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Out for a day hike in the Snowy range in Wyoming....
The core of the Snowy Range is a very ancient granitic upthrust, some 2.5 billion years old, that penetrates the earth’s crust. Geologic structures of this age are rare and are found in only a few other places on earth, most notably in the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa.
Source and more info: www.vedauwoo.org/snowy-range/#:~:text=Creek%20Trail%20(south)-,HISTORY,that%20penetrates%20the%20earth's%20crust.
Jardín Botánico José Celestino Mutis; Bogotá; 2600 meters above sea level.
Clivia miniata is native to damp woodland habitats in South Africa. The world's love affair with South Africa's clivia began in the 1800's when specimens were sent back to England from Kwazulu-Natal.
Derivation of name:
Clivia- after the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte Clive who first cultivated and flowered the type specimen in England.
Miniata - colour of red lead - referring to the flowers.
Source:
Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden, South Africa
Parts of Albert's Farm have been left as original Highveld savannah vegetation and topography, giving us a glimpse of what the region looked like before the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand. When you are standing here at this time of day you could be forgiven for thinking you are miles from civilisation, but it's only a hundred or so metres away.
Clivia miniata is native to damp woodland habitats in South Africa. The world's love affair with South Africa's clivia began in the 1800's when specimens were sent back to England from Kwazulu-Natal.
Derivation of name:
Clivia- after the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte Clive who first cultivated and flowered the type specimen in England.
miniata - colour of red lead - referring to the flowers.
Source:
Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden, South Africa
The prestigious University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, photographed at night from the roof of Randlords..
This is the late Prof Tobias taking part in a television commercial for the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), at age 84. Although officially "retired", he used to show up at his office daily. At the time of this shot he was busy preparing for an international conference. The commercial was shot on a Canon 5D Mk 1 or II. You can see it here.
Kapstadt (afrikaans: Kaapstad /ˈkɑːpstɑt/, englisch: Cape Town [ˈkeɪptaʊn], isiXhosa: iKapa) ist nach Johannesburg die zweitgrößte Stadt Südafrikas. Seit 2004 bildet sie den ausschließlichen Sitz des südafrikanischen Parlaments. Kapstadt ist die Hauptstadt der Provinz Westkap und bildet die City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality, die Metropolgemeinde um Kapstadt. Die Stadt dehnt sich über eine Fläche von 2460 Quadratkilometern aus und hatte 2011 rund 3,7 Millionen Einwohner.Bürgermeisterin der Stadt ist Patricia de Lille von der Demokratischen Allianz.
Den Namen erhielt Kapstadt nach dem Kap der guten Hoffnung, das etwa 45 Kilometer südlicher liegt und eine Hauptgefahr auf dem Seeweg nach Indien darstellte. Da Kapstadt die erste Stadtgründung der südafrikanischen Kolonialzeit war, wird sie gelegentlich als „Mutterstadt“ (afrikaans: Moederstad, englisch: Mother City) bezeichnet
Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad [ˈkɑːpstɐt]; Xhosa: Ikapa) is a coastal city in South Africa. It ranks third among the most populous urban areas in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Durban, and has roughly the same population as the Durban Metropolitan Area. It is also the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape.
QUELLE: WIKIPEDIA
As the seat of the National Parliament it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The city is famous for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, as well as for such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. As of 2014, it is the 10th most populous city in Africa and home to 64% of the Western Cape's population.It is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates[9] to South Africa. The city was named the World Design Capital for 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both the American New York Times and the British Daily Telegraph.
Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town was first developed by the Dutch East India Company as a victualling (supply) station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town quickly outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa.
QUELLE: WIKIPEDIA
Flug mit dem Hubschrauber um Kapstadt / Flight with the helicopter around Cape Town
Scenes from the WSOA Physical Theatre production, Woman of the Snow, directed by Jenni-lee Crewe at the Wits Theatre, Johannesburg, September 2009. The dance play, based upon Masaki Kobayashi, 1965 classic film The Woman of the Snow is tells an old Japanese ghost story of forbidden love.
La Ceja, Colombia.
Clivia miniata is native to damp woodland habitats in South Africa. The world's love affair with South Africa's clivia began in the 1800's when specimens were sent back to England from Kwazulu-Natal.
Derivation of name:
Clivia- after the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte Clive who first cultivated and flowered the type specimen in England.
Miniata - colour of red lead - referring to the flowers.
Source:
Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden, South Africa
The Great Hall at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits. This is the site of the University’s graduations.
The University of the Witwatersrand was opened in 1922, with its “Central Block” of buildings largely following, in precast concerete in 1925. In 1937, however, the University Council decided to complete the Central Block and build an Assembly Hall. Architect Jean Welz designed what was then called the Great Hall, completed in 1940.
The building was substantially renovated in 2020-2.
The neoclassical Great Hall at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits.
Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad [ˈkɑːpstɐt]; Xhosa: Ikapa) is a coastal city in South Africa. It ranks third among the most populous urban areas in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Durban, and has roughly the same population as the Durban Metropolitan Area. It is also the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape.
As the seat of the National Parliament it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The city is famous for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, as well as for such well-known landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. As of 2014, it is the 10th most populous city in Africa and home to 64% of the Western Cape's population. It is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa. The city was named the World Design Capital for 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both the American New York Times and the British Daily Telegraph.
Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town was first developed by the Dutch East India Company as a victualling (supply) station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town quickly outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa.
A capture of one of the many abandoned goldmine shaft structures in Johannesburg.
Mining in South Africa has been the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa's most advanced and richest economy. Large scale and profitable mining started with the discovery of a diamond on the banks of the Orange River in 1867 by Erasmus Jacobs and the subsequent discovery and exploitation of the Kimberley pipes a few years later. Gold rushes to Pilgrim's Rest and Barberton were precursors to the biggest discovery of all, the Main Reef/Main Reef Leader on Gerhardus Oosthuizen's farm Langlaagte, Portion C, in 1886, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the subsequent rapid development of the gold field there, the biggest of them all.
The Witwatersrand is in Gauteng Province, South Africa. Gauteng Province is the roughly the southern portion of what was previously the Transvaal, formerly an independent state settled by the Boers after the Great Trek. J. H. Davis, an Englishman, was reported to have found gold "in considerable quantities" in July 1852 at Paardekraal near Krugersdorp, which was the earliest discovery on the Rand. Davis had sold £600 worth of gold (£457,000 in 2010 Pounds to the Transvaal Treasury and had shortly thereafter been ordered out of the country in accordance with the prevailing policy of secrecy. In October 1853 Pieter Jacob Marais, born in Cape Town on 31 July 1826, discovered gold on the banks of the Jukskei River, this find too was hushed up. The first mining concern (the Nil Desperandum Co-operative Gold Company) was formed at Blaauwbank in 1874.
Gold was mined at various places on the Rand up to 1886, when the discovery of the Witwatersrand Main Reef set off the historic Witwatersrand Gold Rush.
Gold was discovered in the area known as Witwatersrand, triggering what would become the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886. Like the diamond discoveries before, the gold rush caused thousands of foreign expatriates to prospect and mine the region. This heightened political tensions in the area, ultimately contributing to the Second Boer War in 1899. Ownership of the diamond and gold mines became concentrated in the hands of a few entrepreneurs, largely of European origin, known as the Randlords.
Cecil Rhodes founded Gold Fields of South Africa (GFSA) in 1887. Rand Mines (now Randgold), Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, General Mining and Union Corporation were quickly in place, all backed by men who had started in diamonds. Only Sir Ernest Oppenheimer's Anglo American was formed rather later, in 1917, while AngloVaal was founded in 1933. These seven houses provided the foundations of the South African gold industry which was always described as the 'flywheel' of the country's expansion.
The Great Hall at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits. This is the site of the University’s graduations.
The University of the Witwatersrand was opened in 1922, with its “Central Block” of buildings largely following, in precast concerete in 1925. In 1937, however, the University Council decided to complete the Central Block and build an Assembly Hall. Architect Jean Welz designed what was then called the Great Hall, completed in 1940.
The building was substantially renovated in 2020-2.
The great Limpopo River , and its feeder river, the Crocodile River, have their source high in the Witwatersrand, Here the source is captured from the magnificent Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. Walter Sisulu was a major figure in the ANC during the long struggle for democracy. 'Witwatersrand' means, in Afrikaans, 'white water ridge' Note the whiteness of the water as it falls ! This waterfall feeds the Crocodile River and others. The Limpopo River forms the natural border between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Outside Cape Town
South Africa
South Atlantic Ocean
Landscape photographed along the coast of South Africa near Cape Town. The ocean seen at the top of the image is the South Atlantic Ocean.
Cape Town (Afrikaans: Kaapstad [ˈkɑːpstat]; Xhosa: iKapa; Dutch: Kaapstad) is a coastal city in South Africa. It is the capital and primate city of the Western Cape province. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.
As the seat of the Parliament of South Africa, Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. The other two capitals are located in Pretoria (the administrative capital) where the President and Cabinet work) and Bloemfontein (the judicial capital where the National Court of Appeal is located).
The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks as Table Mountain and Cape Point. As of 2014, it is the 10th most populous city in Africa and home to 64% of the Western Cape's population. It is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa.
Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town, as the oldest urban area in South Africa, was developed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a supply station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa, India, and the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established Dutch Cape Colony, the first permanent European settlement in South Africa.
Cape Town outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony. Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa.
Whitehall is a grand old apartment block in the affluent suburb of Killarney, Johannesburg, Apartments in this block are expensive and much sought after. It was originally owned by the Schlesinger family as a residence before being converted into a 'sectional title' block. The extraordinary elegance and affluence of large parts of South African cities should always be seen against the counterpoint reality of poverty, destitution and inequality.
The Schlesinger family, notably the father who arrived in South Africa in 1894 and his son John were among the most successful and enterprising among those who came to South Africa to make their fortunes in the context of the diamond and gold rushes, and associated industries at the time. The family were notable patrons of the arts and acquired a famous collection, much of it bequeathed to the University of the Witwatersrand. For more information on the family, and on Killarney and indeed South Africa see: www.heritageportal.co.za/article/schlesingers-south-africa
The blue skies of South Africa are famous. The Witwatersrand skies can be strikingly azure, This late morning capture gives a good sense of the blue, especially against the contrast of the off-white edifice. Taken in Kelland, north-west Johannesburg.
cropproject.com/ - "We are a creative collective who believe in the power of collaboration, art and photography to not only disrupt, but to empower and promote positive change." - Wheatpaste on the wall taken during #feesmustfall# protest at the University of The Witwatersrand (WITS) by Jan Bornman with student activist Mcebo Dlamini in the foreground.
A capture of the Johannesburg skyline. Taken from the south of the city. Post processing kept to a minimum as I wanted a clean clear image of the reality of what I saw. No dramatic skies this time.
Egoli, or the "City of Gold" is South Africa's most populated city, and the cosmopolitan business centre of the country. The hub of South Africa's most densely populated province, Gauteng, Johannesburg, or Jozi, was built along the gold-bearing reefs of the Witwatersrand, and is the home of South Africa's Constitutional Court.
Johannesburg is probably the only metropolis in the world whose location was not dictated by the presence of navigable water. Founded in 1886 to service the needs of the mines on the Witwatersrand, within fourteen years it had become the largest city in southern Africa as well as the country’s foremost centre for industry, commerce and finance. Indeed, its growth was so phenomenal that it rapidly transformed from a tented camp in 1886, to a settlement of shimmering but impermanent corrugated iron structures in 1886, to a fully fledged town of permanent brick-and-mortar multi-storey buildings in 1890. Confidence in its future was hardly dented when its payable gold deposits began to run out in the early 1890s, and when the MacArthur-Forrest method of extracting gold at depth was introduced in 1891, its future was finally assured. Thus by the time its gold mines began to close down in the 1930s, its economy had moved firmly into secondary manufacture, and by the 1960s it had become a centre for international finance.
Johannesburg’s citizens were never angels, and although they reflected in many ways the values of their times, they were also pragmatic, a quality which often set them against the governments of the time. As a result they retained their links with the outside world, and while the rest of the country moved deeper into its own introspective bigotry, Johannesburg reflected many of the developments for democratic government found in Europe, North America and Russia.
During the 1890's it opposed the corrupt practices of the Kruger government, became a focal point for the Labour movement in the 1920's, wholeheartedly supported the war against the Nazis in 1929, and when the servicemen returned from the war, it became an organising centre against the rising nationalism of the 1950's and 1960's. Through most of the apartheid era it elected to parliament the only MP who opposed the policies of the Nationalist Party, and currently remains a major centre for liberal thought and religious, racial and gender tolerance.
Today Johannesburg remains South Africa’s premier city, and while other centres may offer better environments to sip wine or soak in the sun, Jozi, as its inhabitants affectionately call it, remains the preferred destination of career professionals and serious-minded entrepreneurs. It is an acknowledged truism that its residents make their money in Johannesburg, but play in Cape Town, Plettenberg Bay, Durban and the Lowveld.
Braamfontein Centre, once known as the Total Centre, is a high rise building near the University of the Witwatersrand which glitters with reflected light as the sun goes down.
Wild South Africa
Gravelotte
Limpopo Province
I had to attend to a court case in Tzaneen and as usual I packed in my macro gear. On the way back to Phalaborwa I had to pass through Gravelotte, a small one horse mining town. Just before you enter Gravelotte their is a dirt road to the right that leads to a massive Boabab tree as well as to a ghost town called Leydsdorp 11 km south-west of Gravelotte and 53 km south-east of Tzaneen. It developed from a gold-mining camp and was proclaimed in 1890, but was virtually abandoned when gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand. Anyway, I didn't feel like going back to the office as it was Friday afternoon and already past two and I decided to visit Leydsdorp to see if there was anything of interest to photograph. On the way I noticed numerous Lowveld Bitter Tee bushes (Vernonia colorata) in flower and stopped in the red dirt road next to one of these bushes, and that is where I nailed this exotic butterfly. You can actually notice the effect of the red soil on the flowers. The wind was blowing at 9 Kph and I handheld the camera.
God het geseën man en geweer! Sink dan terneer! Hom sy die eer!
— Jacob Daniël du Toit
When I visited Montréal, eight years ago, I remember seeing the Boer War Memorial at Dorchester Square. In Québec City, near the Porte Saint-Louis, I immediately recognized this statue as related to the same war. The same sculptor also made the bust of Pierre Dugua, le Sieur de Mons on the eponymous Terrasse.
Ce monument rappelle que onze soldats québécois ont été tués lors de la guerre des Boers (1899-1902), qui a opposé la Grande-Bretagne et les colons afrikaners en Afrique du Sud. Il s’élève sur les lieux mêmes d’où est parti le premier contingent canadien. Portant l’uniforme colonial, le soldat tient d’une main une carabine et de l’autre le Red Ensign, le drapeau canadien de l’époque.
Hamilton Thomas Carlton Plantagenet MacCarthy (1846-1939), Monument aux Braves de la Guerre des Boers (1905).
Muizenberg is a beach-side town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is situated where the shore of the Cape Peninsula curves round to the east on the False Bay coast. It is considered to be the main surfing spot in Cape Town and is currently home to a surfing community, centered on the popular 'Surfer's Corner'.
Muizenberg was apparently named after Wynand Willem Muijs who commanded a small outpost on the shore of Zandvlei in 1743.[3]
The Battle of Muizenberg was a small but significant military affair that began on 7 August 1795 and ended three months later with the (first) British occupation of the Cape. Thus began the period (briefly interrupted from 1803 to 1806) of British control of the Cape, and subsequently much of Southern Africa. The historical remnant of the Battle of Muizenberg is a site on the hillside overlooking False Bay that holds the remains of a defensive fort started by the Dutch in 1795 and expanded by the British from 1796 onwards. Cannons from that era are mounted at "Het Posthuys", the Muizenberg Park and on the station platform.
The railway from Cape Town, which for twenty years stopped at Wynberg, was extended to Muizenberg in 1882. Muizenberg started as a place for holiday homes for the rich after the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand in 1886. Muizenberg Municipality was established in 1895. It merged with Kalk Bay in 1897. In 1910 a library opened next to the Natale Labia, and a year later a post office opened. In 1911 the first pavilion, a wooden one, was built. In the twentieth century, Muizenberg was the premier summer destination among Southern African Jews. The post office was bombed in 1986, injuring the postman.
The sun sets over the "Cradle of Humankind", close to where the Homo naledi fossils were found (an UNESCO Word Heritage Site, Kromdraai, South Africa).
The most complete fossil of Australopithecus africanus was also found in this area in 1947.
From the fossil records, Sabre-Tooth Tigers were abundant in this area, close to where I live.
Photo usage and Copyright:
Photograph uploded with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licensing Terms (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Martin
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Once home to both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, Vilakazi Street has become Soweto’s main tourist attraction. As well as visitors to the Mandela House and Soweto Uprising Museum, Vilakazi Street also boasts many restaurants and bars popular with locals, especially on Sunday. It isn’t all tourism, though: a big secondary school means the street also throngs with local students.
The street itself is named after Dr. BW Vilakazi who was a poet, novelist, intellectual and the first black man to teach at the University of Witwatersrand.
The North West Engineering Building at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, generally known as Wits, was built between 1926 and 1928. It was designed by Cowin and WIlliamson architects, in neoclassical style to harmonise with other key central buildings.
Bull elephant (Loxodonta africanus) taking a nap - Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.
_______
Interesting article from the BBC quoted below www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39126993
Wild African elephants sleep for the shortest time of any mammal, according to a study. Scientists tracked two elephants in Botswana to find out more about the animals' natural sleep patterns. Elephants in zoos sleep for four to six hours a day, but in their natural surroundings the elephants rested for only two hours, mainly at night. The elephants, both matriarchs of the herd, sometimes stayed awake for several days. During this time, they travelled long distances.
They only went into rapid eye movement (REM, or dreaming sleep, at least in humans) every three or four days, when they slept lying down rather than on their feet.
Prof Paul Manger of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, said this makes elephant sleep unique. "Elephants are the shortest sleeping mammal - that seems to be related to their large body size," he told BBC News. "It seems like elephants only dream every three to four days. Given the well-known memory of the elephant this calls into question theories associating REM sleep with memory consolidation."
To find out more about their sleeping habits in the wild, Prof Manger and his research team fitted the scientific equivalent of a fitness tracker under the skin of the animals' trunks. The device was used to record when the elephants were sleeping, based on their trunk staying still for five minutes or more. The two elephants were also fitted with a gyroscope to assess their sleeping position. Both elephants were followed for five weeks, giving new insights into their natural sleep patterns.
"We had the idea that elephants should be the shortest sleeping mammal because they're the largest," said Prof Manger. "Why this occurs, we're not really sure. Sleep is one of those really unusual mysteries of biology, that along with eating and reproduction, it's one of the biological imperatives. We must sleep to survive."
Generally, smaller-bodied mammals sleep for longer than larger ones. For example, sloths sleep for around 14 hours a day, while humans sleep for around 8 hours. How elephants survive on so little sleep remains a mystery. The researchers are planning follow-up studies on more elephants, including males. They also want to find out more about REM sleep in elephants. REM sleep is believed to be critical in laying down memories. It is a type of sleep seen across the animal kingdom, in mammals and birds and even lizards. Most mammals go into REM sleep every day.
Built as C-54A 42-72232 and delivered to the USAAF in Jul44, it was passed immediately to the US Navy as Bu39715. It was sold to Transocean Air Lines in 1946 as N49288, leased to Pakair Sep48-49 as AP-ADL and sold to Saudi Arabian Airlines in Jun52 as HZ-AAG and on to British Eagle in Feb64 as G-ASPN, then to Invicta International Airlines in Feb65. The fleet only ever wore Invicta on the cabin roof and I photographed it at Southend on 28May65.
