The Most Famous
MILITARY PERSONNELS from South Africa
This page contains a list of the greatest South African Military Personnels. The pantheon dataset contains 1,468 Military Personnels, 2 of which were born in South Africa. This makes South Africa the birth place of the 71st most number of Military Personnels behind Peru and Colombia.
Top 2
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Military Personnels of all time. This list of famous South African Military Personnels is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Koos de la Rey (1847 - 1914)
With an HPI of 50.68, Koos de la Rey is the most famous South African Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages on wikipedia.
Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey (22 October 1847 – 15 September 1914), better known as Koos de la Rey, was a South African military officer who served as a Boer general during the Second Boer War. De la Rey also had a political career and was one of the leading advocates of Boer independence.
2. Constand Viljoen (1933 - 2020)
With an HPI of 42.33, Constand Viljoen is the 2nd most famous South African Military Personnel. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
General Constand Laubscher Viljoen (28 October 1933 – 3 April 2020) was a South African military commander and politician. He co-founded the Afrikaner Volksfront (Afrikaner People's Front) and later founded the Freedom Front (which in turn merged into the Freedom Front Plus before the 2004 election). He is partly credited with having prevented the outbreak of armed violence by disaffected white South Africans prior to post-apartheid general elections.
Pantheon has 2 people classified as military personnels born between 1847 and 1933. Of these 2, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased military personnels include Koos de la Rey and Constand Viljoen.
