IT took a recent visit to Kedar Country Hotel and Conference Centre near Rustenburg for me to come to the conclusion that Paul Kruger, president of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, has been given an undeservedly bad press.
Kedar has taken over the running of the Paul Kruger Country Museum at Boekenhoutfontein and has committed the hotel’s ethic to celebrating the local heroes of the past – Paul Kruger being one of them. Out history books have always had an ambivalent attitude towards ‘Oom Paul’. The British regarded him as backward and obstinate, his administration chaotic and corrupt, and many of his actions prompted by low cunning rather than statesmanship. Well, they would, wouldn’t they – seeing that he refused to meekly hand over his gold-rich country to them, and instead embarked on a defiance campaign that definitely gave them pause for thought.
There’s the famous story about when Queen Victoria hosted him to a banquet (he had gone to England to ask the English politely to keep their grubby mitts off his country), he drank the water out of the fingerbowl and Queen Victoria had promptly followed suit. The story is told to illustrate the tact and good manners of the Queen, but it could equally show the good manners of Kruger: if these strange people give him a peculiar glass of watery lemonade, he would drink it.
Despite only having three months of education, Kruger was a strange mixture of enlightenment and ignorance. He joined the Great Trek with his parents at age 10, shot his first lion at age 14, was a successful farmer by age 16, and had fought in several small wars by age 25.
Then he got interested in politics, mainly to try to halt British expansion in Southern Africa. Cecil John Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape, was his avowed enemy – and one could not imagine two men more different in background, outlook and temperament.
Kruger was not only looking for a homeland for his people but – and this is something that is not well known – he saw a future that involved all of the different races together and equally. He was a firm friend of the Bafokeng people and persuaded them to register their land rights. And – this is quite revolutionary for the time – he also foresaw a need to protect wild animals and spent 12 years setting aside an area between the Sabie and Crocodile rivers for a game reserve.
Even his enemies acknowledged that Kruger was a wily negotiator and a shrewd politician, even if he did not have the required airs and graces. The Boers at that stage were a scattered, quarrelsome farming community who thought laws pertained to other people. There was also constant simmering discontent about the citizen demands of the ‘Uitlanders’ who had streamed to the Transvaal in pursuit of gold. Ironically, most ‘Uitlanders’ themselves didn’t care whether they could vote or not, but the issue was used by the British to whip up anti-Afrikaner sentiment and to give an excuse for the Jameson Raid – an extremely silly act of aggression.
Kruger tried to avoid war at all costs, and when the British occupied Pretoria he slipped off to Holland to direct operations from there. He died in Clarens in Switzerland and he is buried in Heroes’ Acre in Pretoria.
His house in Pretoria has been also turned into a museum (they used milk instead of water to mix the cement when building it – can you imagine the smell after a few days?). It had the first electric lights and the first telephone. Despite the fact that he was no oil painting, he held enough fascination for his wife to father 16 children. Oh, and he firmly believed that the earth was flat.
The dining room hosted many distinguished dinner guests, including American Mark Twain, Henry Stanley the explorer, prime ministers and financiers. Perhaps they were there on state business, perhaps they just enjoyed the old man’s company. He was well known for sitting on his verandah in his crow-black suit in the afternoons and discussing matters of state with passers-by. (Can you just imagine any of our modern politicians, in their Hugo Boss suits and flashy cars, doing the same?)
But I don’t think we fully realise his legacy. Because of him, the Bafokeng people were never dispossessed of their land and instead enjoy enormous wealth from the royalties of their platinum mines. He purchased the country’s first mint from Germany in 1892 and ordered the first gold coin (the Kruger Rand, obviously). The Kruger National Park is one of the world’s top tourist attractions.
His last message to his people was: “Search in the past for all that is good and beautiful, make it your ideal and build on it your future.” Which is a resoundingly articulate and wise legacy from an ‘illiterate and unsophisticated’ old man.