In 1969 Invicta merged with British Midland but Invicta Airways (1969) was formed a month later and ‘SPN was transferred to it. In Apr72 it was sold to Africair as ZS-IRE and then sold on to WENELA (Witwatersrand Native Labour Association) as A2-ZGU. It was re-registered 9Q-CWP and sold to SGA (Societe General d’Alimentation) in 1976. It was withdrawn at N’djili, Zaire, in Apr81, but reported sold to GLM Aviation in 1986 and scrapped around the same time.
Photo: Richard John Goring (Transportraits)
Dr Berger talked at the American Museum of Natural History about finding Homo naledi, a new species of human, deep in a cave in South Africa.
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"The new hominin species was announced by an international team of more than 60 scientists led by Lee R. Berger, an American paleoanthropologist who is a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
"'With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, Homo naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,' Dr. Berger said."
-- New York Times, Sept 10, 2015
Muizenberg (/ˈmjuːzənbɜːrɡ/ MEW-zən-burg, Dutch for 'mice mountain') is a beach-side town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is situated where the shore of the Cape Peninsula curves round to the east on the False Bay coast. It is considered to be the main surfing spot in Cape Town and is currently home to a surfing community, centered on the popular 'Surfer's Corner'.
History
Muizenberg was apparently named after Wynand Willem Muijs who commanded a small outpost on the shore of Zandvlei in 1743.
The Battle of Muizenberg was a small but significant military affair that began on 7 August 1795 and ended three months later with the (first) British occupation of the Cape. Thus began the period (briefly interrupted from 1803 to 1806) of British control of the Cape, and subsequently much of Southern Africa. The historical remnant of the Battle of Muizenberg is a site on the hillside overlooking False Bay that holds the remains of a defensive fort started by the Dutch in 1795 and expanded by the British from 1796 onwards. Cannons from that era are mounted at "Het Posthuys", the Muizenberg Park and on the station platform.
The railway from Cape Town, which for twenty years stopped at Wynberg, was extended to Muizenberg in 1882. Muizenberg started as a place for holiday homes for the rich after the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand in 1886. Muizenberg Municipality was established in 1895. It merged with Kalk Bay in 1897. In 1910 the Muizenberg Carnegie Library opened next to the Natale Labia, and a year later a post office opened. In 1911 the first pavilion, a wooden one, was built. In the twentieth century, Muizenberg was the premier summer destination among Southern African Jews.[5] The post office was bombed in 1986, injuring the postman.
Present day
Muizenberg has a fine, long beach that in effect stretches all the way round the top of False Bay to the Strand, a distance of over 20 km. False Bay, known for its population of White Sharks, also has a shark watch service that operates from Muizenberg, signalling alerts when sharks come in proximity of bathers at the main beach and surfers at Surfer's Corner. Above Muizenberg there is a line of steep cliffs that is very popular as a venue for rock climbing. However, certain parts of the cliff are off-limits to climbers when birds nest on the ledges.
The Zandvlei estuary enters the ocean in Muizenberg. The estuary is one of the most important estuaries for fish spawning on the coastline and is home to the Imperial Yacht Club, Peninsula Canoe Club and Sandvlei Sea Scout Base.
Educational establishments
Muizenberg houses one of the False Bay College campuses in the Cinnabar Building, a high-rise apartment tower. The college, a Public Further Education and Training Institution (FET), was established in September 2002 when the South Peninsula College (established 1970) and the Westlake College (established 1954) were merged.[ Muizenberg is also home to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a pan-African centre for education and research in mathematical sciences.
Beach front
Muizenberg is home to the well known "Surfers Corner", there is a range of restaurants and coffee shops in the area such as Knead Bakery, Bootlegger, Kauai and Starbucks. Surf shops are also very present in the area.
Agatha Christie, famous author and playwright, wrote that after nursing duty she would daily take the train to Muizenberg to go surfing.
Geography
Muizenberg is located approximately 27 km south-east of Cape Town’s CBD by road and is bounded by Kalk Bay to the south-west, the suburbs of Lavender Hill, Seawinds, Coniston Park, Sheraton Park, Retreat and Westlake to the north and Grassy Park to the north-west.
The older part of the town known as Muizenberg Village occupies the foot slopes of the Muizenberg Mountain, whilst the newer suburbs have spread eastwards along the flat expanse of land, known as the Cape Flats, bordering the lake of Zandvlei to the west.
The municipal boundaries of Muizenberg comprises Muizenberg Village and the following other suburbs:
Capricorn
Costa da Gama
Lakeside
Marina da Gama
St James
Stonehurst Mountain Estate
Vrygrond
Transport
Rail
Muizenberg is situated on the main commuter to connect line between Cape Town and Simon’s Town, known as the Southern Line which is operated by Metrorail. Metrorail currently operates commuter railway services in Muizenberg from the False Bay, Lakeside, Muizenberg, and St James railway stations to Cape Town, Kalk Bay, Fish Hoek and Simon’s Town.
Roads
The main thoroughfare through Muizenberg is the M4 (Main Road) which roughly runs in a north-south direction from Cape Town towards Kalk Bay, Fish Hoek and Simon’s Town. The R310 is another major route roughly running NE to SW from Stellenbosch and Mitchells Plain to Muizenberg and runs through Muizenberg as Atlantic Road and Baden Powell Drive.
Muizenberg is also intersected by other metropolitan routes within the City of Cape Town including the M5 (Prince George Drive) linking Muizenberg with Cape Town and Milnerton and the M75 (Boyes Drive) skirting above Muizenberg along the lower slopes of the Muizenberg Mountains towards Kalk Bay.
The M3 expressway (Simon van der Stel Freeway) runs northwards to Cape Town’s CBD from the intersection with the M42 (Steenberg Drive) in Westlake. The M42 then connects the M3 to Muizenberg from the intersection with the M4 near Lakeside.
(Wikipedia)
False Bay (Afrikaans: Valsbaai) is a body of water in the Atlantic Ocean between the mountainous Cape Peninsula and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the extreme south-west of South Africa. The mouth of the bay faces south and is demarcated by Cape Point to the west and Cape Hangklip to the east. The north side of the bay is the low-lying Cape Flats, and the east side is the foot of the Hottentots Holland Mountains to Cape Hangklip which is at nearly the same latitude as Cape Point. In plan the bay is approximately square, being roughly the same extent from north to south as east to west, with the southern side open to the ocean. The seabed generally slopes gradually down from north to south, and is mostly fairly flat unconsolidated sediments. Much of the bay is off the coast of the City of Cape Town, and it includes part of the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area and the whole of the Helderberg Marine Protected Area. The name "False Bay" was applied at least three hundred years ago by sailors returning from the east who confused Cape Point and Cape Hangklip, which are somewhat similar in profile when approached from the southeast.
False Bay is at the extreme western end of the inshore Agulhas marine ecoregion which extends from Cape Point to the Mbashe river over the continental shelf, in the overlap zone between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point where the warm Agulhas Current and the cooler South Atlantic waters mix. The continental shelf is at its widest in this ecoregion, extending up to 240 km (150 mi) offshore on the Agulhas Bank, but is considerably narrower off False Bay. This ecoregion has the highest number of South African marine endemics, and is a breeding area for many species. The transition between the Agulhas ecoregion and the cooler Benguela ecoregion is at Cape Point, on the western boundary of False Bay.
False Bay also contains South Africa's largest naval base at Simon's Town (historically a base for the Royal Navy), and small fishing harbours at Kalk Bay and Gordon's Bay.
Description and location
The western side is bordered by the Cape Peninsula, and this stretch of coastline includes the smaller Buffels Bay, Smitswinkel Bay, Simon's Bay and Fish Hoek Bay. At Muizenberg the coastline becomes relatively low and sandy and curves east across the southern boundary of the Cape Flats to Gordon's Bay to form the northern boundary of False Bay. From Gordon's Bay the coastline swings roughly south, and zig-zags its way along the foot of the Hottentots Holland Mountains to Cape Hangklip which is at nearly the same latitude as Cape Point. The highest peak on this side is Kogelberg at 1,269 m (4,163 ft).[4]
In plan the bay is approximately square with rather wobbly edges, being roughly the same extent from north to south as east to west (30 km), with the entire southern side open to the ocean. The area of False Bay has been measured at about 1,090 km2 (420 sq mi), and the volume is approximately 45 km3 (11 cu mi) (average depth about 40 m). The land perimeter has been measured at 116 km, from a 1:50,000 scale map.
The eastern and western shores of the bay are very rocky and even mountainous; in places large cliffs plunge into the water. Notable peaks associated with the bay include Koeëlberg (1,289 m (4,229 ft)), which rises from the water itself forming the highest point of the Kogelberg, as well as Somerset Sneeukop (1590m / 5217 feet) and Wemmershoek Peak (1,788 m (5,866 ft)) which are clearly visible across the bay. Some of the highest peaks visible across False Bay include Du Toits Peak near Paarl (1,995 m (6,545 ft)), Klein Winterhoek Peak near Tulbagh (1,995 m (6,545 ft)), Mostertshoek Peak at the Western extreme of the Michell's Pass (2,008 m (6,588 ft)) and Groot Winterhoek Peak North of Tulbagh (2,077 m (6,814 ft)). The northern shore, is defined by a very long, curving, sandy beach. This sandy, northern perimeter of the bay is the southern edge of the area known as the Cape Flats. The bay is 30 km wide at its widest point.
Suburbs of Cape Town stretch right across the Cape Flats from Simon's Town halfway down the Cape Peninsula to the north-eastern corner at Gordon's Bay. There are also two small towns of the Overberg region on the east coast of the bay, Rooiels and Pringle Bay.
(Wikipedia)
Muizenberg ist ein an der False Bay gelegener Vorort von Kapstadt am westlichen Rand der Cape Flats.
Geografie
Lage
Muizenberg gehört zur City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality. Es hat einen langen Sandstrand. Der Zandvlei mündet mit einem teilweise als Yachthafen genutzten Ästuar in die False Bay. n Muizenberg gibt es die Quartiere Capricorn, Costa Da Gama, Lakeside, Marina Da Gama, Saint James und Vrygrond.
Durch die Southern Line der Metrorail Kapstadt ist der Bahnhof Muizenberg mit Kapstadt und in Richtung Süden mit Simon’s Town verbunden.
Bevölkerung
Muizenberg hatte 2011 (Volkszählung) 36.857 Einwohner in 12.245 Haushalten.
Geschichte
Muizenberg entwickelte sich um 1743 aus einem Viehposten, militärischen Außenposten und Winterhafen der Niederländischen Ostindien-Kompanie (VOC).[2] Het Posthuys (das Posthaus) ist eines der ältesten Häuser Südafrikas. Es wurde um 1742 von der Niederländischen Ostindien-Kompanie als Mautstelle erbaut. Das Haus diente unter anderem auch als Polizeistation, Hotel und Privathaus und wurde in den 1980er Jahren restauriert. Heute befindet sich darin ebenfalls ein Museum.
Einer der ersten Postbeamten war 1744 Sergeant Wynand Willem Muijs, der spätere Kommandant der hiesigen Garnison wurde. Von ihm leitet sich der Name Muysenbergh oder Muys Zijn Bergh ab, aus dem später Muizenberg wurde.
Die Schlacht von Muizenberg war eine kleine, aber bedeutende militärische Offensive, die im Juni 1795 begann und mit der ersten britischen Okkupation am Kap der guten Hoffnung drei Monate später endete. Es begann die Zeit der britischen Herrschaft. Zwischen 1804 und 1806 unterstand das Kap der Batavischen Republik. Danach wurde die Kapkolonie wieder britisch.
Das Rhodes’ Cottage ist ein kleines Haus, welches Cecil Rhodes, der Premierminister der Kapkolonie, als Urlaubshaus kaufte. Hier starb er am 26. März 1902. Heute befindet sich darin das Rhodes-Museum.
Bildung
Des Weiteren ist Muizenberg der Sitz des African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
Tourismus
Da in der False Bay eine Anzahl Weißer Haie leben, gibt es in Muizenberg eine Beobachtungsstation, die die Schwimmer und Surfer bei Gefahr alarmiert. An der Mündung des Zandvlei sind der Imperial Yacht Club und der Peninsula Canoe Club beheimatet.
(Wikipedia)
Die False Bay (afrikaans: Valsbaai; deutsch etwa: „Falsche Bucht“) ist eine Bucht am Kap der Guten Hoffnung im südwestlichen Teil Südafrikas.
Beschreibung und Lage
Die östlichen und westlichen Küsten der False Bay sind sehr felsig; an einigen Stellen münden große Klippen im tiefen Wasser. Die nördliche Küste verläuft an einem langen, kurvigen Sandstrand. An diesem Strand liegt das Areal, das als Cape Flats bekannt ist. Die Bucht umfasst an ihrem weitesten Punkt eine Spanne von 30 Kilometern und befindet sich südöstlich von Kapstadt. Die Orte Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek, Muizenberg, Mitchells Plain, Strand und Khayelitsha liegen direkt an der Bucht. Auf Höhe der Ortschaft Strand reichen die Hottentots-Holland Mountains, die südlichsten Ausläufer des Kap-Faltengürtels, bis an die Küste der Bucht.
Das Kap der Guten Hoffnung liegt westlich der False Bay am südlichsten Punkt der Kap-Halbinsel.
Geschichte
Bartolomeu Dias beschrieb die Bucht erstmals 1488 als „Golf zwischen den Bergen“. Der Name „False Bay“ stammt von Seefahrern, die in die Bucht steuerten, weil sie die Bucht fälschlicherweise für die Tafelbucht hielten.
Die Bounty traf am 24. Mai 1788 in der False Bay bei Kapstadt ein, wo sie generalüberholt werden musste.
Klima
Es herrscht ein mediterranes mildes Klima mit warmen, trockenen Sommern und kalten, nassen Wintern. Im Winter können Stürme vom Nordwesten über das Land wehen, im Sommer wird das Klima von warmen Winden aus Südosten bestimmt. Das Wasser in der Bucht ist rund 6 °C wärmer als das Wasser in der westlich gelegenen Tafelbucht.
Tourismus
Die False Bay eignet sich zum Angeln, da hier oftmals Fischschwärme vorbeiziehen. In der Bucht können sich jedoch sogenannte „Monsterwellen“ bilden, die mit großer Wucht auf die felsigen Klippen der Bucht treffen. Viele Fischer fielen diesen Wellen zum Opfer, die ohne jegliche Vorwarnung entstehen. Auch das Segeln ist eine der vielen Freizeitaktivitäten in der Bucht. Rund um die Bucht sind zahlreiche Segel- und Yachtclubs ansässig.
In der Bucht gibt es eine kleine Insel, die als Brutstätte für Kaprobben (Südafrikanischer Seebär) dient. Die Aktivität der Robben zieht die Aufmerksamkeit des Weißen Hais nach sich, der dort oft gesichtet wird. So ereignete sich am 10. Januar 2010 ein Angriff auf einen Mann aus Simbabwe, der im Dorf Fish Hoek 100 Meter vor der Küste schwamm und tödlich attackiert wurde.
(Wikipedia)
ISS040-E-006271 (31 May 2014) --- One of the Expedition 40 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station captured this panoramic image of South Africa on May 31, 2014. A combination of contrails and a bit of winter mist appears to have formed alphabetic and/or numeric characters in the upper right near the horizon. Sun glint off the south coast is slightly confusing as it is similar in brightness to the west-coast cloud cover, where an Atlantic storm rolls in. The Cape Fold Mountains cross the center of the view, going east from the Cape Town region (clouds obscure the Cape peninsula which normally serves as an icon for this part of Africa). A popular winegrowing region attributable to the Mediterranean climate is the area around Cape Town near lower left. Witwatersrand lies at the top of the picture obscured by the seemingly ever-present winter smoke and smog. The Orange River valley appears as a dark, nearly horizontal line at left.
A group of students, ranging in age from six to eight, were invited to use over sized crayons to color in geometric vinyl graphics applied directly to the walls by Robin Rhode at The National Gallery Victoria.
Robin Rhode (b. Cape Town, 1976) is a South African artist based in Berlin, Germany. In 1998, he obtained a diploma in Fine Art from Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by a postgraduate program at the South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Art in Johannesburg.
Working predominantly with everyday material like charcoal, chalk and paint, Rhode started out creating performances that are based on his own drawings of objects that he interacts with. He expanded and refined this practice into creating photography sequences and digital animations. These works are characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that brings aspects of performance, happening, drawing, film and photography together. Rhode often returns to his native South Africa, creating work in the streets of Johannesburg and continuously registering the traces of poverty and social inequality. An outstanding characteristic of his works is his addressing of social concerns in a playful and productive manner, incorporating these issues into his practice without simplifying or judging them.
Explored.
Thanks everyone.
the Netherlands reformed church (NGK) in Prince Albert
Prince Albert is a small town in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Prince Albert was founded in 1762[3] on a farm called Queekvalleij that had been on loan to Zacharias and Dina de Beer since 1762[4]
Originally known as Albertsburg, when it obtained municipal status in 1845 it was renamed Prince Albert in honour of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg.[4] Prince Albert was historically part of the Cape Colony.
During the latter part of the century, a nugget of gold was discovered on a farm in the area. Due to the fact that a similar occurrence had led to the Gold Rush in the Witwatersrand, this new discovery precipitated a similar population boom. However, the prosperity up North was not to be shared in Prince Albert and the gold mined turned out to be minimal.[4]
Prince Albert became a British garrison during the Second Boer War in 1899. The town was the site of several clashes between the British and the Boers during this period.[4] Thx to Wikipedia
Sometime in 1984, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Citroen Traction Avant (i.e. the 'Light 15'), the Citroen Club of Johannesburg ... ... held a rally to Kimberley calling at Parys on the way (where there was a prominent miniature model of the Eiffel Tower, in a residential district) .
At that time certainly tram no 1 was in service, while no 11 may well have been just static.
A Witwatersrand University dissertation ... ... from 2004 implies only one tram is in use by that time (page 39). An RSA travel agent web site ... ... features an even more recent photo, with the tram in an even more sorry state.
..
{img163 C ; scan}
a beautiful valley and town ..
Prince Albert is a small town in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Prince Albert was founded in 1762[3] on a farm called Queekvalleij that had been on loan to Zacharias and Dina de Beer since 1762[4]
Originally known as Albertsburg, when it obtained municipal status in 1845 it was renamed Prince Albert in honour of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg.[4] Prince Albert was historically part of the Cape Colony.
During the latter part of the century, a nugget of gold was discovered on a farm in the area. Due to the fact that a similar occurrence had led to the Gold Rush in the Witwatersrand, this new discovery precipitated a similar population boom. However, the prosperity up North was not to be shared in Prince Albert and the gold mined turned out to be minimal.[4]
Prince Albert became a British garrison during the Second Boer War in 1899. The town was the site of several clashes between the British and the Boers during this period.[4] Thx to Wikipedia
boekenhout, country house of president paul kruger, museum near rustenburg, western transvaal. pix 1997
Paul Kruger
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This article is about the South African politician. For others of the same name, see Paul Kruger (disambiguation).
Paul Kruger
Kruger, photographed in 1900
3rd President of the South African Republic
In office
9 May 1883 – 10 September 1900
Preceded byTriumvirate
Succeeded bySchalk Willem Burger (acting)
Member of the Triumvirate
In office
8 August 1881 – 9 May 1883
Serving with M W Pretorius and Piet Joubert
Preceded byT F Burgers (President, 1872–77)
Personal details
BornStephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger
10 October 1825
Bulhoek, Steynsburg, Cape Colony
Died14 July 1904 (aged 78)
Clarens, Vaud, Switzerland
Resting placeHeroes' Acre, Pretoria, South Africa
Spouse(s)Maria (née du Plessis)
* (1842–46, her death)
* Gezina (née du Plessis)
* (1847–1901, her death)
Children17
Signature
Stephanus Johannes Paulus "Paul" Kruger (/ˈkruːɡər/; Dutch: [ˈkryɣər]; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904) was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and President of the South African Republic (or Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed Oom Paul ("Uncle Paul"), he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom, and remains a controversial and divisive figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero, while critics view him as the obstinate guardian of an unjust cause.
Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible and, through his interpretations of scripture, believed the Earth was flat. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South African Republic, leading its commandos and resolving disputes between the rival Boer leaders and factions. In 1863 he was elected Commandant-General, a post he held for a decade before he resigned soon after the election of President Thomas François Burgers.
Kruger was appointed Vice-President in March 1877, shortly before the South African Republic was annexed by Britain as the Transvaal.[1] Over the next three years he headed two deputations to London to try to have this overturned and became the leading figure in the movement to restore the South African Republic's independence, culminating in the Boers' victory in the First Boer War of 1880–81. Kruger served until 1883 as a member of an executive triumvirate, then was elected President. In 1884 he headed a third deputation that brokered the London Convention, under which Britain recognised the South African Republic as a fully independent state.
Following the influx of thousands of predominantly British settlers with the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886, "uitlanders" (out-landers) provided almost all of the South African Republic's tax revenues but lacked civic representation; Boer burghers retained control of the government. The uitlander problem and the associated tensions with Britain dominated Kruger's attention for the rest of his presidency, to which he was re-elected in 1888, 1893 and 1898, and led to the Jameson Raid of 1895–96 and ultimately the Second Boer War. 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. After he died in Switzerland at the age of 78 in 1904, his body was returned to South Africa for a state funeral, and buried in the Heroes' Acre in Pretoria.
Contents [hide]
* 1Early life1.1Family and childhood1.2Great Trek1.3Burgher1.4Field cornet2Commandant2.1Mediator2.2Forming the "Dopper Church"2.3Civil war; Commandant-General3Diamonds and deputations3.1Under Burgers3.2British annexation; first and second deputations3.3Drive for independence4Triumvirate4.1Transvaal rebellion: the First Boer War4.2Pretoria Convention5President5.1Third deputation; London Convention5.2Gold rush; burghers and uitlanders5.3Early 1890s5.4Rising tensions: raiders and reformers5.5Resurgence5.6Road to war5.7Second Boer War6Exile and death7Appraisal and legacy8Notes and references9
Further reading
Early life[edit]
Family and childhood[edit]
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 Elsie (Elisa; née Steyn).[2] The family was of Dutch-speaking Afrikaner or Boer background, of German, French Huguenot and Dutch stock.[2][3] His paternal ancestors had been in South Africa since 1713, when Jacob Krüger, from Berlin, arrived in Cape Town as a 17-year-old soldier in the Dutch East India Company's service. Jacob's children dropped the umlaut from the family name, a common practice among South Africans of German origin, and over the following generations Kruger's paternal forebears moved into the interior.[2] His mother's family, the Steyns, had lived in South Africa since 1668 and were relatively affluent and cultured by Cape standards.[2] Kruger's great-great-uncle Hermanus Steyn had been President of the self-declared Republic of Swellendam that revolted against Company rule in 1795.[4]
Bulhoek, 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. The Krugers and Steyns were acquainted and Casper occasionally visited Bulhoek as a young man. He and Elsie married in Cradock in 1820, when he was 18 and she was 14.[n 1] A girl, Sophia, and a boy, Douw Gerbrand, were born before Paul's arrival in 1825.[2] The child's first two names, Stephanus Johannes, were chosen after his paternal grandfather, but rarely used—the provenance of the third name Paulus "was to remain rather a mystery", Johannes Meintjes wrote in his 1974 biography of Kruger, "and yet the boy was always called Paul."[2]
Paul Kruger was baptised at Cradock on 19 March 1826,[2] and soon thereafter his parents acquired a farm of their own to the north-west at Vaalbank, near Colesberg, in the remote north-east of the Cape Colony.[6] His mother died when he was eight; Casper soon remarried and had more children with his second wife, Heiletje (née du Plessis).[7] Beyond reading and writing, which he learned from relatives, Kruger's only education was three months under a travelling tutor, Tielman Roos, and Calvinist religious instruction from his father.[7] In adulthood Kruger would claim to have never read any book apart from the Bible.[8]
Great Trek[edit]
Map showing the routes taken by the Voortrekkers during the Great Trek of the 1830s and 1840s
In 1835 Casper Kruger, his father and his brothers Gert and Theuns moved their families east and set up farms near the Caledon River, on the Cape Colony's far north-eastern frontier. The Cape had been under British sovereignty since 1814, when the Netherlands ceded it to Britain with the Convention of London. Boer discontent with aspects of British rule, such as the institution of English as the sole official language and the abolition of slavery in 1834, led to the Great Trek—a mass migration by Dutch-speaking "Voortrekkers" north-east from the Cape to the land over the Orange and Vaal Rivers.[9] While many Boers had been voicing displeasure with the British Cape administration for some time, the Krugers were comparatively content—they had always co-operated with the British and the abolition of slavery was irrelevant to them as they did not own slaves. They had given little thought to the idea of leaving the Cape.[10]
A group of emigrants under Hendrik Potgieter passed through the Krugers' Caledon encampments in early 1836. Potgieter envisioned a Boer republic with himself in a prominent role; he sufficiently impressed the Krugers that they joined his party of Voortrekkers.[11] 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. At stops along the journey classrooms were improvised from reeds and grass and the more educated emigrants took turns in teaching.[12]
Voortrekkers; a 1909 depiction
The Voortrekkers faced competition for the area they were entering from Mzilikazi and his Ndebele (or Matabele) people, a recent offshoot from the Zulu Kingdom to the south-east. On 16 October 1836 the 11-year-old Kruger took part in the Battle of Vegkop, where Potgieter's laager, a circle of wagons chained together, was unsuccessfully attacked by Mzilikazi and around 4,000–6,000 Matabele warriors.[13][14] Kruger and the other small children assisted in tasks such as bullet-casting while the women and larger boys helped the fighting men, of whom there were about 40. Kruger could recall the battle in great detail and give a vivid account well into old age.[14]
During 1837 and 1838 Kruger's family was part of the Voortrekker group under Potgieter that trekked further east into Natal. Here they met the American missionary Daniel Lindley, who gave young Paul much spiritual invigoration.[15] The Zulu King Dingane concluded a land treaty with Potgieter, but then promptly reconsidered and massacred first Piet Retief's party of settlers, then others at Weenen.[13] Kruger would recount 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"—but "God heard our prayer", he recalled, and "we followed them and shot them down as they fled, until more of them were dead than those of us they had killed in their attack ... I could shoot moderately well for we lived, so to speak, among the game."[16]
These developments impelled the Krugers' return to the highveld, where they took part in Potgieter's campaign that compelled Mzilikazi to move his people north, across the Limpopo River, to what became Matabeleland. Kruger and his father thereupon settled at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountains in the Transvaal.[13] Meanwhile, in Natal, Andries Pretorius defeated more than 10,000 of Dingane's Zulus at the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838, a date subsequently marked by the Boers as Dingaansdag ("Dingane's Day") or the Day of the Vow.[n 2]
Burgher[edit]
Boer tradition of the time dictated that men were entitled to choose two 6,000-acre (24 km2) farms—one for crops and one for grazing—upon becoming enfranchised burghers at the age of 16. Kruger set up his home at Waterkloof, near Rustenburg in the Magaliesberg area.[13] This concluded, he wasted little time in pursuing the hand of Maria du Plessis, the daughter of a fellow Voortrekker south of the Vaal; she was only 14 years old when they married in Potchefstroom in 1842.[19] The same year Kruger was elected a deputy field cornet—"a singular honour at seventeen", Meintjes comments.[20] This role combined the civilian duties of a local magistrate with a military rank equivalent to that of a junior commissioned officer.[21]
Kruger was already an accomplished frontiersman, horseman and guerrilla fighter.[13] In addition to his native Dutch he could speak basic English and several African languages, some fluently.[22] He had shot a lion for the first time while still a boy—in old age he recalled being 14, but Meintjes suggests he may have been as young as 11.[23] During his many hunting excursions he was nearly killed on several occasions.[13] In 1845, while he was hunting rhinoceros along the Steelpoort River, his four-pounder elephant gun exploded in his hands and blew off most of his left thumb.[24] Kruger wrapped the wound in a handkerchief and retreated to camp, where he treated it with turpentine. He refused calls to have the hand amputated by a doctor, and instead cut off the remains of the injured thumb himself with a pocketknife. When gangrenous marks appeared up to his shoulder, he placed the hand in the stomach of a freshly-killed goat, a traditional Boer remedy.[25] He considered this a success—"when it came to the turn of the second goat, my hand was already easier and the danger much less."[26] The wound took over half a year to heal, but he did not wait that long to start hunting again.[25]
Andries Pretorius, a great influence on the young Kruger
Britain annexed the Voortrekkers' short-lived Natalia Republic in 1843 as the Colony of Natal. Pretorius briefly led Boer resistance to this, but before long most of the Boers in Natal had trekked back north-west to the area around the Orange and Vaal Rivers. In 1845 Kruger was a member of Potgieter's expedition to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique to negotiate a frontier with Portugal; the Lebombo Mountains were settled upon as the border between Boer and Portuguese lands.[27] After Maria and their first child died of fever in January 1846,[28] Kruger married her cousin Gezina du Plessis, from the Colesberg area, in 1847. Their first child, Casper Jan Hendrik, was born on 22 December that year.[29]
Concerned by the exodus of so many whites from the Cape and Natal, and taking the view that they remained British subjects, the British Governor Sir Harry Smith in 1848 annexed the area between the Orange and Vaal rivers as the "Orange River Sovereignty". A Boer commando led by Pretorius against this was defeated by Smith at the Battle of Boomplaats. Pretorius also lived in the Magaliesberg mountains and often hosted the young Kruger, who greatly admired the elder man's resolve, sophistication and piety. A warm relationship developed.[30] "Kruger's political awareness can be dated from 1850", Meintjes writes, "and it was in no small measure given to him by Pretorius."[31] Like Pretorius, Kruger wanted to centralise the emigrants under a single authority and win British recognition for this as an independent state. This last point was not due to hostility to Britain—neither Pretorius nor Kruger was particularly anti-British—but because they perceived the emigrants' unity as under threat if the Cape administration continued to regard them as British subjects.[31]
The British resident in the Orange River area, Henry Douglas Warden, advised Smith in 1851 that he thought a compromise should be attempted with Pretorius. Smith sent representatives to meet him at the Sand River. Kruger, aged 26, accompanied Pretorius and on 17 January 1852 was present at the conclusion of the Sand River Convention,[32] under which Britain recognised "the Emigrant Farmers" in the Transvaal—the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek ("South African Republic"), they called themselves—as independent. In exchange for the Boers' pledge not to introduce slavery in the Transvaal, the British agreed not to ally with any "coloured nations" there.[33] Kruger's uncle Gert was also present; his father Casper would have been as well had he not been ill.[32]
Field cornet[edit]
Kruger as a field cornet, photographed c. 1852
The Boers and the local Tswana and Basotho chiefdoms were in near-constant conflict, mainly over land.[33] Kruger was elected field cornet of his district in 1852,[21] and in August that year he took part in the Battle of Dimawe, a raid against the Tswana chief Sechele I. The Boer commando was headed by Pretorius, but in practice he did not take much part as he was suffering from dropsy. Kruger narrowly escaped death twice—first a piece of shrapnel hit him in the head but only knocked him out, then later a Tswana bullet swiped across his chest, tearing his jacket without wounding him.[34] The commando wrecked David Livingstone's mission station at Kolobeng, destroying his medicines and books. Livingstone was away at the time.[35] Kruger's version of the story was that the Boers found an armoury and a workshop for repairing firearms in Livingstone's house and, interpreting this as a breach of Britain's promise at the Sand River not to arm tribal chiefs, confiscated them.[34] Whatever the truth, Livingstone wrote about the Boers in strongly condemnatory terms thereafter, depicting them as mindless barbarians.[36]
One charge levelled by Livingstone and many others against the Boers was that when attacking tribal settlements they abducted women and children and took them home as slaves.[37] The Boer argument was that these were not slaves but inboekelings—indentured "apprentices" who, having lost their families, were given bed, board and training in a Boer household until reaching adulthood.[38] Modern scholarship widely dismisses this as a ruse to create inexpensive labour while avoiding overt slavery.[39][n 3] Gezina Kruger had an inboekeling maid for whom she eventually arranged marriage, paying her a dowry.[40]
Having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant (between field cornet and commandant), Kruger formed part of a commando sent against the chief Montshiwa in December 1852 to recover some stolen cattle. Pretorius was still sick, and only nominally in command.[42] Seven months later, on 23 July 1853, Pretorius died, aged 54. Just before the end he sent for Kruger, but the young man arrived too late.[43] Meintjes comments that Pretorius "was perhaps the first person to recognise that behind [Kruger's] rough exterior was a most singular person with an intellect all the more remarkable for being almost entirely self-developed."[31]
Commandant[edit]
Pretorius did not name a successor as Commandant-General; his eldest son Marthinus Wessel Pretorius was appointed in his stead.[43] The younger Pretorius elevated Kruger to the rank of commandant.[44] Pretorius the son claimed power over not just the Transvaal but also the Orange River area—he said the British had promised it to his father—but virtually nobody, not even supporters like Kruger, accepted this.[45] Following Sir George Cathcart's replacement of Smith as Governor in Cape Town, the British policy towards the Orange River Sovereignty changed to the extent that the British were willing to pull out and grant independence to a second Boer republic there. This was in spite of the fact that in addition to the Boer settlers there were many English-speaking colonists who wanted rule from the Cape to continue.[46] On 23 February 1854 Sir George Russell Clerk signed the Orange River Convention, ending the sovereignty and recognising what the Boers dubbed the Oranje-Vrijstaat ("Orange Free State").[47]
Bloemfontein, the former British garrison town, became the Free State's capital; the Transvaal seat of government became Pretoria, named after the elder Pretorius.[47] The South African Republic was in practice split between the south-west and central Transvaal, where most of Pretorius's supporters were, and regionalist factions in the Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg and Utrecht districts that viewed any central authority with suspicion.[48] Kruger's first campaign as a commandant was in the latter part of 1854, against the chiefs Mapela and Makapan near the Waterberg. The chiefs retreated into what became called the Caves of Makapan ("Makapansgat") with many of their people and cattle, and a siege ensued in which thousands of the defenders died, mainly from starvation. When Commandant-General Piet Potgieter of Zoutpansberg was shot dead, Kruger advanced under heavy fire to retrieve the body and was almost killed himself.[49]
Mediator[edit]
M W Pretorius, who became the Transvaal's first President in 1857
Marthinus Pretorius hoped to achieve either federation or amalgamation with the Orange Free State, but before he could contemplate this he would have to unite the Transvaal. In 1855 he appointed an eight-man constitutional commission, including Kruger, which presented a draft constitution in September that year. Lydenburg and Zoutpansberg rejected the proposals, calling for a less centralised government. Pretorius tried again during 1856, holding meetings with eight-man commissions in Rustenburg, Potchefstroom and Pretoria, but Stephanus Schoeman, Zoutpansberg's new Commandant-General, repudiated these efforts.[50]
The constitution settled upon formalised a national volksraad (parliament) and created an executive council, headed by a President. Pretorius was sworn in as the first President of the South African Republic on 6 January 1857. 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. With the Transvaal on the verge of civil war, tensions also rose with the Orange Free State after Pretorius's ambitions of absorbing it became widely known. Kruger had strong personal reservations about Pretorius, not considering him his father's equal, but nevertheless remained steadfastly loyal to him.[51]
After the Free State government dismissed an ultimatum from Pretorius to cease what he regarded as the marginalisation of his supporters south of the Vaal, Pretorius called up the burghers and rode to the border, prompting President Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff of the Free State to do the same. Kruger was dismayed to learn of this and on reaching the Transvaal commando he spoke out against the idea of fighting their fellow Boers. However, when he learned that Boshoff had called on Schoeman to lead a commando against Pretorius from Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg, he realised that simply disbanding was no longer enough and that they would have to make terms.[52]
With Pretorius's approval, Kruger met Boshoff under a white flag. 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. A commission of 12 men from each republic, including Kruger, reached a compromise whereby Pretorius would drop his claim on the Free State, and a treaty was concluded on 2 June 1857.[53][n 4] Over the next year Kruger helped to negotiate a peace agreement between the Free State and Moshoeshoe I of the Basotho,[54] and persuaded Schoeman to take part in successful talks regarding constitutional revisions, after which Zoutpansberg accepted the central government with Schoeman as Commandant-General.[55] On 28 June 1858 Schoeman appointed Kruger Assistant Commandant-General of the South African Republic.[56] "All in all", Kruger's biographer T R H Davenport comments, "he had shown a loyalty to authority in political disputes, devotion to duty as an officer, and a real capacity for power play."[16]
Forming the "Dopper Church"[edit]
Kruger considered Providence his guide in life and referred to scripture constantly; he knew large sections of the Bible by heart.[8] He understood the biblical texts literally and inferred from them that the Earth was flat, a belief he retained firmly to his dying day.[8] At mealtimes he said grace twice, at length and in formal Dutch rather than the South African dialect that was to become Afrikaans.[57] In late 1858, when he returned to Waterkloof, he was mentally and physically drained following the exertions of the past few years and in the midst of a spiritual crisis. Hoping to establish a personal relationship with God,[58] he ventured into the Magaliesberg and spent several days without food or water. A search party found him "nearly dead from hunger and thirst", Davenport records.[16] The experience reinvigorated him and greatly intensified his faith, which for the rest of his life was unshakeable and, according to Meintjes, perceived by some of his contemporaries as like that of a child.[58]
Kruger belonged to the "Doppers"—a group of about 6,000 that followed an extremely strict interpretation of traditional Calvinist doctrine.[59] They based their theology almost entirely on the Old Testament and, among other things, wished to eschew hymns and organs and read only from the Psalms.[60] When the 1859 synod of the Nederduits Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHK), the main church in the Transvaal, decided to enforce the singing of modern hymns, Kruger led a group of Doppers that denounced the NHK as "deluded" and "false" and left its Rustenburg congregation.[61] They formed the Gereformeerde Kerke van Zuid-Afrika (GK),[59] thereafter known informally as the "Dopper Church",[60] and recruited the Reverend Dirk Postma, a like-minded traditionalist recently arrived from the Netherlands, to be their minister.[59] This act also had secular ramifications as according to the 1858 constitution only NHK members could take part in public affairs.[58]
Civil war; Commandant-General[edit]
In late 1859 Pretorius was invited to stand for President in the Orange Free State, where many burghers now favoured union, partly as a means to overcome the Basotho. The Transvaal constitution he had just enacted made it illegal to simultaneously hold office abroad, but nevertheless he readily did so and won. The Transvaal volksraad attempted to side-step the constitutional problems surrounding this by granting Pretorius half a year's leave, hoping a solution might come about during this time, and the President duly left for Bloemfontein, appointing Johannes Hermanus Grobler to be Acting President in his absence. Pretorius was sworn in as President of the Free State on 8 February 1860; he sent a deputation to Pretoria to negotiate union the next day.[62]
Stephanus Schoeman, a fierce opponent of Kruger during the 1860s
Kruger and others in the Transvaal government disliked Pretorius's unconstitutional dual presidency, and worried that Britain might declare the Sand River and Orange River Conventions void if the republics joined.[62] Pretorius was told by the Transvaal volksraad on 10 September 1860 to choose between his two posts—to the surprise of both supporters and detractors he resigned as President of the Transvaal and continued in the Free State.[62] After Schoeman unsuccessfully attempted to forcibly supplant Grobler as Acting President, Kruger persuaded him to submit to a volksraad hearing, where Schoeman was censured and relieved of his post. Willem Cornelis Janse van Rensburg was appointed Acting President while a new election was organised for October 1862. Having returned home, Kruger was surprised to receive a message urgently requesting his presence in the capital, the volksraad having recommended him as a suitable candidate; he replied that he was pleased to be summoned but his membership in the Dopper Church meant he could not enter politics. Van Rensburg promptly had legislation passed to give equal political rights to members of all Reformed denominations.[63]
Kruger, photographed as Commandant-General of the South African Republic, c. 1865. The loss of his left thumb is clearly visible.
