103 Facts About Paul Kruger

Paul Kruger was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and State President of the South African Republic from 1883 to 1900.

Paul Kruger has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom and admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero.

Paul Kruger had almost no education apart from the Bible.

Paul Kruger was appointed vice president in March 1877, shortly before the South African Republic was annexed by Britain as the Transvaal.

Paul Kruger served until 1883 as a member of an executive triumvirate, then was elected president.

Paul Kruger left for Europe as the war turned against the Boers in 1900 and spent the rest of his life in exile, refusing to return home following the British victory.

Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger was born on 10 October 1825 at Bulhoek, a farm in the Steynsburg area of the Cape Colony, the third child and second son of Casper Jan Hendrik Kruger, a farmer, and his wife Elsje.

Paul Kruger had some Khoi ancestry, which came down to him from his ancestress Krotoa.

Bulhoek, Paul Kruger's birthplace, was the Steyn family farm and had been Elsie's home since early childhood; her father Douw Gerbrand Steyn had settled there in 1809.

Paul Kruger was baptised at Cradock on 19 March 1826.

Paul Kruger's mother died when he was eight; his father Casper soon remarried and had more children with his second wife, Heiletje.

Beyond reading and writing, which he learned from relatives, the only education Paul Kruger received was three months of study under a travelling tutor, Tielman Roos, and Calvinist religious instruction from his father.

Paul Kruger's father continued to give the children religious education in the Boer fashion during the trek, having them recite or write down biblical passages from memory each day after lunch and dinner.

Paul Kruger could recall the battle in great detail and give a vivid account well into old age.

Paul Kruger later recounted his family's group coming under attack from Zulus soon after the Retief massacre, describing "children pinioned to their mothers' breasts by spears, or with their brains dashed out on waggon wheels".

Paul Kruger set up his home at the farm Boekenhoutfontein, near Rustenburg in the Magaliesberg area.

Paul Kruger later became the owner of a piece of farmland named Waterkloof, on 30 September 1842.

Paul Kruger was already an accomplished frontiersman, horseman, and guerrilla fighter.

Paul Kruger wrapped the wound in a handkerchief and retreated to camp, where he treated it with turpentine.

Paul Kruger refused calls to have the hand amputated by a doctor, and instead cut off the remains of the injured thumb himself with a pocketknife.

In 1845 Paul Kruger was a member of Potgieter's expedition to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique to negotiate a frontier with Portugal; the Lebombo Mountains was settled upon as the border between Boer and Portuguese lands.

In 1847 Paul Kruger married her cousin, Gezina du Plessis, from the Colesberg area.

Gezina Paul Kruger had an inboekeling maid for whom she eventually arranged marriage, and paid her a dowry.

Meintjes says that Pretorius "was perhaps the first person to recognise that behind [Paul Kruger's] rough exterior was a most singular person with an intellect all the more remarkable for being almost entirely self-developed".

In 1855 he appointed an eight-man constitutional commission, including Paul Kruger, which presented a draft constitution in September that year.

Paul Kruger successfully proposed Schoeman for the post of national Commandant-General, hoping to thereby end the factional disputes and foster unity, but Schoeman categorically refused to serve under this constitution or Pretorius.

Paul Kruger had strong personal reservations about Pretorius, not considering him his father's equal, but nevertheless remained steadfastly loyal to him.

Paul Kruger made clear that he personally disapproved of Pretorius's actions and the situation as a whole, but defended his president when the Free Staters began to speak harshly of him.

Paul Kruger considered Providence his guide in life and referred to scripture constantly; he knew large sections of the Bible by heart.

Paul Kruger understood the biblical texts literally and inferred from them that the Earth was flat, a belief he retained firmly to his dying day.

Paul Kruger was re-elected as commandant-general with over two-thirds of the vote.

Pretorius and Paul Kruger led a commando of about 1,000 men south to help the Free State.

In 1867, Pretoria sent Paul Kruger to restore law and order in Zoutpansberg.

Paul Kruger had around 500 men but very low reserves of ammunition, and discipline in the ranks was poor.

Paul Kruger did not believe in the Devil, for example.

Paul Kruger publicly accepted Burgers's election, announcing at his inauguration that "as a good republican" he submitted to the vote of the majority, but he had grave personal reservations regarding the new president.

Paul Kruger moved his main residence to Boekenhoutfontein, near Rustenburg, and for a time absented himself from public affairs.

Paul Kruger outlined criticisms expressed by Carnarvon regarding the Transvaal government and expressed support for federation.

The impression of Paul Kruger garnered by the British envoys in Pretoria during early 1877 was one of an unspeakably vulgar, bigoted backveld peasant.

