with some land on the hill. He had intended to retire there but died suddenly from a cerebral embolism in 1944 whilst serving as the South African High Commissioner in Britain. He described the area as:

[...] a piece of land more beautiful, in my eyes, than anything in the country. It has a crystal clear mountain torrent of its own, it has flower-carpeted forests and from the rim one looks down a mighty gorge and almost the whole of the Low Country lies stretched beyond.

Reitz's funeral memorial is located south of Mariepskop, approximately 10 km (6.2 mi) east of the Blyde River Canyon in Mpumalanga, alongside those of his wife and younger son Michael.