Schoeman mustered a commando at Potchefstroom, but was routed by Kruger on the night of 9 October 1862. After Schoeman returned with a larger force Kruger and Pretorius held negotiations where it was agreed to hold a special court on the disturbances in January 1863, and soon thereafter fresh elections for President and Commandant-General.[64] Schoeman was found guilty of rebellion against the state and banished. In May the election results were announced—Van Rensburg became President, with Kruger as Commandant-General. Both expressed disappointment at the low turnout and resolved to hold another set of elections. Van Rensburg's opponent this time was Pretorius, who had resigned his office in the Orange Free State and returned to the Transvaal. Turnout was higher and on 12 October the volksraad announced another Van Rensburg victory. Kruger was returned as Commandant-General with a large majority.[65] The civil war ended with Kruger's victory over Jan Viljoen's commando, raised in support of Pretorius and Schoeman, at the Crocodile River on 5 January 1864. Elections were held yet again, and this time Pretorius defeated Van Rensburg. Kruger was re-elected as Commandant-General with over two-thirds of the vote.[66]
The civil war had led to an economic collapse in the Transvaal, weakening the government's ability to back up its professed authority and sovereignty over the local chiefdoms,[16] though Lydenburg and Utrecht did now accept the central administration.[67] By 1865 tensions had risen with the Zulus to the east and war had broken out again between the Orange Free State and the Basotho. Pretorius and Kruger led a commando of about 1,000 men south to help the Free State. The Basotho were defeated and Moshoeshoe ceded some of his territory, but President Johannes Brand of the Free State decided not to give any of the conquered land to the Transvaal burghers. The Transvaal men were scandalised and returned home en masse, despite Kruger's attempts to maintain discipline.[68] The following February, after a meeting of the executive council in Potchefstroom, Kruger capsized his cart during the journey home and broke his left leg. On one leg he righted the cart and continued the rest of the way. This injury incapacitated him for the next nine months, and his left leg was thereafter slightly shorter than his right.[68]
President Thomas François Burgers, whose election dismayed Kruger
In 1867, Pretoria sent Kruger to restore law and order in Zoutpansberg. He had around 500 men but very low reserves of ammunition, and discipline in the ranks was poor. On reaching Schoemansdal, which was under threat by the chief Katlakter, Kruger and his officers resolved that holding the town was impossible and ordered a general evacuation, following which Katlakter razed the town. The loss of Schoemansdal, once a prosperous settlement by Boer standards, was considered a great humiliation by many burghers. The Transvaal government formally exonerated Kruger over the matter, ruling that he had been forced to evacuate Schoemansdal by factors beyond his control, but some still argued that he had given the town up too readily.[69] Peace returned to Zoutpansberg in 1869, following the intervention of the republic's Swazi allies.[16]
Pretorius stepped down as President in November 1871. In the 1872 election Kruger's preferred candidate, William Robinson, was decisively defeated by the Reverend Thomas François Burgers, a church minister from the Cape who was noted for his eloquent preaching but controversial for some because of his liberal interpretation of the scriptures. He did not believe in the Devil, for example.[70][n 5] 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.[70] He particularly disliked Burgers's new education law, which restricted children's religious instruction to outside school hours—in Kruger's view an affront to God.[71] This, coupled with the sickness of Gezina and their children with malaria, caused Kruger to lose interest in his office. In May 1873 he requested an honourable discharge from his post, which Burgers promptly granted. The office of Commandant-General was abolished the following week. Kruger moved his main residence to Boekenhoutfontein, near Rustenburg, and for a time absented himself from public affairs.[70][n 6]
Diamonds and deputations[edit]
Under Burgers[edit]
A map of South Africa in 1878, showing the Transvaal or South African Republic (purple), the Orange Free State (yellow), the Cape Colony (red), Natal (orange) and neighbouring territories
Burgers busied himself attempting to modernise the South African Republic along European lines, hoping to set in motion a process that would lead to a united, independent South Africa. Finding Boer officialdom inadequate, he imported ministers and civil servants en masse from the Netherlands. His ascent to the presidency came shortly after the realisation that the Boer republics might stand on land of immense mineral wealth. Diamonds had been discovered in Griqua territory just north of the Orange River on the western edge of the Free State, arousing the interest of Britain and other countries; mostly British settlers, referred to by the Boers as uitlanders ("out-landers"), were flooding into the region.[72] Britain began to pursue federation (at that time often referred to as "confederation") of the Boer republics with the Cape and Natal and in 1873, over Boer objections, annexed the area surrounding the huge diamond mine at Kimberley, dubbing it Griqualand West.[73][n 7]
Some Doppers preferred to embark on another trek, north-west across the Kalahari Desert towards Angola, rather than live under Burgers. This became the Dorsland Trek of 1874. The emigrants asked Kruger to lead the way, but he refused to take part. In September 1874, following a long delay calling the volksraad due to sickness, Burgers proposed a railway to Delagoa Bay and said he would go to Europe to raise the necessary funds. By the time he left in February 1875 opposition pressure had brought about an amendment to bring religious instruction back into school hours, and Kruger had been restored to the executive council.[72]
In 1876 hostilities broke out with the Bapedi people under Sekhukhune. Burgers had told the Acting President Piet Joubert not to fight a war in his absence, so the Transvaal government did little to combat the Bapedi raids. On his return Burgers resolved to send a commando against Sekhukhune; he called on Kruger to lead the column, but much to his surprise the erstwhile Commandant-General refused. Burgers unsuccessfully asked Joubert to head the commando, then approached Kruger twice more, but to no avail. Kruger was convinced that God would cause any military expedition organised by Burgers to fail—particularly if the President rode with the commando, which he was determined to do.[75] "I cannot lead the commando if you come", Kruger said, "for, with your merry evenings in laager and your Sunday dances, the enemy will even shoot me behind the wall; for God's blessing will not rest on your expedition."[76] Burgers, who had no military experience, led the commando himself after several other prospective generals rebuffed him. After being routed by Sekhukhune, he hired a group of "volunteers" under the German Conrad von Schlickmann to defend the country, paying for this by levying a special tax. The war ended, but Burgers became extremely unpopular among his electorate.[75]
With Burgers due to stand for re-election the following year, Kruger became a popular alternative candidate, but he resolved to stand by the President after Burgers privately assured him that he would do his utmost to defend the South African Republic's independence. The towns of the Transvaal were becoming increasingly British in character as immigration and trade gathered apace, and the idea of annexation was gaining support both locally and in the British government. In late 1876 Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary under Benjamin Disraeli, gave Sir Theophilus Shepstone of Natal a special commission to confer with the South African Republic's government and, if he saw fit, annex the country.[77]
British annexation; first and second deputations[edit]
Shepstone arrived in Pretoria in January 1877. He outlined criticisms expressed by Carnarvon regarding the Transvaal government and expressed support for federation. After a joint commission of inquiry on the British grievances—Kruger and the State Attorney E J P Jorissen refuted most of Carnarvon's allegations, one of which was that Pretoria tolerated slavery—Shepstone stayed in the capital, openly telling Burgers he had come to the Transvaal to annex it. Hoping to stop the annexation by reforming the government, Burgers introduced scores of bills and revisions to a bewildered volksraad, which opposed them all but then passed them, heightening the general mood of discord and confusion. One of these reforms appointed Kruger to the new post of Vice-President.[78]
The impression of Kruger garnered by the British envoys in Pretoria during early 1877 was one of an unspeakably vulgar, bigoted backveld peasant.[79] Regarding his austere, weather-beaten face, greying hair and simple Dopper dress of a short-cut black jacket, baggy trousers and a black top hat, they considered him extremely ugly. Furthermore, they found his personal habits, such as copious spitting, revolting. Shepstone's legal adviser William Morcom was one of the first British officials to write about Kruger: calling him "gigantically horrible", he recounted a public luncheon at which Kruger dined with a dirty pipe protruding from his pocket and such greasy hair that he spent part of the meal combing it.[80] According to Martin Meredith, Kruger's unsightliness was mentioned in British reports "so often that it became shorthand for his whole personality, and indeed, his objectives".[80] They did not consider him a major threat to British ambitions.[80]
E J P Jorissen, Kruger's colleague in the first deputation to London, pictured in 1897
Shepstone had the Transvaal's annexation as a British territory formally announced in Pretoria on 12 April 1877. Burgers resigned and returned to the Cape to live in retirement—his last act as President was to announce the government's decision to send a deputation, headed by Kruger and Jorissen, to London to make an official protest. He exhorted the burghers not to attempt any kind of resistance to the British until these diplomats returned.[81] Jorissen, one of the Dutch officials recently imported by Burgers, was included at Kruger's request because of his wide knowledge of European languages (Kruger was not confident in his English); a second Dutchman, Willem Eduard Bok, accompanied them as secretary.[82] They left in May 1877, travelling first to Bloemfontein to confer with the Free State government, then on to Kimberley and Worcester, where the 51-year-old Kruger boarded a train for the first time in his life. In Cape Town, where his German ancestor had landed 164 years before, he had his first sight of the sea.[83]
During the voyage to England Kruger encountered a 19-year-old law student from the Orange Free State named Martinus Theunis Steyn.[84] Jorissen and Bok marvelled at Kruger, in their eyes more suited to the 17th century than his own time. One night, when 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.[84] At the Colonial Office in Whitehall, Carnarvon and Kruger's own colleagues were astonished when, speaking through interpreters, he rose to what Meintjes calls "remarkable heights of oratory", averring that the annexation breached the Sand River Convention and went against the popular will in the Transvaal.[85] His 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".[85] Carnarvon dismissed Kruger's idea of a general plebiscite and concluded that British rule would remain.[85]
Kruger did not meet Queen Victoria, though such an audience is described in numerous anecdotes, depicted in films and sometimes reported as fact.[n 8] Between August and October he visited the Netherlands and Germany, where he aroused little general public interest, but made a potent impact in the Reformed congregations he visited. After a brief sojourn back in England he returned to South Africa and arrived at Boekenhoutfontein shortly before Christmas 1877.[86] He found a national awakening occurring. "Paradoxically", John Laband writes, "British occupation seemed to be fomenting a sense of national consciousness in the Transvaal which years of fractious independence had failed to elicit."[87] When Kruger visited Pretoria in January 1878 he was greeted by a procession that took him to a mass gathering in Church Square. Attempting to stir up the crowd, Kruger said that since Carnarvon had told him the annexation would not be revoked he could not see what more they could do. The gambit worked; burghers began shouting that they would sooner die fighting for their country than submit to the British.[88]
Piet Joubert, Kruger's associate in the second deputation
According to Meintjes, Kruger was still not particularly anti-British; he thought the British had made a mistake and would rectify the situation if this could be proven to them.[88] After conducting a poll through the former republican infrastructure—587 signed in favour of the annexation, 6,591 against—he organised a second deputation to London, made up of himself and Joubert with Bok again serving as secretary.[89] The envoys met the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, Sir Bartle Frere,[89] and arrived in London on 29 June 1878 to find a censorious letter from Shepstone waiting for them, along with a communication that since Kruger was agitating against the government he had been dismissed from the executive council.[n 9]
Carnarvon had been succeeded as Colonial Secretary by Sir Michael Hicks Beach, who received the deputation coldly. After Bok gave a lengthy opening declaration, Hicks Beach muttered: "Have you ever heard of an instance where the British Lion has ever given up anything on which he had set his paw?" Kruger retorted: "Yes. The Orange Free State."[91] The deputation remained in London for some weeks thereafter, communicating by correspondence with Hicks Beach, who eventually reaffirmed Carnarvon's decision that the annexation would not be revoked. The deputation attempted to rally support for their cause, as the first mission had done, but with the Eastern Question dominating the political scene few were interested.[91] One English sympathiser gave Kruger a gold ring, bearing the inscription: "Take courage, your cause is just and must triumph in the end."[74] Kruger was touched and wore it for the rest of his life.[74]
Like its predecessor, the second deputation went on from England to continental Europe, visiting the Netherlands, France and Germany.[92] In Paris, where the 1878 Exposition Universelle was in progress, Kruger saw a hot air balloon for the first time and readily took part in an ascent to view the city from above. "High up in mid-air", he recalled, "I jestingly asked the aeronaut, as we had gone so far, to take me all the way home."[93] The pilot asked who Kruger was and, on their descent, gave him a medal "to remind me of my journey through the air".[93] Meanwhile, the deputation composed a long reply to Hicks Beach, which was published as an open letter in the British press soon before they sailed for home on 24 October 1878. Unless the annexation were revoked, the letter stated, the Transvaal Boers would not co-operate regarding federation.[94]
Drive for independence[edit]
Kruger and Joubert returned home to find the British and the Zulus were close to war. Shepstone had supported the Zulus in a border dispute with the South African Republic, but then, after annexing the Transvaal, changed his mind and endorsed the Boer claim.[95] Meeting Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford at Pietermaritzburg on 28 November 1878, Kruger happily gave tactical guidance for the British campaign—he advised the use of Boer tactics, making laagers at every stop and constantly scouting ahead—but refused Frere's request that he accompany one of the British columns, saying he would only help if assurances were made regarding the Transvaal.[n 10] Chelmsford thought the campaign would be a "promenade" and did not take Kruger's advice.[96] Soon after he entered Zululand in January 1879, starting the Anglo-Zulu War, his unlaagered central column was surprised by Cetshwayo's Zulus at Isandlwana and almost totally destroyed.[96]
Sir Garnet Wolseley, who headed the British Transvaal administration from 1879 to 1880
The war in Zululand effectively ended on 4 July 1879 with Chelmsford's decisive victory at the Zulu capital Ulundi. Around the same time the British appointed a new Governor and High Commissioner for the Transvaal and Natal, Sir Garnet Wolseley, who introduced a new Transvaal constitution giving the Boers a limited degree of self-government.[97] Wolseley blunted the Zulu military threat by splitting the kingdom into 13 chiefdoms, and crushed Sekhukhune and the Bapedi during late 1879. However, he had little success in winning the Boers over to the idea of federation—indeed 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.[98] Most Boers refused to co-operate with Wolseley's new order;[87] Kruger declined a seat in the new executive council.[99]
At Wonderfontein on 15 December 1879, 6,000 burghers, many of them bearing the republic's vierkleur ("four-colour") flag, voted to pursue a restored, independent republic.[100] Pretorius and Bok were imprisoned on charges of high treason when they took this news to Wolseley and Sir Owen Lanyon (who had replaced Shepstone),[100] prompting many burghers to consider rising up there and then—Kruger persuaded them not to, saying this was premature.[87] Pretorius and Bok were swiftly released after Jorissen telegraphed the British Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone, who had met Kruger's first deputation in London and had since condemned the annexation as unjust during his Midlothian campaign.[101]
In early 1880 Hicks Beach forwarded a scheme for South African federation to the Cape Parliament.[102] 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.[102] In Cape Town, Paarl and elsewhere Kruger lobbied vigorously against the annexation and won much sympathy.[n 11] Davenport suggests that this contributed to the federation plan's withdrawal, which in turn weakened the British resolve to keep the Transvaal.[16] Kruger and Joubert wrote to Gladstone asking him to restore the South African Republic's independence, but to their astonishment the Prime Minister replied in June 1880 that he feared withdrawing from the Transvaal might lead to chaos across South Africa. 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.[104] Meanwhile, Wolseley was replaced as Governor and High Commissioner by Sir George Pomeroy Colley.[104]
Piet Cronjé, pictured later in life
In the last months of 1880, Lanyon began to pursue tax payments from burghers who were in arrears.[105] Piet Cronjé, a farmer in the Potchefstroom district, gave his local landdrost a written statement that the burghers would pay taxes to their "legal government"—that of the South African Republic—but not to the British "usurper" administration. Kruger and Cronjé knew each other; the writer Johan Frederik van Oordt, who was acquainted with them both, suggested that Kruger may have had a hand in this and what followed.[105] In November, when the British authorities in Potchefstroom were about to auction off a burgher's wagon that had been seized amid a tax dispute, Cronjé and a group of armed Boers intervened, overcame the presiding officers and reclaimed the wagon.[106] On hearing of this from Cronjé, Kruger told Joubert: "I can no longer restrain the people, and the English government is entirely responsible for the present state of things."[107]
Starting on 8 December 1880 at Paardekraal, a farm to the south-west of Pretoria, 10,000 Boers congregated—the largest recorded meeting of white people in South Africa up to that time. "I stand here before you", Kruger declared, "called by the people. In the voice of the people I have heard the voice of God, the King of Nations, and I obey!"[107] He announced the fulfilment of the decision taken at Wonderfontein the previous year to restore the South African Republic government and volksraad, which as the Vice-President of the last independent administration he considered his responsibility.[108] To help him in this he turned to Jorissen and Bok, who respectively became State Attorney and State Secretary, and Pretorius and Joubert, who the reconstituted volksraad elected to an executive triumvirate along with Kruger.[108] The assembly approved a proclamation announcing the restoration of the South African Republic.[109]
Triumvirate[edit]
Transvaal rebellion: the First Boer War[edit]
Main article: First Boer War
Kruger, photographed c. 1880
At Kruger's suggestion Joubert was elected Commandant-General of the restored republic, though he had little military experience and protested he was not suited to the position.[109] The provisional government set up a temporary capital at Heidelberg, a strategically placed town on the main road from Natal, and sent a copy of the proclamation to Lanyon along with a written demand that he surrender the government offices in Pretoria.[110] Lanyon refused and mobilised the British garrison.[110]
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.[111] The first major clash, a successful Boer ambush, took place on 20 December 1880 at Bronkhorstspruit.[112] By the turn of the year the Transvaalers had all six British garrison outposts, including that in Pretoria, under siege.[113] Colley assembled a field force in Natal, summoned reinforcements from India, and advanced towards the Transvaal.[114] Joubert moved about 2,000 Boers south to the Drakensberg and repulsed Colley at Laing's Nek on 28 January 1881.[115] After Colley retreated to Schuinshoogte, near Ingogo, he was attacked by Joubert's second-in-command Nicolaas Smit on 8 February and again defeated.[116]
Understanding that they could not hold out against the might of the British Empire indefinitely, Kruger hoped for a solution at the earliest opportunity.[117] The triumvirate wrote to Colley on 12 February that they were prepared to submit to a royal commission. Colley liaised by telegraph with Gladstone's Colonial Secretary Lord Kimberley, then wrote to Kruger on 21 February that if the Boers stopped fighting he would cease hostilities and send commissioners for talks. Kruger received this letter on 28 February and readily accepted, but by now it was too late. Colley had been killed at the Battle of Majuba Hill the day before, another decisive victory for the Boers under Smit.[118] This progressive humiliation of the Imperial forces in South Africa by a ragtag collection of farmers, to paraphrase Meintjes and the historian Ian Castle, stunned the Western world.[118]
Colley's death horrified Kruger, who feared it might jeopardise the peace process.[119] His reply to Colley's letter was delivered to his successor Sir Evelyn Wood on 7 March 1881, a day after Wood and Joubert had agreed to an eight-day truce.[120] Kruger was outraged to learn of this armistice, which in his view only gave the British opportunity to strengthen their forces—he expected a British attempt to avenge Majuba, which indeed Wood and others wanted[121]—but Gladstone wanted peace, and Wood was instructed to proceed with talks.[120] Negotiations began on 16 March. The British offered amnesty for the Boer leaders, retrocession of the Transvaal under British suzerainty, a British resident in Pretoria and British control over foreign affairs.[121] Kruger pressed on how the British intended to withdraw and what exactly "suzerainty" meant.[122] Brand arrived to mediate on 20 March and the following day agreement was reached; the British committed to formally restore the republic within six months.[n 12] The final treaty was concluded on 23 March 1881.[123]
Pretoria Convention[edit]
Kruger presented the treaty to the volksraad on the triumvirate's behalf at Heidelberg on 15 April 1881. "With a feeling of gratitude to the God of our fathers", he said, "who has been near us in battle and danger, it is to me an unspeakable privilege to lay before you the treaty ... I consider it my duty plainly to declare before you and the whole world, that our respect for Her Majesty the Queen of England, for the government of Her Majesty, and for the English Nation, has never been greater than at this time, when we are enabled to show you a proof of England's noble and magnanimous love for right and justice."[124] This statement was to be ignored by many writers,[124] but Manfred Nathan, one of Kruger's biographers, stresses it as one of his "most notable utterances".[124] Kruger reaffirmed his faith in the royal commission of Wood, Sir Hercules Robinson and the Cape's Chief Justice Sir Henry de Villiers, who convened for the first time in Natal on 30 April, Brand with them as an adviser. The commissioners held numerous sessions in Pretoria over the following months with little input from Kruger, who was bedridden with pneumonia.[125]