Shepstone's legal adviser William Morcom was one of the first British officials to write about Paul Kruger: calling him "gigantically horrible", he recounted a public luncheon at which Paul Kruger dined with a dirty pipe protruding from his pocket and such greasy hair that he spent part of the meal combing it.

Paul Kruger exhorted the burghers not to attempt any kind of resistance to the British until these diplomats returned.

One night, when Paul Kruger heard the two Dutchmen discussing celestial bodies and the structure of the universe, he interjected that if their conversation was accurate and the Earth was not flat, he might as well throw his Bible overboard.

Paul Kruger's arguments were undermined by reports to the contrary from Shepstone and other British officials, and by a widely publicised letter from a Potchefstroom vicar claiming that Kruger only represented the will of "a handful of irreconcilables".

Paul Kruger did not meet Queen Victoria, though such an audience is described in numerous anecdotes, depicted in films and sometimes reported as fact.

The envoys met the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, Sir Bartle Frere, and arrived in London on 29 June 1878 to find a censorious letter from Shepstone waiting for them, along with a communication that since Paul Kruger was agitating against the government he had been dismissed from the executive council.

In Paris, where the 1878 Exposition Universelle was in progress, Paul Kruger saw a hot air balloon for the first time and readily took part in an ascent to view the city from above.

Paul Kruger had little success in winning the Boers over to the idea of federation; his defeat of the Zulus and the Bapedi had the opposite effect, as with these two long-standing threats to security removed the Transvaalers could focus all their efforts against the British.

Paul Kruger travelled to the Cape to agitate against the proposals alongside Joubert and Jorissen; by the time they arrived the Liberals had won an election victory in Britain and Gladstone was prime minister.

In Cape Town, Paarl and elsewhere Paul Kruger lobbied vigorously against the annexation and won much sympathy.

Paul Kruger concluded that they had done all they could to try to regain independence peacefully, and over the following months the Transvaal burghers prepared for rebellion.

Paul Kruger took part in the First Boer War in a civilian capacity only, playing a diplomatic and political role with the aid of Jorissen and Bok.

Understanding that they could not hold out against the might of the British Empire indefinitely, Paul Kruger hoped for a solution at the earliest opportunity.

Colley's death horrified Paul Kruger, who feared it might jeopardise the peace process.

Paul Kruger pressed on how the British intended to withdraw and what exactly "suzerainty" meant.

Paul Kruger presented the treaty to the volksraad on the triumvirate's behalf at Heidelberg on 15 April 1881.

The commissioners held numerous sessions in Pretoria over the following months with little input from Paul Kruger, who was bedridden with pneumonia.

Paul Kruger was largely happy with the terms under which the republic would regain its sovereignty, but two points offended him.

Paul Kruger was absent due to his illness, but he did attend the official retrocession five days later in Church Square.

Paul Kruger felt well enough to give only a short speech, after which Pretorius addressed the crowd and the vierkleur was raised.

In July 1882 the volksraad decided to elect a new president the following year; Joubert and Paul Kruger emerged as candidates.

Paul Kruger defeated Joubert by 3,431 votes to 1,171, and was inaugurated as president on 9 May 1883.

Paul Kruger became president soon after the discovery of gold near what was to become Barberton, which prompted a fresh influx of uitlander diggers.

Paul Kruger spent part of the voyage to Britain studying the English language with a Bible printed in Dutch and English side by side.

The western border question remained unresolved, but Paul Kruger still considered the convention a triumph.

The British became anxious to link Johannesburg to the Cape and Natal by rail, but Paul Kruger thought this might have undesirable geopolitical and economic implications if done prematurely and gave the Delagoa Bay line first priority.

Paul Kruger defeated Joubert again in the 1888 election, by 4,483 votes to 834, and was sworn in for a second time in May Nicolaas Smit was elected vice-president, and Leyds was promoted to state secretary.

Paul Kruger proposed to end the lack of higher education in the Boer republics by forming a university in Pretoria; enthusiastic support emerged for this but the Free University of Amsterdam expressed strong opposition, not wishing to lose the Afrikaner element of its student body.

Paul Kruger was obsessed with the South African Republic's independence, the retention of which he perceived as under threat if the Transvaal became too British in character.

Paul Kruger expressed great satisfaction at the new arrivals' industry and respect for the state's laws, but surmised that giving them full burgher rights might cause the Boers to be swamped by sheer weight in numbers, with the probable result of absorption into the British sphere.

Paul Kruger's administration recorded twice as many Transvaalers as uitlanders, but acknowledged that there were more uitlanders than enfranchised burghers.

