If the South African contribution to the war effort made a material difference to the Allied cause in 1914–18, it was on the scrublands of South-West Africa and on the savannahs of Tanganyika, rather than in the fields of France and Flanders. Early during the conflict, South African forces rapidly and decisively suppressed a pro-German rebellion by dissident Afrikaners. Prime Minister Louis Botha personally led the South African invasion of the vast, though ill-defended, German colony in what is now Namibia, giving the British Empire one of its few victories of 1915. And in German East Africa (now Tanzania), Minister of Defence Jan Smuts in 1916 led an imperial army, including a large South African contingent, against the Schütztruppe and Askaris of Von Lettow Vorbeck. Though Smuts's efforts have been much disparaged by subsequent historians because of his inability to crush his antagonist, under his leadership the British did in fact gain control over the key urban and agricultural areas and communications routes. Yet when the Botha government began, even before the conflict was over, to commemorate South Africa's military achievements, they concentrated on the role that the country had played on the western front. Here, South Africa had sent a mere brigade of white combat troops and a contingent of black troops to serve as labourers. Both were, of course, a tiny element in the vast Allied armies, far too small to affect the outcome of the struggle. They were there for reasons of political symbolism, to help stake South Africa's claim to a seat at the peace negotiations. Given the uncertainly evolving political relationship between the Dominions and Whitehall, it was by no means clear that the ‘colonials’ would be directly represented when the post-war settlement was made. A military presence in the central theatre of the war would provide Pretoria with the moral leverage to get a voice in the process when the time came.

The South African government's approach to celebrating the nation's role in the war took an oddly Scottish turn. The centrepiece of their official story of the conflict was the heroic resistance of the South African Brigade at Delville Wood, during the battle of the Somme, among them the kilted South African Scottish Regiment, more formally known as the 4th South African Infantry.