Kruger was largely happy with the terms under which the republic would regain its sovereignty, but two points offended him. The first of these was that the British would recognise them as the "Transvaal Republic" and not the South African Republic; the second was that it was still not clear to him what British "suzerainty" was. The commission, in which De Villiers emerged as the dominant figure, defined it primarily as British purview over the Transvaal's external affairs. The final Pretoria Convention was signed on 3 August 1881 by Joubert, Pretorius and the members of the royal commission. Kruger was absent due to his illness, but he did attend the official retrocession five days later in Church Square. Kruger felt well enough to give only a short speech, after which Pretorius addressed the crowd and the vierkleur was raised.[126]
Kruger House, the family home in Pretoria (2008 photograph)
By now aged nearly 56, Kruger resolved that he could no longer travel constantly between Boekenhoutfontein and the capital, and in August 1881 he and Gezina moved to Church Street, Pretoria, from where he could easily walk to the government offices on Church Square. Also around this time he shaved off his moustache and most of his facial hair, leaving the chinstrap beard he kept thereafter. His and Gezina's permanent home on Church Street, what is now called Kruger House, would be completed in 1884.[127]
A direct consequence of the end of British rule was an economic slump; the Transvaal government almost immediately found itself again on the verge of bankruptcy.[128] The triumvirate spent two months discussing the terms of the Pretoria Convention with the new volksraad—approve it or go back to Laing's Nek, said Kruger[128]—before it was finally ratified on 25 October 1881. During this time Kruger introduced tax reforms, announced the triumvirate's decision to grant industrial monopolies to raise money and appointed the Reverend S J du Toit to be Superintendent of Education.[128] To counteract the influx of uitlanders, the residency qualification to vote was raised from a year to five years.[129] In July 1882 the volksraad decided to elect a new President the following year; Joubert and Kruger emerged as candidates. Kruger campaigned on the idea of an administration in which "God's Word would be my rule of conduct"—as premier he would prioritise agriculture, industry and education, revive Burgers's Delagoa Bay railway scheme, introduce an immigration policy that would "prevent the Boer nationality from being stifled", and pursue a cordial stance towards Britain and "obedient native races in their appointed districts".[130] He defeated Joubert by 3,431 votes to 1,171,[130] and was inaugurated as President on 9 May 1883.[131]
President[edit]
Third deputation; London Convention[edit]
Lord Derby, with whom the third deputation concluded the London Convention
Kruger became President soon after the discovery of gold near what was to become Barberton, which prompted a fresh influx of uitlander diggers. "This gold is still going to soak our country in blood", said Joubert—a prediction he would repeat many times over the coming years.[132] Joubert remained Commandant-General under Kruger and also became Vice-President.[132] A convoluted situation developed on the Transvaal's western frontier, where burghers had crossed the border defined in the Pretoria Convention and formed two new Boer republics, Stellaland and Goshen, on former Tswana territory in 1882.[133] These states were tiny but they occupied land of potentially huge importance—the main road from the Cape to Matabeleland and the African interior.[133]
Kruger and the volksraad resolved to send yet another deputation to London to renegotiate the Pretoria Convention and settle the western border issue. The third deputation, comprising Kruger, Smit and Du Toit with Jan Eloff as secretary, left the Transvaal in August 1883 and sailed from Cape Town two months later. Kruger spent part of the voyage to Britain studying the English language with a Bible printed in Dutch and English side by side. Talks with the new Colonial Secretary Lord Derby and Robinson progressed smoothly—apart from an incident when Kruger, thinking himself insulted, nearly punched Robinson—and on 27 February 1884 the London Convention, superseding that of Pretoria, was concluded. Britain ended its suzerainty, reduced the Transvaal's national debt and once again recognised the country as the South African Republic. The western border question remained unresolved, but Kruger still considered the convention a triumph.[134][n 13]
Bismarck, one of the many European leaders Kruger met in 1884
The deputation went on from London to mainland Europe, where according to Meintjes their reception "was beyond all expectations ... one banquet followed the other, the stand of a handful of Boers against the British Empire having caused a sensation".[135] During a grand tour Kruger met William III of the Netherlands and his son the Prince of Orange, Leopold II of Belgium, President Jules Grévy of France, Alfonso XII of Spain, Luís I of Portugal, and in Germany Kaiser Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. His public appearances were attended by tens of thousands.[135] The deputation discussed the bilateral aspects of the proposed Delagoa Bay railway with the Portuguese, and in the Netherlands laid the groundwork for the Netherlands-South African Railway Company, which would build and operate it.[135] Kruger now held that Burgers had been "far ahead of his time"[135]—while reviving his predecessor's railway scheme, he also brought back the policy of importing officials from the Netherlands, in his view a means to strengthen the Boer identity and keep the Transvaal "Dutch". Willem Johannes Leyds, a 24-year-old Dutchman, returned to South Africa with the deputation as the republic's new State Attorney.[135]
By late 1884 the Scramble for Africa was well underway. Competition on the western frontier rose after Germany annexed South-West Africa; at the behest of the mining magnate and Cape MP Cecil Rhodes, Britain proclaimed a protectorate over Bechuanaland, including the Stellaland–Goshen corridor. While Joubert was in negotiations with Rhodes, Du Toit had Kruger proclaim Transvaal protection over the corridor on 18 September 1884. Joubert was outraged, as was Kruger when on 3 October Du Toit unilaterally hoisted the vierkleur in Goshen. Realising the implications of this—it clearly violated the London Convention—Kruger had the flag stricken immediately and retracted his proclamation of 18 September. Meeting Rhodes personally in late January 1885, Kruger insisted the "flag incident" had taken place without his consent and conceded the corridor to the British.[136]
Gold rush; burghers and uitlanders[edit]
Gold mining at Johannesburg in 1893
In July 1886 an Australian prospector reported to the Transvaal government his discovery of an unprecedented gold reef between Pretoria and Heidelberg. The South African Republic's formal proclamation of this two months later prompted the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the founding of Johannesburg, which within a few years was the largest city in southern Africa, populated almost entirely by uitlanders.[137] The economic landscape of the region was transformed overnight—the South African Republic went from the verge of bankruptcy in 1886 to a fiscal output equal to the Cape Colony's the following year.[138] The British became anxious to link Johannesburg to the Cape and Natal by rail, but Kruger thought this might have undesirable geopolitical and economic implications if done prematurely and gave the Delagoa Bay line first priority.[137]
The President was by this time widely nicknamed Oom Paul ("Uncle Paul"), both among the Boers and the uitlanders, who variously used it out of affection or contempt.[139] He was perceived by some as a despot after he compromised the independence of the republic's judiciary to help his friend Alois Hugo Nellmapius, who had been found guilty of embezzlement—Kruger rejected the court's judgement and granted Nellmapius a full pardon, an act Nathan calls "completely indefensible".[140] 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.[141]
President Francis William Reitz of the Orange Free State
Much of Kruger's efforts over the next year were dedicated to attempts to acquire a sea outlet for the South African Republic. In July Pieter Grobler, who had just negotiated a treaty with King Lobengula of Matabeleland, was killed by Ngwato warriors on his way home; Kruger alleged that this was the work of "Cecil Rhodes and his clique".[141] Kruger despised Rhodes, considering him corrupt and immoral—in his memoirs he called him "capital incarnate" and "the curse of South Africa".[142] According to the editor of Kruger's memoirs, Rhodes attempted to win him as an ally by suggesting "we simply take" Delagoa Bay from Portugal; Kruger was appalled.[141] Failing to make headway in talks with the Portuguese, Kruger switched his attention to Kosi Bay, next to Swaziland, in late 1888.[141]
In early 1889 Kruger and the new Orange Free State President Francis William Reitz enacted a common-defence pact and a customs treaty waiving most import duties.[143] The same year the volksraad passed constitutional revisions to remove the Nederduits Hervormde Kerk's official status, open the legislature to members of other denominations and make all churches "sovereign in their own spheres".[16] 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.[144] No university was built.[n 14]
Kruger was obsessed with the South African Republic's independence,[146] the retention of which he perceived as under threat if the Transvaal became too British in character. The uitlanders created an acute predicament in his mind. Taxation on their mining provided almost all of the republic's revenues, but they had very limited civic representation and almost no say in the running of the country. Though the English language was dominant in the mining areas, only Dutch remained official.[147] Kruger expressed great satisfaction at the new arrivals' industry and respect for the state's laws,[139] 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.[147] Agonising over how he "could meet the wishes of the new population for representation, without injuring the republic or prejudicing the interests of the older burghers",[143] he thought he had solved the problem in 1889 when he tabled a "second volksraad" in which the uitlanders would have certain matters devolved to them.[143] Most deemed this inadequate, and even Kruger's own supporters were unenthusiastic.[143]
Rhodes and other Brit
These images were taken in 1976, with a Nikon F camera using a Nikkor-H 50mm f2.0 lens and on Kodak Tri-X film rated at ASA 400 and processed in Agfa Rodinal 1:50. The little town of Pilgrim’s Rest lies in the hills some 100 kms from Nelspruit in Mpumalanga province of South Africa. It was established in 1873 when alluvial gold was discovered in the surrounding hills and became the second gold rush location after the Witwatersrand. It was the location of the Emergency Mint during the second Anglo-Boer war, where the now extremely rare Veld Pond was struck. Very much the same as any frontier town, it remained pretty much un-changed until it was declared a National Monument in 1986. When these images were taken, it was still a functioning town with a hotel, general store and livery yard. The permanent population was around 150.
The Wits Theatre Complex, covered in ivy here, is a performing arts complex in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. It is part of the University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits, although it also caters for professional companies, dance studios and schools.
The Wits Theatre Complex opened in July 1983. Plans for the construction of the theatre complex were first announced ten years before that; in the interim, money for construction had been raised from public and private sources. It is built in High Modernist style.
Looking south towards the village of Magaliesburg, South Africa into the New Thorndale valley and at the Witwatersrand Hills.
boekenhout, country house of president paul kruger, museum near rustenburg, western transvaal. pix 1997
Paul Kruger
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This article is about the South African politician. For others of the same name, see Paul Kruger (disambiguation).
Paul Kruger
Kruger, photographed in 1900
3rd President of the South African Republic
In office
9 May 1883 – 10 September 1900
Preceded byTriumvirate
Succeeded bySchalk Willem Burger (acting)
Member of the Triumvirate
In office
8 August 1881 – 9 May 1883
Serving with M W Pretorius and Piet Joubert
Preceded byT F Burgers (President, 1872–77)
Personal details
BornStephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger
10 October 1825
Bulhoek, Steynsburg, Cape Colony
Died14 July 1904 (aged 78)
Clarens, Vaud, Switzerland
Resting placeHeroes' Acre, Pretoria, South Africa
Spouse(s)Maria (née du Plessis)
* (1842–46, her death)
* Gezina (née du Plessis)
* (1847–1901, her death)
Children17
Signature
Stephanus Johannes Paulus "Paul" Kruger (/ˈkruːɡər/; Dutch: [ˈkryɣər]; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904) was one of the dominant political and military figures in 19th-century South Africa, and President of the South African Republic (or Transvaal) from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed Oom Paul ("Uncle Paul"), he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom, and remains a controversial and divisive figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero, while critics view him as the obstinate guardian of an unjust cause.
Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible and, through his interpretations of scripture, believed the Earth was flat. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South African Republic, leading its commandos and resolving disputes between the rival Boer leaders and factions. In 1863 he was elected Commandant-General, a post he held for a decade before he resigned soon after the election of President Thomas François Burgers.
Kruger was appointed Vice-President in March 1877, shortly before the South African Republic was annexed by Britain as the Transvaal.[1] Over the next three years he headed two deputations to London to try to have this overturned and became the leading figure in the movement to restore the South African Republic's independence, culminating in the Boers' victory in the First Boer War of 1880–81. Kruger served until 1883 as a member of an executive triumvirate, then was elected President. In 1884 he headed a third deputation that brokered the London Convention, under which Britain recognised the South African Republic as a fully independent state.
Following the influx of thousands of predominantly British settlers with the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886, "uitlanders" (out-landers) provided almost all of the South African Republic's tax revenues but lacked civic representation; Boer burghers retained control of the government. The uitlander problem and the associated tensions with Britain dominated Kruger's attention for the rest of his presidency, to which he was re-elected in 1888, 1893 and 1898, and led to the Jameson Raid of 1895–96 and ultimately the Second Boer War. 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. After he died in Switzerland at the age of 78 in 1904, his body was returned to South Africa for a state funeral, and buried in the Heroes' Acre in Pretoria.
Contents [hide]
* 1Early life1.1Family and childhood1.2Great Trek1.3Burgher1.4Field cornet2Commandant2.1Mediator2.2Forming the "Dopper Church"2.3Civil war; Commandant-General3Diamonds and deputations3.1Under Burgers3.2British annexation; first and second deputations3.3Drive for independence4Triumvirate4.1Transvaal rebellion: the First Boer War4.2Pretoria Convention5President5.1Third deputation; London Convention5.2Gold rush; burghers and uitlanders5.3Early 1890s5.4Rising tensions: raiders and reformers5.5Resurgence5.6Road to war5.7Second Boer War6Exile and death7Appraisal and legacy8Notes and references9
Further reading
Early life[edit]
Family and childhood[edit]
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 Elsie (Elisa; née Steyn).[2] The family was of Dutch-speaking Afrikaner or Boer background, of German, French Huguenot and Dutch stock.[2][3] His paternal ancestors had been in South Africa since 1713, when Jacob Krüger, from Berlin, arrived in Cape Town as a 17-year-old soldier in the Dutch East India Company's service. Jacob's children dropped the umlaut from the family name, a common practice among South Africans of German origin, and over the following generations Kruger's paternal forebears moved into the interior.[2] His mother's family, the Steyns, had lived in South Africa since 1668 and were relatively affluent and cultured by Cape standards.[2] Kruger's great-great-uncle Hermanus Steyn had been President of the self-declared Republic of Swellendam that revolted against Company rule in 1795.[4]
Bulhoek, 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. The Krugers and Steyns were acquainted and Casper occasionally visited Bulhoek as a young man. He and Elsie married in Cradock in 1820, when he was 18 and she was 14.[n 1] A girl, Sophia, and a boy, Douw Gerbrand, were born before Paul's arrival in 1825.[2] The child's first two names, Stephanus Johannes, were chosen after his paternal grandfather, but rarely used—the provenance of the third name Paulus "was to remain rather a mystery", Johannes Meintjes wrote in his 1974 biography of Kruger, "and yet the boy was always called Paul."[2]
Paul Kruger was baptised at Cradock on 19 March 1826,[2] and soon thereafter his parents acquired a farm of their own to the north-west at Vaalbank, near Colesberg, in the remote north-east of the Cape Colony.[6] His mother died when he was eight; Casper soon remarried and had more children with his second wife, Heiletje (née du Plessis).[7] Beyond reading and writing, which he learned from relatives, Kruger's only education was three months under a travelling tutor, Tielman Roos, and Calvinist religious instruction from his father.[7] In adulthood Kruger would claim to have never read any book apart from the Bible.[8]
Great Trek[edit]
Map showing the routes taken by the Voortrekkers during the Great Trek of the 1830s and 1840s
In 1835 Casper Kruger, his father and his brothers Gert and Theuns moved their families east and set up farms near the Caledon River, on the Cape Colony's far north-eastern frontier. The Cape had been under British sovereignty since 1814, when the Netherlands ceded it to Britain with the Convention of London. Boer discontent with aspects of British rule, such as the institution of English as the sole official language and the abolition of slavery in 1834, led to the Great Trek—a mass migration by Dutch-speaking "Voortrekkers" north-east from the Cape to the land over the Orange and Vaal Rivers.[9] While many Boers had been voicing displeasure with the British Cape administration for some time, the Krugers were comparatively content—they had always co-operated with the British and the abolition of slavery was irrelevant to them as they did not own slaves. They had given little thought to the idea of leaving the Cape.[10]
A group of emigrants under Hendrik Potgieter passed through the Krugers' Caledon encampments in early 1836. Potgieter envisioned a Boer republic with himself in a prominent role; he sufficiently impressed the Krugers that they joined his party of Voortrekkers.[11] 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. At stops along the journey classrooms were improvised from reeds and grass and the more educated emigrants took turns in teaching.[12]
Voortrekkers; a 1909 depiction
The Voortrekkers faced competition for the area they were entering from Mzilikazi and his Ndebele (or Matabele) people, a recent offshoot from the Zulu Kingdom to the south-east. On 16 October 1836 the 11-year-old Kruger took part in the Battle of Vegkop, where Potgieter's laager, a circle of wagons chained together, was unsuccessfully attacked by Mzilikazi and around 4,000–6,000 Matabele warriors.[13][14] Kruger and the other small children assisted in tasks such as bullet-casting while the women and larger boys helped the fighting men, of whom there were about 40. Kruger could recall the battle in great detail and give a vivid account well into old age.[14]
During 1837 and 1838 Kruger's family was part of the Voortrekker group under Potgieter that trekked further east into Natal. Here they met the American missionary Daniel Lindley, who gave young Paul much spiritual invigoration.[15] The Zulu King Dingane concluded a land treaty with Potgieter, but then promptly reconsidered and massacred first Piet Retief's party of settlers, then others at Weenen.[13] Kruger would recount 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"—but "God heard our prayer", he recalled, and "we followed them and shot them down as they fled, until more of them were dead than those of us they had killed in their attack ... I could shoot moderately well for we lived, so to speak, among the game."[16]
These developments impelled the Krugers' return to the highveld, where they took part in Potgieter's campaign that compelled Mzilikazi to move his people north, across the Limpopo River, to what became Matabeleland. Kruger and his father thereupon settled at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountains in the Transvaal.[13] Meanwhile, in Natal, Andries Pretorius defeated more than 10,000 of Dingane's Zulus at the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838, a date subsequently marked by the Boers as Dingaansdag ("Dingane's Day") or the Day of the Vow.[n 2]
Burgher[edit]
Boer tradition of the time dictated that men were entitled to choose two 6,000-acre (24 km2) farms—one for crops and one for grazing—upon becoming enfranchised burghers at the age of 16. Kruger set up his home at Waterkloof, near Rustenburg in the Magaliesberg area.[13] This concluded, he wasted little time in pursuing the hand of Maria du Plessis, the daughter of a fellow Voortrekker south of the Vaal; she was only 14 years old when they married in Potchefstroom in 1842.[19] The same year Kruger was elected a deputy field cornet—"a singular honour at seventeen", Meintjes comments.[20] This role combined the civilian duties of a local magistrate with a military rank equivalent to that of a junior commissioned officer.[21]
Kruger was already an accomplished frontiersman, horseman and guerrilla fighter.[13] In addition to his native Dutch he could speak basic English and several African languages, some fluently.[22] He had shot a lion for the first time while still a boy—in old age he recalled being 14, but Meintjes suggests he may have been as young as 11.[23] During his many hunting excursions he was nearly killed on several occasions.[13] In 1845, while he was hunting rhinoceros along the Steelpoort River, his four-pounder elephant gun exploded in his hands and blew off most of his left thumb.[24] Kruger wrapped the wound in a handkerchief and retreated to camp, where he treated it with turpentine. He refused calls to have the hand amputated by a doctor, and instead cut off the remains of the injured thumb himself with a pocketknife. When gangrenous marks appeared up to his shoulder, he placed the hand in the stomach of a freshly-killed goat, a traditional Boer remedy.[25] He considered this a success—"when it came to the turn of the second goat, my hand was already easier and the danger much less."[26] The wound took over half a year to heal, but he did not wait that long to start hunting again.[25]
Andries Pretorius, a great influence on the young Kruger
Britain annexed the Voortrekkers' short-lived Natalia Republic in 1843 as the Colony of Natal. Pretorius briefly led Boer resistance to this, but before long most of the Boers in Natal had trekked back north-west to the area around the Orange and Vaal Rivers. In 1845 Kruger was a member of Potgieter's expedition to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique to negotiate a frontier with Portugal; the Lebombo Mountains were settled upon as the border between Boer and Portuguese lands.[27] After Maria and their first child died of fever in January 1846,[28] Kruger married her cousin Gezina du Plessis, from the Colesberg area, in 1847. Their first child, Casper Jan Hendrik, was born on 22 December that year.[29]