On 4 March 1890, when Paul Kruger visited Johannesburg, men sang British patriotic songs, tore down and trampled on the vierkleur at the city landdrost's office, and rioted outside the house where the President was staying.

In mid-March 1890 Paul Kruger met the new British High Commissioner and Governor Sir Henry Brougham Loch, Loch's legal adviser William Philip Schreiner, and Rhodes, who had by now attained a dominant position in the Transvaal's mining industry and a royal charter for his British South Africa Company to occupy and administer Matabeleland and Mashonaland.

Paul Kruger made no commitments, thinking this union might easily turn into the federation Britain had pursued years before, but on his return to Pretoria forbade any Boer trek to Mashonaland.

Paul Kruger honoured the latter commitment in 1891 when he outlawed the Adendorff Trek, another would-be emigration to Mashonaland, over the protests of Joubert and many others.

Joubert conceded and Paul Kruger was inaugurated for the third time on 12 May 1893.

Paul Kruger was by this time widely perceived as a personification of Afrikanerdom both at home and abroad.

Paul Kruger announced that "the government will, in the meantime, provisionally, no more commandeer British subjects for personal military service".

Paul Kruger dismissed all such entreaties with the assertion that enfranchising "these new-comers, these disobedient persons" might imperil the republic's independence.

Paul Kruger said this did not extend to those who had "proved their trustworthiness", and conferred burgher rights on all uitlanders who had served in Transvaal commandos.

Understanding that renewed hostilities with Britain were now a real possibility, Paul Kruger began to pursue armament.

Jameson's force failed to cut all of the telegraph wires, allowing a rural Transvaal official to raise the alarm early, though there are suggestions Paul Kruger had been tipped off some days before.

Robinson publicly repudiated Jameson's actions and ordered him back, but Jameson ignored him and pushed on towards Johannesburg; Robinson wired Paul Kruger offering to come immediately for talks.

Paul Kruger's handling of the affair made his name a household word across the world and won him much support from Afrikaners in the Cape and the Orange Free State, who began to visit Pretoria in large numbers.

In March 1896 Marthinus Theunis Steyn, the young lawyer Paul Kruger had encountered on the ship to England two decades earlier, became President of the Orange Free State.

Paul Kruger developed a habit of threatening to resign whenever the volksraad did not give him his way.

Paul Kruger offered naturalisation after two years' residence and full franchise after five more along with increased representation and a new oath similar to that of the Free State.

Milner ended the conference that evening, saying the further meetings Steyn and Paul Kruger wanted were unnecessary.

Back in Pretoria Paul Kruger introduced a draft law to give the mining regions four more seats in each volksraad and fix a seven-year residency period for voting rights.

Paul Kruger resolved that war was inevitable, comparing the Boers' position to that of a man attacked by a lion with only a pocketknife for defence.

Aware of the deployment of British troops from elsewhere in the Empire, Paul Kruger and Smuts surmised that from a military standpoint the Boers' only chance was a swift pre-emptive strike.

In countries antagonistic to Britain he was idolised; Paul Kruger expressed high hopes of German, French or Russian military intervention, despite the repeated despatches from Leyds telling him this was a fantasy.

Soon thereafter, following a serious injury to Joubert, Paul Kruger appointed Louis Botha to be acting commandant-general.

Morale plummeted among the commandos over the following months, with many burghers simply going home; Paul Kruger toured the front in response and asserted that any man who deserted in this time of need should be shot.

Paul Kruger had hoped for large numbers of Cape Afrikaners to rally to the republican cause, but only small bands did so, along with a few thousand foreign volunteers.

When British troops entered Bloemfontein on 13 March 1900 Reitz and others urged Paul Kruger to destroy the gold mines, but he refused on the grounds that this would obstruct rehabilitation after the war.

Paul Kruger found new strength in Steyn and telegrammed all Transvaal officers forbidding the laying down of arms.

Paul Kruger planned to board the first outgoing steamer, the Herzog of the German East Africa Line, but was prevented from doing so when, at the behest of the local British Consul, the Portuguese Governor insisted that Kruger stay in port under house arrest.

Paul Kruger accepted it was all over only when Bredell had the flags of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State removed from outside Oranjelust two weeks later.

Paul Kruger's Bible lay open on a table beside him.

Paul Kruger's body was initially buried in The Hague but was repatriated with British permission.

Rights and wrongs aside, Meintjes asserts, Paul Kruger is the central figure of Boer history and one of the "most extraordinary" of South Africans.

Paul Kruger was certainly not learned, but he had a thorough knowledge of many things.

Paul Kruger was what I believe soldiers would call a brilliant tactician, but a hopeless strategist.