By October 1895 Smuts was back in South Africa and in practice as an advocate in Cape Town. This decisive stage of his life lasted little longer than a year. Again it is a period for which his papers yield very few letters but, as before, a number of his writings survive to throw light on his activities. In this instance the writings are journalistic pieces. He wrote them partly, no doubt, to make a living and ward off boredom while waiting for briefs, but chiefly because politics was fast becoming a passion—so much so that he had hardly settled in Cape Town before he was making his first public speech at Kimberley.

A selection of Smuts's newspaper articles, both in English and Dutch, together with the reports of two of his public speeches, make up the first group of documents printed below. Up to the time of the Jameson Raid these utterances reflect his belief in and support of the Rhodes–Hofmeyr combination in the Cape Colony as the starting-point of an eventual federation of South Africa. But after the shock of Rhodes's betrayal his public statements were those of an impassioned Afrikaner nationalist, looking to the South African Republic to lead his country into future union.

A more personal outcome of Smuts's venture into journalism was the beginning of a life-long friendship with Olive Schreiner after he had written admiring but critical reviews of her Stray Thoughts on South Africa.