Concerned by the exodus of so many whites from the Cape and Natal, and taking the view that they remained British subjects, the British Governor Sir Harry Smith in 1848 annexed the area between the Orange and Vaal rivers as the "Orange River Sovereignty". A Boer commando led by Pretorius against this was defeated by Smith at the Battle of Boomplaats. Pretorius also lived in the Magaliesberg mountains and often hosted the young Kruger, who greatly admired the elder man's resolve, sophistication and piety. A warm relationship developed.[30] "Kruger's political awareness can be dated from 1850", Meintjes writes, "and it was in no small measure given to him by Pretorius."[31] Like Pretorius, Kruger wanted to centralise the emigrants under a single authority and win British recognition for this as an independent state. This last point was not due to hostility to Britain—neither Pretorius nor Kruger was particularly anti-British—but because they perceived the emigrants' unity as under threat if the Cape administration continued to regard them as British subjects.[31]
The British resident in the Orange River area, Henry Douglas Warden, advised Smith in 1851 that he thought a compromise should be attempted with Pretorius. Smith sent representatives to meet him at the Sand River. Kruger, aged 26, accompanied Pretorius and on 17 January 1852 was present at the conclusion of the Sand River Convention,[32] under which Britain recognised "the Emigrant Farmers" in the Transvaal—the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek ("South African Republic"), they called themselves—as independent. In exchange for the Boers' pledge not to introduce slavery in the Transvaal, the British agreed not to ally with any "coloured nations" there.[33] Kruger's uncle Gert was also present; his father Casper would have been as well had he not been ill.[32]
Field cornet[edit]
Kruger as a field cornet, photographed c. 1852
The Boers and the local Tswana and Basotho chiefdoms were in near-constant conflict, mainly over land.[33] Kruger was elected field cornet of his district in 1852,[21] and in August that year he took part in the Battle of Dimawe, a raid against the Tswana chief Sechele I. The Boer commando was headed by Pretorius, but in practice he did not take much part as he was suffering from dropsy. Kruger narrowly escaped death twice—first a piece of shrapnel hit him in the head but only knocked him out, then later a Tswana bullet swiped across his chest, tearing his jacket without wounding him.[34] The commando wrecked David Livingstone's mission station at Kolobeng, destroying his medicines and books. Livingstone was away at the time.[35] Kruger's version of the story was that the Boers found an armoury and a workshop for repairing firearms in Livingstone's house and, interpreting this as a breach of Britain's promise at the Sand River not to arm tribal chiefs, confiscated them.[34] Whatever the truth, Livingstone wrote about the Boers in strongly condemnatory terms thereafter, depicting them as mindless barbarians.[36]
One charge levelled by Livingstone and many others against the Boers was that when attacking tribal settlements they abducted women and children and took them home as slaves.[37] The Boer argument was that these were not slaves but inboekelings—indentured "apprentices" who, having lost their families, were given bed, board and training in a Boer household until reaching adulthood.[38] Modern scholarship widely dismisses this as a ruse to create inexpensive labour while avoiding overt slavery.[39][n 3] Gezina Kruger had an inboekeling maid for whom she eventually arranged marriage, paying her a dowry.[40]
Having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant (between field cornet and commandant), Kruger formed part of a commando sent against the chief Montshiwa in December 1852 to recover some stolen cattle. Pretorius was still sick, and only nominally in command.[42] Seven months later, on 23 July 1853, Pretorius died, aged 54. Just before the end he sent for Kruger, but the young man arrived too late.[43] Meintjes comments that Pretorius "was perhaps the first person to recognise that behind [Kruger's] rough exterior was a most singular person with an intellect all the more remarkable for being almost entirely self-developed."[31]
Commandant[edit]
Pretorius did not name a successor as Commandant-General; his eldest son Marthinus Wessel Pretorius was appointed in his stead.[43] The younger Pretorius elevated Kruger to the rank of commandant.[44] Pretorius the son claimed power over not just the Transvaal but also the Orange River area—he said the British had promised it to his father—but virtually nobody, not even supporters like Kruger, accepted this.[45] Following Sir George Cathcart's replacement of Smith as Governor in Cape Town, the British policy towards the Orange River Sovereignty changed to the extent that the British were willing to pull out and grant independence to a second Boer republic there. This was in spite of the fact that in addition to the Boer settlers there were many English-speaking colonists who wanted rule from the Cape to continue.[46] On 23 February 1854 Sir George Russell Clerk signed the Orange River Convention, ending the sovereignty and recognising what the Boers dubbed the Oranje-Vrijstaat ("Orange Free State").[47]
Bloemfontein, the former British garrison town, became the Free State's capital; the Transvaal seat of government became Pretoria, named after the elder Pretorius.[47] The South African Republic was in practice split between the south-west and central Transvaal, where most of Pretorius's supporters were, and regionalist factions in the Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg and Utrecht districts that viewed any central authority with suspicion.[48] Kruger's first campaign as a commandant was in the latter part of 1854, against the chiefs Mapela and Makapan near the Waterberg. The chiefs retreated into what became called the Caves of Makapan ("Makapansgat") with many of their people and cattle, and a siege ensued in which thousands of the defenders died, mainly from starvation. When Commandant-General Piet Potgieter of Zoutpansberg was shot dead, Kruger advanced under heavy fire to retrieve the body and was almost killed himself.[49]
Mediator[edit]
M W Pretorius, who became the Transvaal's first President in 1857
Marthinus Pretorius hoped to achieve either federation or amalgamation with the Orange Free State, but before he could contemplate this he would have to unite the Transvaal. In 1855 he appointed an eight-man constitutional commission, including Kruger, which presented a draft constitution in September that year. Lydenburg and Zoutpansberg rejected the proposals, calling for a less centralised government. Pretorius tried again during 1856, holding meetings with eight-man commissions in Rustenburg, Potchefstroom and Pretoria, but Stephanus Schoeman, Zoutpansberg's new Commandant-General, repudiated these efforts.[50]
The constitution settled upon formalised a national volksraad (parliament) and created an executive council, headed by a President. Pretorius was sworn in as the first President of the South African Republic on 6 January 1857. 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. With the Transvaal on the verge of civil war, tensions also rose with the Orange Free State after Pretorius's ambitions of absorbing it became widely known. Kruger had strong personal reservations about Pretorius, not considering him his father's equal, but nevertheless remained steadfastly loyal to him.[51]
After the Free State government dismissed an ultimatum from Pretorius to cease what he regarded as the marginalisation of his supporters south of the Vaal, Pretorius called up the burghers and rode to the border, prompting President Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff of the Free State to do the same. Kruger was dismayed to learn of this and on reaching the Transvaal commando he spoke out against the idea of fighting their fellow Boers. However, when he learned that Boshoff had called on Schoeman to lead a commando against Pretorius from Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg, he realised that simply disbanding was no longer enough and that they would have to make terms.[52]
With Pretorius's approval, Kruger met Boshoff under a white flag. 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. A commission of 12 men from each republic, including Kruger, reached a compromise whereby Pretorius would drop his claim on the Free State, and a treaty was concluded on 2 June 1857.[53][n 4] Over the next year Kruger helped to negotiate a peace agreement between the Free State and Moshoeshoe I of the Basotho,[54] and persuaded Schoeman to take part in successful talks regarding constitutional revisions, after which Zoutpansberg accepted the central government with Schoeman as Commandant-General.[55] On 28 June 1858 Schoeman appointed Kruger Assistant Commandant-General of the South African Republic.[56] "All in all", Kruger's biographer T R H Davenport comments, "he had shown a loyalty to authority in political disputes, devotion to duty as an officer, and a real capacity for power play."[16]
Forming the "Dopper Church"[edit]
Kruger considered Providence his guide in life and referred to scripture constantly; he knew large sections of the Bible by heart.[8] He understood the biblical texts literally and inferred from them that the Earth was flat, a belief he retained firmly to his dying day.[8] At mealtimes he said grace twice, at length and in formal Dutch rather than the South African dialect that was to become Afrikaans.[57] In late 1858, when he returned to Waterkloof, he was mentally and physically drained following the exertions of the past few years and in the midst of a spiritual crisis. Hoping to establish a personal relationship with God,[58] he ventured into the Magaliesberg and spent several days without food or water. A search party found him "nearly dead from hunger and thirst", Davenport records.[16] The experience reinvigorated him and greatly intensified his faith, which for the rest of his life was unshakeable and, according to Meintjes, perceived by some of his contemporaries as like that of a child.[58]
Kruger belonged to the "Doppers"—a group of about 6,000 that followed an extremely strict interpretation of traditional Calvinist doctrine.[59] They based their theology almost entirely on the Old Testament and, among other things, wished to eschew hymns and organs and read only from the Psalms.[60] When the 1859 synod of the Nederduits Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHK), the main church in the Transvaal, decided to enforce the singing of modern hymns, Kruger led a group of Doppers that denounced the NHK as "deluded" and "false" and left its Rustenburg congregation.[61] They formed the Gereformeerde Kerke van Zuid-Afrika (GK),[59] thereafter known informally as the "Dopper Church",[60] and recruited the Reverend Dirk Postma, a like-minded traditionalist recently arrived from the Netherlands, to be their minister.[59] This act also had secular ramifications as according to the 1858 constitution only NHK members could take part in public affairs.[58]
Civil war; Commandant-General[edit]
In late 1859 Pretorius was invited to stand for President in the Orange Free State, where many burghers now favoured union, partly as a means to overcome the Basotho. The Transvaal constitution he had just enacted made it illegal to simultaneously hold office abroad, but nevertheless he readily did so and won. The Transvaal volksraad attempted to side-step the constitutional problems surrounding this by granting Pretorius half a year's leave, hoping a solution might come about during this time, and the President duly left for Bloemfontein, appointing Johannes Hermanus Grobler to be Acting President in his absence. Pretorius was sworn in as President of the Free State on 8 February 1860; he sent a deputation to Pretoria to negotiate union the next day.[62]
Stephanus Schoeman, a fierce opponent of Kruger during the 1860s
Kruger and others in the Transvaal government disliked Pretorius's unconstitutional dual presidency, and worried that Britain might declare the Sand River and Orange River Conventions void if the republics joined.[62] Pretorius was told by the Transvaal volksraad on 10 September 1860 to choose between his two posts—to the surprise of both supporters and detractors he resigned as President of the Transvaal and continued in the Free State.[62] After Schoeman unsuccessfully attempted to forcibly supplant Grobler as Acting President, Kruger persuaded him to submit to a volksraad hearing, where Schoeman was censured and relieved of his post. Willem Cornelis Janse van Rensburg was appointed Acting President while a new election was organised for October 1862. Having returned home, Kruger was surprised to receive a message urgently requesting his presence in the capital, the volksraad having recommended him as a suitable candidate; he replied that he was pleased to be summoned but his membership in the Dopper Church meant he could not enter politics. Van Rensburg promptly had legislation passed to give equal political rights to members of all Reformed denominations.[63]
Kruger, photographed as Commandant-General of the South African Republic, c. 1865. The loss of his left thumb is clearly visible.
Schoeman mustered a commando at Potchefstroom, but was routed by Kruger on the night of 9 October 1862. After Schoeman returned with a larger force Kruger and Pretorius held negotiations where it was agreed to hold a special court on the disturbances in January 1863, and soon thereafter fresh elections for President and Commandant-General.[64] Schoeman was found guilty of rebellion against the state and banished. In May the election results were announced—Van Rensburg became President, with Kruger as Commandant-General. Both expressed disappointment at the low turnout and resolved to hold another set of elections. Van Rensburg's opponent this time was Pretorius, who had resigned his office in the Orange Free State and returned to the Transvaal. Turnout was higher and on 12 October the volksraad announced another Van Rensburg victory. Kruger was returned as Commandant-General with a large majority.[65] The civil war ended with Kruger's victory over Jan Viljoen's commando, raised in support of Pretorius and Schoeman, at the Crocodile River on 5 January 1864. Elections were held yet again, and this time Pretorius defeated Van Rensburg. Kruger was re-elected as Commandant-General with over two-thirds of the vote.[66]
The civil war had led to an economic collapse in the Transvaal, weakening the government's ability to back up its professed authority and sovereignty over the local chiefdoms,[16] though Lydenburg and Utrecht did now accept the central administration.[67] By 1865 tensions had risen with the Zulus to the east and war had broken out again between the Orange Free State and the Basotho. Pretorius and Kruger led a commando of about 1,000 men south to help the Free State. The Basotho were defeated and Moshoeshoe ceded some of his territory, but President Johannes Brand of the Free State decided not to give any of the conquered land to the Transvaal burghers. The Transvaal men were scandalised and returned home en masse, despite Kruger's attempts to maintain discipline.[68] The following February, after a meeting of the executive council in Potchefstroom, Kruger capsized his cart during the journey home and broke his left leg. On one leg he righted the cart and continued the rest of the way. This injury incapacitated him for the next nine months, and his left leg was thereafter slightly shorter than his right.[68]
President Thomas François Burgers, whose election dismayed Kruger
In 1867, Pretoria sent Kruger to restore law and order in Zoutpansberg. He had around 500 men but very low reserves of ammunition, and discipline in the ranks was poor. On reaching Schoemansdal, which was under threat by the chief Katlakter, Kruger and his officers resolved that holding the town was impossible and ordered a general evacuation, following which Katlakter razed the town. The loss of Schoemansdal, once a prosperous settlement by Boer standards, was considered a great humiliation by many burghers. The Transvaal government formally exonerated Kruger over the matter, ruling that he had been forced to evacuate Schoemansdal by factors beyond his control, but some still argued that he had given the town up too readily.[69] Peace returned to Zoutpansberg in 1869, following the intervention of the republic's Swazi allies.[16]
Pretorius stepped down as President in November 1871. In the 1872 election Kruger's preferred candidate, William Robinson, was decisively defeated by the Reverend Thomas François Burgers, a church minister from the Cape who was noted for his eloquent preaching but controversial for some because of his liberal interpretation of the scriptures. He did not believe in the Devil, for example.[70][n 5] 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.[70] He particularly disliked Burgers's new education law, which restricted children's religious instruction to outside school hours—in Kruger's view an affront to God.[71] This, coupled with the sickness of Gezina and their children with malaria, caused Kruger to lose interest in his office. In May 1873 he requested an honourable discharge from his post, which Burgers promptly granted. The office of Commandant-General was abolished the following week. Kruger moved his main residence to Boekenhoutfontein, near Rustenburg, and for a time absented himself from public affairs.[70][n 6]
Diamonds and deputations[edit]
Under Burgers[edit]
A map of South Africa in 1878, showing the Transvaal or South African Republic (purple), the Orange Free State (yellow), the Cape Colony (red), Natal (orange) and neighbouring territories
Burgers busied himself attempting to modernise the South African Republic along European lines, hoping to set in motion a process that would lead to a united, independent South Africa. Finding Boer officialdom inadequate, he imported ministers and civil servants en masse from the Netherlands. His ascent to the presidency came shortly after the realisation that the Boer republics might stand on land of immense mineral wealth. Diamonds had been discovered in Griqua territory just north of the Orange River on the western edge of the Free State, arousing the interest of Britain and other countries; mostly British settlers, referred to by the Boers as uitlanders ("out-landers"), were flooding into the region.[72] Britain began to pursue federation (at that time often referred to as "confederation") of the Boer republics with the Cape and Natal and in 1873, over Boer objections, annexed the area surrounding the huge diamond mine at Kimberley, dubbing it Griqualand West.[73][n 7]
Some Doppers preferred to embark on another trek, north-west across the Kalahari Desert towards Angola, rather than live under Burgers. This became the Dorsland Trek of 1874. The emigrants asked Kruger to lead the way, but he refused to take part. In September 1874, following a long delay calling the volksraad due to sickness, Burgers proposed a railway to Delagoa Bay and said he would go to Europe to raise the necessary funds. By the time he left in February 1875 opposition pressure had brought about an amendment to bring religious instruction back into school hours, and Kruger had been restored to the executive council.[72]
In 1876 hostilities broke out with the Bapedi people under Sekhukhune. Burgers had told the Acting President Piet Joubert not to fight a war in his absence, so the Transvaal government did little to combat the Bapedi raids. On his return Burgers resolved to send a commando against Sekhukhune; he called on Kruger to lead the column, but much to his surprise the erstwhile Commandant-General refused. Burgers unsuccessfully asked Joubert to head the commando, then approached Kruger twice more, but to no avail. Kruger was convinced that God would cause any military expedition organised by Burgers to fail—particularly if the President rode with the commando, which he was determined to do.[75] "I cannot lead the commando if you come", Kruger said, "for, with your merry evenings in laager and your Sunday dances, the enemy will even shoot me behind the wall; for God's blessing will not rest on your expedition."[76] Burgers, who had no military experience, led the commando himself after several other prospective generals rebuffed him. After being routed by Sekhukhune, he hired a group of "volunteers" under the German Conrad von Schlickmann to defend the country, paying for this by levying a special tax. The war ended, but Burgers became extremely unpopular among his electorate.[75]
With Burgers due to stand for re-election the following year, Kruger became a popular alternative candidate, but he resolved to stand by the President after Burgers privately assured him that he would do his utmost to defend the South African Republic's independence. The towns of the Transvaal were becoming increasingly British in character as immigration and trade gathered apace, and the idea of annexation was gaining support both locally and in the British government. In late 1876 Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary under Benjamin Disraeli, gave Sir Theophilus Shepstone of Natal a special commission to confer with the South African Republic's government and, if he saw fit, annex the country.[77]
British annexation; first and second deputations[edit]
Shepstone arrived in Pretoria in January 1877. He outlined criticisms expressed by Carnarvon regarding the Transvaal government and expressed support for federation. After a joint commission of inquiry on the British grievances—Kruger and the State Attorney E J P Jorissen refuted most of Carnarvon's allegations, one of which was that Pretoria tolerated slavery—Shepstone stayed in the capital, openly telling Burgers he had come to the Transvaal to annex it. Hoping to stop the annexation by reforming the government, Burgers introduced scores of bills and revisions to a bewildered volksraad, which opposed them all but then passed them, heightening the general mood of discord and confusion. One of these reforms appointed Kruger to the new post of Vice-President.[78]
The impression of Kruger garnered by the British envoys in Pretoria during early 1877 was one of an unspeakably vulgar, bigoted backveld peasant.[79] Regarding his austere, weather-beaten face, greying hair and simple Dopper dress of a short-cut black jacket, baggy trousers and a black top hat, they considered him extremely ugly. Furthermore, they found his personal habits, such as copious spitting, revolting. Shepstone's legal adviser William Morcom was one of the first British officials to write about Kruger: calling him "gigantically horrible", he recounted a public luncheon at which Kruger dined with a dirty pipe protruding from his pocket and such greasy hair that he spent part of the meal combing it.[80] According to Martin Meredith, Kruger's unsightliness was mentioned in British reports "so often that it became shorthand for his whole personality, and indeed, his objectives".[80] They did not consider him a major threat to British ambitions.[80]
E J P Jorissen, Kruger's colleague in the first deputation to London, pictured in 1897
Shepstone had the Transvaal's annexation as a British territory formally announced in Pretoria on 12 April 1877. Burgers resigned and returned to the Cape to live in retirement—his last act as President was to announce the government's decision to send a deputation, headed by Kruger and Jorissen, to London to make an official protest. He exhorted the burghers not to attempt any kind of resistance to the British until these diplomats returned.[81] Jorissen, one of the Dutch officials recently imported by Burgers, was included at Kruger's request because of his wide knowledge of European languages (Kruger was not confident in his English); a second Dutchman, Willem Eduard Bok, accompanied them as secretary.[82] They left in May 1877, travelling first to Bloemfontein to confer with the Free State government, then on to Kimberley and Worcester, where the 51-year-old Kruger boarded a train for the first time in his life. In Cape Town, where his German ancestor had landed 164 years before, he had his first sight of the sea.[83]
During the voyage to England Kruger encountered a 19-year-old law student from the Orange Free State named Martinus Theunis Steyn.[84] Jorissen and Bok marvelled at Kruger, in their eyes more suited to the 17th century than his own time. One night, when 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.[84] At the Colonial Office in Whitehall, Carnarvon and Kruger's own colleagues were astonished when, speaking through interpreters, he rose to what Meintjes calls "remarkable heights of oratory", averring that the annexation breached the Sand River Convention and went against the popular will in the Transvaal.[85] His 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".[85] Carnarvon dismissed Kruger's idea of a general plebiscite and concluded that British rule would remain.[85]
Kruger did not meet Queen Victoria, though such an audience is described in numerous anecdotes, depicted in films and sometimes reported as fact.[n 8] Between August and October he visited the Netherlands and Germany, where he aroused little general public interest, but made a potent impact in the Reformed congregations he visited. After a brief sojourn back in England he returned to South Africa and arrived at Boekenhoutfontein shortly before Christmas 1877.[86] He found a national awakening occurring. "Paradoxically", John Laband writes, "British occupation seemed to be fomenting a sense of national consciousness in the Transvaal which years of fractious independence had failed to elicit."[87] When Kruger visited Pretoria in January 1878 he was greeted by a procession that took him to a mass gathering in Church Square. Attempting to stir up the crowd, Kruger said that since Carnarvon had told him the annexation would not be revoked he could not see what more they could do. The gambit worked; burghers began shouting that they would sooner die fighting for their country than submit to the British.[88]
Piet Joubert, Kruger's associate in the second deputation
According to Meintjes, Kruger was still not particularly anti-British; he thought the British had made a mistake and would rectify the situation if this could be proven to them.[88] After conducting a poll through the former republican infrastructure—587 signed in favour of the annexation, 6,591 against—he organised a second deputation to London, made up of himself and Joubert with Bok again serving as secretary.[89] The envoys met the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, Sir Bartle Frere,[89] and arrived in London on 29 June 1878 to find a censorious letter from Shepstone waiting for them, along with a communication that since Kruger was agitating against the government he had been dismissed from the executive council.[n 9]
Carnarvon had been succeeded as Colonial Secretary by Sir Michael Hicks Beach, who received the deputation coldly. After Bok gave a lengthy opening declaration, Hicks Beach muttered: "Have you ever heard of an instance where the British Lion has ever given up anything on which he had set his paw?" Kruger retorted: "Yes. The Orange Free State."[91] The deputation remained in London for some weeks thereafter, communicating by correspondence with Hicks Beach, who eventually reaffirmed Carnarvon's decision that the annexation would not be revoked. The deputation attempted to rally support for their cause, as the first mission had done, but with the Eastern Question dominating the political scene few were interested.[91] One English sympathiser gave Kruger a gold ring, bearing the inscription: "Take courage, your cause is just and must triumph in the end."[74] Kruger was touched and wore it for the rest of his life.[74]
Like its predecessor, the second deputation went on from England to continental Europe, visiting the Netherlands, France and Germany.[92] In Paris, where the 1878 Exposition Universelle was in progress, Kruger saw a hot air balloon for the first time and readily took part in an ascent to view the city from above. "High up in mid-air", he recalled, "I jestingly asked the aeronaut, as we had gone so far, to take me all the way home."[93] The pilot asked who Kruger was and, on their descent, gave him a medal "to remind me of my journey through the air".[93] Meanwhile, the deputation composed a long reply to Hicks Beach, which was published as an open letter in the British press soon before they sailed for home on 24 October 1878. Unless the annexation were revoked, the letter stated, the Transvaal Boers would not co-operate regarding federation.[94]
Drive for independence[edit]
Kruger and Joubert returned home to find the British and the Zulus were close to war. Shepstone had supported the Zulus in a border dispute with the South African Republic, but then, after annexing the Transvaal, changed his mind and endorsed the Boer claim.[95] Meeting Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford at Pietermaritzburg on 28 November 1878, Kruger happily gave tactical guidance for the British campaign—he advised the use of Boer tactics, making laagers at every stop and constantly scouting ahead—but refused Frere's request that he accompany one of the British columns, saying he would only help if assurances were made regarding the Transvaal.[n 10] Chelmsford thought the campaign would be a "promenade" and did not take Kruger's advice.[96] Soon after he entered Zululand in January 1879, starting the Anglo-Zulu War, his unlaagered central column was surprised by Cetshwayo's Zulus at Isandlwana and almost totally destroyed.[96]
Sir Garnet Wolseley, who headed the British Transvaal administration from 1879 to 1880
The war in Zululand effectively ended on 4 July 1879 with Chelmsford's decisive victory at the Zulu capital Ulundi. Around the same time the British appointed a new Governor and High Commissioner for the Transvaal and Natal, Sir Garnet Wolseley, who introduced a new Transvaal constitution giving the Boers a limited degree of self-government.[97] Wolseley blunted the Zulu military threat by splitting the kingdom into 13 chiefdoms, and crushed Sekhukhune and the Bapedi during late 1879. However, he had little success in winning the Boers over to the idea of federation—indeed 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.[98] Most Boers refused to co-operate with Wolseley's new order;[87] Kruger declined a seat in the new executive council.[99]
At Wonderfontein on 15 December 1879, 6,000 burghers, many of them bearing the republic's vierkleur ("four-colour") flag, voted to pursue a restored, independent republic.[100] Pretorius and Bok were imprisoned on charges of high treason when they took this news to Wolseley and Sir Owen Lanyon (who had replaced Shepstone),[100] prompting many burghers to consider rising up there and then—Kruger persuaded them not to, saying this was premature.[87] Pretorius and Bok were swiftly released after Jorissen telegraphed the British Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone, who had met Kruger's first deputation in London and had since condemned the annexation as unjust during his Midlothian campaign.[101]
In early 1880 Hicks Beach forwarded a scheme for South African federation to the Cape Parliament.[102] 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.[102] In Cape Town, Paarl and elsewhere Kruger lobbied vigorously against the annexation and won much sympathy.[n 11] Davenport suggests that this contributed to the federation plan's withdrawal, which in turn weakened the British resolve to keep the Transvaal.[16] Kruger and Joubert wrote to Gladstone asking him to restore the South African Republic's independence, but to their astonishment the Prime Minister replied in June 1880 that he feared withdrawing from the Transvaal might lead to chaos across South Africa. 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.[104] Meanwhile, Wolseley was replaced as Governor and High Commissioner by Sir George Pomeroy Colley.[104]
Piet Cronjé, pictured later in life
In the last months of 1880, Lanyon began to pursue tax payments from burghers who were in arrears.[105] Piet Cronjé, a farmer in the Potchefstroom district, gave his local landdrost a written statement that the burghers would pay taxes to their "legal government"—that of the South African Republic—but not to the British "usurper" administration. Kruger and Cronjé knew each other; the writer Johan Frederik van Oordt, who was acquainted with them both, suggested that Kruger may have had a hand in this and what followed.[105] In November, when the British authorities in Potchefstroom were about to auction off a burgher's wagon that had been seized amid a tax dispute, Cronjé and a group of armed Boers intervened, overcame the presiding officers and reclaimed the wagon.[106] On hearing of this from Cronjé, Kruger told Joubert: "I can no longer restrain the people, and the English government is entirely responsible for the present state of things."[107]
Starting on 8 December 1880 at Paardekraal, a farm to the south-west of Pretoria, 10,000 Boers congregated—the largest recorded meeting of white people in South Africa up to that time. "I stand here before you", Kruger declared, "called by the people. In the voice of the people I have heard the voice of God, the King of Nations, and I obey!"[107] He announced the fulfilment of the decision taken at Wonderfontein the previous year to restore the South African Republic government and volksraad, which as the Vice-President of the last independent administration he considered his responsibility.[108] To help him in this he turned to Jorissen and Bok, who respectively became State Attorney and State Secretary, and Pretorius and Joubert, who the reconstituted volksraad elected to an executive triumvirate along with Kruger.[108] The assembly approved a proclamation announcing the restoration of the South African Republic.[109]
Triumvirate[edit]
Transvaal rebellion: the First Boer War[edit]
Main article: First Boer War
Kruger, photographed c. 1880
At Kruger's suggestion Joubert was elected Commandant-General of the restored republic, though he had little military experience and protested he was not suited to the position.[109] The provisional government set up a temporary capital at Heidelberg, a strategically placed town on the main road from Natal, and sent a copy of the proclamation to Lanyon along with a written demand that he surrender the government offices in Pretoria.[110] Lanyon refused and mobilised the British garrison.[110]
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.[111] The first major clash, a successful Boer ambush, took place on 20 December 1880 at Bronkhorstspruit.[112] By the turn of the year the Transvaalers had all six British garrison outposts, including that in Pretoria, under siege.[113] Colley assembled a field force in Natal, summoned reinforcements from India, and advanced towards the Transvaal.[114] Joubert moved about 2,000 Boers south to the Drakensberg and repulsed Colley at Laing's Nek on 28 January 1881.[115] After Colley retreated to Schuinshoogte, near Ingogo, he was attacked by Joubert's second-in-command Nicolaas Smit on 8 February and again defeated.[116]
Understanding that they could not hold out against the might of the British Empire indefinitely, Kruger hoped for a solution at the earliest opportunity.[117] The triumvirate wrote to Colley on 12 February that they were prepared to submit to a royal commission. Colley liaised by telegraph with Gladstone's Colonial Secretary Lord Kimberley, then wrote to Kruger on 21 February that if the Boers stopped fighting he would cease hostilities and send commissioners for talks. Kruger received this letter on 28 February and readily accepted, but by now it was too late. Colley had been killed at the Battle of Majuba Hill the day before, another decisive victory for the Boers under Smit.[118] This progressive humiliation of the Imperial forces in South Africa by a ragtag collection of farmers, to paraphrase Meintjes and the historian Ian Castle, stunned the Western world.[118]
Colley's death horrified Kruger, who feared it might jeopardise the peace process.[119] His reply to Colley's letter was delivered to his successor Sir Evelyn Wood on 7 March 1881, a day after Wood and Joubert had agreed to an eight-day truce.[120] Kruger was outraged to learn of this armistice, which in his view only gave the British opportunity to strengthen their forces—he expected a British attempt to avenge Majuba, which indeed Wood and others wanted[121]—but Gladstone wanted peace, and Wood was instructed to proceed with talks.[120] Negotiations began on 16 March. The British offered amnesty for the Boer leaders, retrocession of the Transvaal under British suzerainty, a British resident in Pretoria and British control over foreign affairs.[121] Kruger pressed on how the British intended to withdraw and what exactly "suzerainty" meant.[122] Brand arrived to mediate on 20 March and the following day agreement was reached; the British committed to formally restore the republic within six months.[n 12] The final treaty was concluded on 23 March 1881.[123]
Pretoria Convention[edit]
Kruger presented the treaty to the volksraad on the triumvirate's behalf at Heidelberg on 15 April 1881. "With a feeling of gratitude to the God of our fathers", he said, "who has been near us in battle and danger, it is to me an unspeakable privilege to lay before you the treaty ... I consider it my duty plainly to declare before you and the whole world, that our respect for Her Majesty the Queen of England, for the government of Her Majesty, and for the English Nation, has never been greater than at this time, when we are enabled to show you a proof of England's noble and magnanimous love for right and justice."[124] This statement was to be ignored by many writers,[124] but Manfred Nathan, one of Kruger's biographers, stresses it as one of his "most notable utterances".[124] Kruger reaffirmed his faith in the royal commission of Wood, Sir Hercules Robinson and the Cape's Chief Justice Sir Henry de Villiers, who convened for the first time in Natal on 30 April, Brand with them as an adviser. The commissioners held numerous sessions in Pretoria over the following months with little input from Kruger, who was bedridden with pneumonia.[125]
Kruger was largely happy with the terms under which the republic would regain its sovereignty, but two points offended him. The first of these was that the British would recognise them as the "Transvaal Republic" and not the South African Republic; the second was that it was still not clear to him what British "suzerainty" was. The commission, in which De Villiers emerged as the dominant figure, defined it primarily as British purview over the Transvaal's external affairs. The final Pretoria Convention was signed on 3 August 1881 by Joubert, Pretorius and the members of the royal commission. Kruger was absent due to his illness, but he did attend the official retrocession five days later in Church Square. Kruger felt well enough to give only a short speech, after which Pretorius addressed the crowd and the vierkleur was raised.[126]
Kruger House, the family home in Pretoria (2008 photograph)
By now aged nearly 56, Kruger resolved that he could no longer travel constantly between Boekenhoutfontein and the capital, and in August 1881 he and Gezina moved to Church Street, Pretoria, from where he could easily walk to the government offices on Church Square. Also around this time he shaved off his moustache and most of his facial hair, leaving the chinstrap beard he kept thereafter. His and Gezina's permanent home on Church Street, what is now called Kruger House, would be completed in 1884.[127]
A direct consequence of the end of British rule was an economic slump; the Transvaal government almost immediately found itself again on the verge of bankruptcy.[128] The triumvirate spent two months discussing the terms of the Pretoria Convention with the new volksraad—approve it or go back to Laing's Nek, said Kruger[128]—before it was finally ratified on 25 October 1881. During this time Kruger introduced tax reforms, announced the triumvirate's decision to grant industrial monopolies to raise money and appointed the Reverend S J du Toit to be Superintendent of Education.[128] To counteract the influx of uitlanders, the residency qualification to vote was raised from a year to five years.[129] In July 1882 the volksraad decided to elect a new President the following year; Joubert and Kruger emerged as candidates. Kruger campaigned on the idea of an administration in which "God's Word would be my rule of conduct"—as premier he would prioritise agriculture, industry and education, revive Burgers's Delagoa Bay railway scheme, introduce an immigration policy that would "prevent the Boer nationality from being stifled", and pursue a cordial stance towards Britain and "obedient native races in their appointed districts".[130] He defeated Joubert by 3,431 votes to 1,171,[130] and was inaugurated as President on 9 May 1883.[131]
President[edit]
Third deputation; London Convention[edit]
Lord Derby, with whom the third deputation concluded the London Convention
Kruger became President soon after the discovery of gold near what was to become Barberton, which prompted a fresh influx of uitlander diggers. "This gold is still going to soak our country in blood", said Joubert—a prediction he would repeat many times over the coming years.[132] Joubert remained Commandant-General under Kruger and also became Vice-President.[132] A convoluted situation developed on the Transvaal's western frontier, where burghers had crossed the border defined in the Pretoria Convention and formed two new Boer republics, Stellaland and Goshen, on former Tswana territory in 1882.[133] These states were tiny but they occupied land of potentially huge importance—the main road from the Cape to Matabeleland and the African interior.[133]
Kruger and the volksraad resolved to send yet another deputation to London to renegotiate the Pretoria Convention and settle the western border issue. The third deputation, comprising Kruger, Smit and Du Toit with Jan Eloff as secretary, left the Transvaal in August 1883 and sailed from Cape Town two months later. Kruger spent part of the voyage to Britain studying the English language with a Bible printed in Dutch and English side by side. Talks with the new Colonial Secretary Lord Derby and Robinson progressed smoothly—apart from an incident when Kruger, thinking himself insulted, nearly punched Robinson—and on 27 February 1884 the London Convention, superseding that of Pretoria, was concluded. Britain ended its suzerainty, reduced the Transvaal's national debt and once again recognised the country as the South African Republic. The western border question remained unresolved, but Kruger still considered the convention a triumph.[134][n 13]
Bismarck, one of the many European leaders Kruger met in 1884
The deputation went on from London to mainland Europe, where according to Meintjes their reception "was beyond all expectations ... one banquet followed the other, the stand of a handful of Boers against the British Empire having caused a sensation".[135] During a grand tour Kruger met William III of the Netherlands and his son the Prince of Orange, Leopold II of Belgium, President Jules Grévy of France, Alfonso XII of Spain, Luís I of Portugal, and in Germany Kaiser Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. His public appearances were attended by tens of thousands.[135] The deputation discussed the bilateral aspects of the proposed Delagoa Bay railway with the Portuguese, and in the Netherlands laid the groundwork for the Netherlands-South African Railway Company, which would build and operate it.[135] Kruger now held that Burgers had been "far ahead of his time"[135]—while reviving his predecessor's railway scheme, he also brought back the policy of importing officials from the Netherlands, in his view a means to strengthen the Boer identity and keep the Transvaal "Dutch". Willem Johannes Leyds, a 24-year-old Dutchman, returned to South Africa with the deputation as the republic's new State Attorney.[135]
By late 1884 the Scramble for Africa was well underway. Competition on the western frontier rose after Germany annexed South-West Africa; at the behest of the mining magnate and Cape MP Cecil Rhodes, Britain proclaimed a protectorate over Bechuanaland, including the Stellaland–Goshen corridor. While Joubert was in negotiations with Rhodes, Du Toit had Kruger proclaim Transvaal protection over the corridor on 18 September 1884. Joubert was outraged, as was Kruger when on 3 October Du Toit unilaterally hoisted the vierkleur in Goshen. Realising the implications of this—it clearly violated the London Convention—Kruger had the flag stricken immediately and retracted his proclamation of 18 September. Meeting Rhodes personally in late January 1885, Kruger insisted the "flag incident" had taken place without his consent and conceded the corridor to the British.[136]
Gold rush; burghers and uitlanders[edit]
Gold mining at Johannesburg in 1893
In July 1886 an Australian prospector reported to the Transvaal government his discovery of an unprecedented gold reef between Pretoria and Heidelberg. The South African Republic's formal proclamation of this two months later prompted the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the founding of Johannesburg, which within a few years was the largest city in southern Africa, populated almost entirely by uitlanders.[137] The economic landscape of the region was transformed overnight—the South African Republic went from the verge of bankruptcy in 1886 to a fiscal output equal to the Cape Colony's the following year.[138] The British became anxious to link Johannesburg to the Cape and Natal by rail, but Kruger thought this might have undesirable geopolitical and economic implications if done prematurely and gave the Delagoa Bay line first priority.[137]
The President was by this time widely nicknamed Oom Paul ("Uncle Paul"), both among the Boers and the uitlanders, who variously used it out of affection or contempt.[139] He was perceived by some as a despot after he compromised the independence of the republic's judiciary to help his friend Alois Hugo Nellmapius, who had been found guilty of embezzlement—Kruger rejected the court's judgement and granted Nellmapius a full pardon, an act Nathan calls "completely indefensible".[140] 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.[141]
President Francis William Reitz of the Orange Free State
Much of Kruger's efforts over the next year were dedicated to attempts to acquire a sea outlet for the South African Republic. In July Pieter Grobler, who had just negotiated a treaty with King Lobengula of Matabeleland, was killed by Ngwato warriors on his way home; Kruger alleged that this was the work of "Cecil Rhodes and his clique".[141] Kruger despised Rhodes, considering him corrupt and immoral—in his memoirs he called him "capital incarnate" and "the curse of South Africa".[142] According to the editor of Kruger's memoirs, Rhodes attempted to win him as an ally by suggesting "we simply take" Delagoa Bay from Portugal; Kruger was appalled.[141] Failing to make headway in talks with the Portuguese, Kruger switched his attention to Kosi Bay, next to Swaziland, in late 1888.[141]
In early 1889 Kruger and the new Orange Free State President Francis William Reitz enacted a common-defence pact and a customs treaty waiving most import duties.[143] The same year the volksraad passed constitutional revisions to remove the Nederduits Hervormde Kerk's official status, open the legislature to members of other denominations and make all churches "sovereign in their own spheres".[16] 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.[144] No university was built.[n 14]
Kruger was obsessed with the South African Republic's independence,[146] the retention of which he perceived as under threat if the Transvaal became too British in character. The uitlanders created an acute predicament in his mind. Taxation on their mining provided almost all of the republic's revenues, but they had very limited civic representation and almost no say in the running of the country. Though the English language was dominant in the mining areas, only Dutch remained official.[147] Kruger expressed great satisfaction at the new arrivals' industry and respect for the state's laws,[139] 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.[147] Agonising over how he "could meet the wishes of the new population for representation, without injuring the republic or prejudicing the interests of the older burghers",[143] he thought he had solved the problem in 1889 when he tabled a "second volksraad" in which the uitlanders would have certain matters devolved to them.[143] Most deemed this inadequate, and even Kruger's own supporters were unenthusiastic.[143]
Rhodes and other Brit
The modernist Humphrey Raikes Building at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, better known as Wits. This, you'll be surprised to learn, hosts the university's Chemistry Department.
Clivia miniata is native to damp woodland habitats in South Africa. The world's love affair with South Africa's clivia began in the 1800's when specimens were sent back to England from Kwazulu-Natal.
Derivation of name:
Clivia- after the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte Clive who first cultivated and flowered the type specimen in England.
miniata - colour of red lead - referring to the flowers.
Source:
Witwatersrand National Botanical Garden, South Africa
hex river train tunnel number 4.. north entrance/exit near touws river. 13,5 km long
Hex River Tunnels
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Hex River rail pass
Tunnel Hexrivier 4 West Approach.JPG
Western approach to tunnel no. 4, at 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) the longest rail tunnel in Africa until 2009.
show
Route map
Hexton Tunnel System Map.svg
The four Hex River Tunnels consist of a twin tunnel of 0.5 kilometres (0.31 miles) and three single tunnels of 1.1 kilometres (0.68 miles), 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) and 13.5 kilometres (8.39 miles), on the Hexton railway route between De Doorns and Kleinstraat through the Hex River Mountains of the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The line, which connects De Doorns in the Hex River valley with Touws River in the Great Karoo, is part of the main rail route between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Of the 30 kilometres (18.64 miles) of track, 16.8 kilometres (10.44 miles) are underground. Construction of the line eliminated the bottleneck of the Hex River rail pass.[1][2][3]
Contents
1The Hex River rail pass
1.1Route
1.2Cape Gauge
1.3First Tunnel
1.4Second Tunnel
2Current route
2.1Approval
2.2First postponement
2.3Second and third postponements
3Hexton completion
3.1Construction
3.2Completion
4Ecotourism
5References
6External links
The Hex River rail pass[edit]
Sir John Charles Molteno
The enormous Cape Fold Belt effectively separated Cape Town on the coast from the hinterland of Southern Africa, and had obstructed previous attempts to expand the Cape Colony's railway infrastructure inland. In 1872 the Cape Government, under Prime Minister John Molteno, ordered that a railway line must be constructed across this barrier in the vicinity of the Hex River Mountains. The Cape Government Railways (CGR) was formed and railway engineer William George Brounger was appointed to oversee the task.[4][5]
Route[edit]
The Hex River Mountain was a major obstacle to be overcome during the construction of the railway between Cape Town and the diamond fields at Kimberley in the Northern Cape. In 1874 surveyor Wells Hood, under the instruction of Brounger, found a potential route up the 2,353 feet (717 metres) climb from De Doorns in the Hex River valley to the top of the Karoo plateau east of the Valley, that would require gradients of no more than 1 in 40 uncompensated, very steep by railway standards, and tight curves with a minimum radius of 100 metres (328 feet). He also proposed that a short tunnel would be required.[1][2][6][7]
By 1876, the Molteno Government had selected Thomas Brounger's proposed route through the Hex River valley, with the line to follow the route from Worcester through De Doorns, then along Hood's proposed pass across the mountain via Osplaas to the 3,147 feet (959 metres) summit at Matroosberg, and then via Kleinstraat to Touws River.[1][2]
Cape Gauge[edit]
Dual gauge track on the old Strand street crossing outside Cape Town station, c. 1880
The original line between Cape Town and Wellington was laid to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge, but this gauge could not be accommodated economically on the tight curves required by the proposed Hex River rail pass. This led to a decision by the CGR to use a narrower gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) across the pass. After initially making use of dual gauge, it was decided in 1873 to convert all existing trackage of the CGR to this narrower gauge that was eventually to become known throughout Africa as Cape gauge. Credit for the fact that most of the present day railway lines in Africa are Cape gauge can therefore be directly attributed to the Hex River rail pass.[1]
First Tunnel[edit]
The original 180 metres (591 feet) tunnel, Southern Africa's first railway tunnel, is situated at 34 kilometres (21.13 miles) from De Doorns on the original line to Matroosberg. The tunnel is straight and the portals are of dressed stone masonry, but the inside is unlined. On the route ascending the mountain, Osplaas provided the only level stretch that was long enough for a conventional passing loop.[7][8]
Progress of the building of the line: Reached Worcester, June 16, 1876, and by the end of 1977 had reached Montagu Road, now known as Touws River - thus past the tunnel.[9]
Second Tunnel[edit]
Eastern portals, 1876 tunnel at left, 1929 tunnel at right
This first tunnel served the railways for 53 years, until the track was re-laid in 1929 to diminish a curve to accommodate larger locomotives. In the process a new concrete lined curved tunnel was sunk alongside the original. Since another crossing place had also become necessary, a siding named Tunnel was fashioned just east of the tunnel by laying two level dead-end spur tracks that branched directly off on opposite sides of the main line. This allowed trains to wait in one or the other of these sidings to allow an opposing train to pass. This latter tunnel remained in use for sixty years, until the line across the pass was closed to rail traffic in 1989.[7][8][10]
Despite its quick and relatively cheap construction, the Hex River rail pass served the South African Railways (SAR) for more than a century. It was the starting point of the country's first railway line to the Witwatersrand and opened the way for Cecil Rhodes' colonisation thrust into central Southern Africa.[8]
Current route[edit]
The railway line between Cape Town and Beaufort West has a ruling grade of 1 in 66 and a minimum curvature of 200 metres (656 feet), except for the pass where the steep gradient and sharp curves restricted train lengths and required additional locomotive power to bank trains on the ascent. In 1943 the gradients between De Doorns and Matroosberg stations were eased to 1 in 40 compensated, while the curves were eased to a minimum radius of 200 metres (656 feet), but despite this the Hex River rail pass still formed a bottleneck that would require more drastic measures to be eliminated.[1]
This eventually led to the decision to construct a tunnel system to eliminate the Hex River rail pass altogether. In 1945 Mr W.H. Evans, later to become Chief Civil Engineer of the SAR, proposed a new route for the section between De Doorns and Matroosberg that would result in a gradient of 1 in 66 compensated and a minimum curve radius of 800 metres (2,625 feet). The scheme would require four tunnels, two with a length of 0.8 kilometres (0.5 miles) each and two more with lengths of 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles) and 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) respectively. The benefits to the SAR would be significant. Operating costs would be decreased as a result of the elimination of sharp curves and steep gradients. The length of the section would be reduced by 8 kilometres (5 miles) and it would also eliminate altogether 5,280 degrees of curvature and 110 metres (361 feet) of false rise in level. Train running times could be reduced by 23 minutes in the ascending direction and 36 minutes in the descending direction.[1][2]
Approval[edit]
Original eastern portal of tunnel no. 4, abandoned in 1948
The scheme was approved in 1946 and it was decided that full-face working would be employed in the long tunnel. With this method and working two faces simultaneously, it was expected that 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) complete with lining could be achieved annually, with the whole tunnel completed in four years.[1]
Tunnelling on the subsidiary tunnels and external earthworks commenced immediately, but start of work on the long tunnel was delayed due to special equipment that had to be designed and ordered in 1946. While awaiting the special equipment, the western (Cape Town side) and eastern (Johannesburg side) portals were established by heading and benching, and short 20 metres (66 feet) sections of tunnel were driven at both ends by 1948. The original eastern portal (coordinates 33.405814°S 19.9008°E) was dug immediately adjacent to the N1 national road some 15 kilometres (9 miles) west of Touws River and took the form of a cutting into a gradient to sufficient depth to commence tunnelling.[1]
First postponement[edit]
In April 1950, however, work on the whole Hexton scheme was deferred for reasons of economy. Instead, the existing line through the pass was electrified by 1954 and operated with the Class 4E electric locomotives that had been ordered for use through the tunnels. At the time the project was halted, altogether 1,170 metres (3,839 feet) of tunnel had been excavated and 540 metres (1,772 feet) of concrete lining had been placed in the shorter tunnels.[1][11]
Second and third postponements[edit]
Southwestern portal of tunnel no. 1, the twin tunnels, of which only one is in use
The tunnel scheme was briefly resuscitated in 1965 but was deferred once again in 1966. Work was eventually resumed in 1974 and included the remodelling of the lower section of the deviation between De Doorns and Osplaas stations as well as the construction of tunnel no. 1, the twin tunnels. This was completed in 1976, at which point financial constraints resulted in yet another postponement. Authority to proceed was only given once again in late 1979.[1]
The twin tunnels bored through a hill that was skirted around the western and northern sides by the original alignment to Osplaas. When completed, the south-eastern of the twin tunnels became part of the new alignment of the De Doorns-Osplaas section. The north-western of the twin tunnels was initially used for construction trains working on the rest of the tunnel system and became part of the new route when the tunnel system opened. The south-eastern of the twin tunnels eventually fell into disuse along with the old Hex River Railpass.[1]
Hexton completion[edit]
In most respects the scheme as eventually completed was the same as that envisaged in 1945. Before proceeding in 1979, however, a sophisticated evaluation of the capacity of the whole Hexton scheme had been carried out using train diagrams and computer-devised train running times. The conclusion was that, with only two passing loops between De Doorns and Kleinstraat compared to the three at Osplaas, Tunnel and Matroosberg on the existing line, the capacity would be 31 trains, but with an additional passing loop it would increase to 42 trains. It was therefore decided to place a third passing loop, called Hexton, inside the long tunnel in addition to the two loops between tunnels no. 1 and 2 at Almeria and between tunnels no. 3 and 4 at Salbar respectively.[1][12]
Construction[edit]
The passing siding inside the longest tunnel, looking west
When tenders were invited, two routes had been selected for tunnel no. 4, the longest tunnel. One would be straight and more or less on the original location, but with the eastern portal relocated further away from the N1 national road. The other would be curved to pass through shale material, that would make the use of a tunnel boring machine an economical proposition. Tenderers were invited to quote for circular or horseshoe profiles and concrete or shotcrete linings for each of the two profiles and for each of the proposed routes. After the engineering, geological and economic factors had been analysed, the straight route with a horseshoe profile and concrete lining was finally selected.[1]
The tunnel was constructed by Compagnie Interafricaine De Travaux (Comiat), a division of Spie-Batignolles in Paris, France.
The contract for tunnel no. 4 was awarded on 13 August 1980 at a tender price of R26,770,082 and with the completion date four years later on 12 August 1984. The contractual completion date was later extended to 25 February 1986. Construction commenced in September 1980, with tunnel excavation commencing in January 1981. As a result of unforeseen adverse sub-surface conditions [13] that were encountered during the execution of the contract, however, the tunnel was only completed in November 1988.[14]
Tunnels no. 2 and 3 are similar in construction to the long tunnel, but were completed under a separate contract at a cost of R9 million. Both of them had been partly excavated when work was suspended in 1949, the 1.1 kilometres (0.68 miles) tunnel no. 2 to a distance of 583 metres (1,913 feet) of which most was concrete lined, and the 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) tunnel no. 3 to a distance of 467 metres (1,532 feet), but only lined in areas of poor ground. The contract called for both to be widened to new design standards to allow for overhead electrification and broader loading gauge clearances.[15]
Completion[edit]
The eastern portal of tunnel no. 4
The western portal (coordinates 33.415182°S 19.765646°E) of tunnel no. 4, as established in 1948, enters directly into the mountain face, which is nearly vertical at that point. The eastern portal (coordinates 33.40843°S 19.908717°E) was relocated a short distance to the southeast of the original 1948 portal and is in a 600 metres (1,969 feet) long and 16 metres (52 feet) deep cutting. The tunnel is 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) long and has a maximum cover of 250 metres (820 feet). The gradient is mainly 1 in 66, except at the passing loop where it decreases to 1 in 200. Five ventilation shafts of 1.8 metres (5 feet 11 inches) diameter and with a combined length of 1,000 metres (3,281 feet) were sunk. The cross-sectional area of the horseshoe profile single line tunnel is 30 square metres (323 square feet), but this increases to 66 square metres (710 square feet) at the passing loop. Tunnel no. 4 also contains relay rooms for signalling equipment.[1][2]
The tunnel system became operational in April 1989, more than forty years after the first portals were sunk, and was officially opened on 27 November 1989. The completed four-tunnel system now boasts the longest railway tunnel system in Africa.[2][3]
Tunnel 4 was the longest railway tunnel in Africa until 2009. The present longest single railway tunnel in Africa is 15.5 kilometres (9.63 miles) long, on the Gautrain line between Johannesburg Park Station and Marlboro Portal, which was broken through in September 2009.[16]
hex river train tunnel number 4. southern exit/entrance near de doorns. 13,5 km long
Hex River Tunnels
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
Hex River rail pass
Tunnel Hexrivier 4 West Approach.JPG
Western approach to tunnel no. 4, at 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) the longest rail tunnel in Africa until 2009.
show
Route map
Hexton Tunnel System Map.svg
The four Hex River Tunnels consist of a twin tunnel of 0.5 kilometres (0.31 miles) and three single tunnels of 1.1 kilometres (0.68 miles), 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) and 13.5 kilometres (8.39 miles), on the Hexton railway route between De Doorns and Kleinstraat through the Hex River Mountains of the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The line, which connects De Doorns in the Hex River valley with Touws River in the Great Karoo, is part of the main rail route between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Of the 30 kilometres (18.64 miles) of track, 16.8 kilometres (10.44 miles) are underground. Construction of the line eliminated the bottleneck of the Hex River rail pass.[1][2][3]
Contents
1The Hex River rail pass
1.1Route
1.2Cape Gauge
1.3First Tunnel
1.4Second Tunnel
2Current route
2.1Approval
2.2First postponement
2.3Second and third postponements
3Hexton completion
3.1Construction
3.2Completion
4Ecotourism
5References
6External links
The Hex River rail pass[edit]
Sir John Charles Molteno
The enormous Cape Fold Belt effectively separated Cape Town on the coast from the hinterland of Southern Africa, and had obstructed previous attempts to expand the Cape Colony's railway infrastructure inland. In 1872 the Cape Government, under Prime Minister John Molteno, ordered that a railway line must be constructed across this barrier in the vicinity of the Hex River Mountains. The Cape Government Railways (CGR) was formed and railway engineer William George Brounger was appointed to oversee the task.[4][5]
Route[edit]
The Hex River Mountain was a major obstacle to be overcome during the construction of the railway between Cape Town and the diamond fields at Kimberley in the Northern Cape. In 1874 surveyor Wells Hood, under the instruction of Brounger, found a potential route up the 2,353 feet (717 metres) climb from De Doorns in the Hex River valley to the top of the Karoo plateau east of the Valley, that would require gradients of no more than 1 in 40 uncompensated, very steep by railway standards, and tight curves with a minimum radius of 100 metres (328 feet). He also proposed that a short tunnel would be required.[1][2][6][7]
By 1876, the Molteno Government had selected Thomas Brounger's proposed route through the Hex River valley, with the line to follow the route from Worcester through De Doorns, then along Hood's proposed pass across the mountain via Osplaas to the 3,147 feet (959 metres) summit at Matroosberg, and then via Kleinstraat to Touws River.[1][2]
Cape Gauge[edit]
Dual gauge track on the old Strand street crossing outside Cape Town station, c. 1880
The original line between Cape Town and Wellington was laid to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge, but this gauge could not be accommodated economically on the tight curves required by the proposed Hex River rail pass. This led to a decision by the CGR to use a narrower gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) across the pass. After initially making use of dual gauge, it was decided in 1873 to convert all existing trackage of the CGR to this narrower gauge that was eventually to become known throughout Africa as Cape gauge. Credit for the fact that most of the present day railway lines in Africa are Cape gauge can therefore be directly attributed to the Hex River rail pass.[1]
First Tunnel[edit]
The original 180 metres (591 feet) tunnel, Southern Africa's first railway tunnel, is situated at 34 kilometres (21.13 miles) from De Doorns on the original line to Matroosberg. The tunnel is straight and the portals are of dressed stone masonry, but the inside is unlined. On the route ascending the mountain, Osplaas provided the only level stretch that was long enough for a conventional passing loop.[7][8]
Progress of the building of the line: Reached Worcester, June 16, 1876, and by the end of 1977 had reached Montagu Road, now known as Touws River - thus past the tunnel.[9]
Second Tunnel[edit]
Eastern portals, 1876 tunnel at left, 1929 tunnel at right
This first tunnel served the railways for 53 years, until the track was re-laid in 1929 to diminish a curve to accommodate larger locomotives. In the process a new concrete lined curved tunnel was sunk alongside the original. Since another crossing place had also become necessary, a siding named Tunnel was fashioned just east of the tunnel by laying two level dead-end spur tracks that branched directly off on opposite sides of the main line. This allowed trains to wait in one or the other of these sidings to allow an opposing train to pass. This latter tunnel remained in use for sixty years, until the line across the pass was closed to rail traffic in 1989.[7][8][10]
Despite its quick and relatively cheap construction, the Hex River rail pass served the South African Railways (SAR) for more than a century. It was the starting point of the country's first railway line to the Witwatersrand and opened the way for Cecil Rhodes' colonisation thrust into central Southern Africa.[8]
Current route[edit]
The railway line between Cape Town and Beaufort West has a ruling grade of 1 in 66 and a minimum curvature of 200 metres (656 feet), except for the pass where the steep gradient and sharp curves restricted train lengths and required additional locomotive power to bank trains on the ascent. In 1943 the gradients between De Doorns and Matroosberg stations were eased to 1 in 40 compensated, while the curves were eased to a minimum radius of 200 metres (656 feet), but despite this the Hex River rail pass still formed a bottleneck that would require more drastic measures to be eliminated.[1]
This eventually led to the decision to construct a tunnel system to eliminate the Hex River rail pass altogether. In 1945 Mr W.H. Evans, later to become Chief Civil Engineer of the SAR, proposed a new route for the section between De Doorns and Matroosberg that would result in a gradient of 1 in 66 compensated and a minimum curve radius of 800 metres (2,625 feet). The scheme would require four tunnels, two with a length of 0.8 kilometres (0.5 miles) each and two more with lengths of 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles) and 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) respectively. The benefits to the SAR would be significant. Operating costs would be decreased as a result of the elimination of sharp curves and steep gradients. The length of the section would be reduced by 8 kilometres (5 miles) and it would also eliminate altogether 5,280 degrees of curvature and 110 metres (361 feet) of false rise in level. Train running times could be reduced by 23 minutes in the ascending direction and 36 minutes in the descending direction.[1][2]
Approval[edit]
Original eastern portal of tunnel no. 4, abandoned in 1948
The scheme was approved in 1946 and it was decided that full-face working would be employed in the long tunnel. With this method and working two faces simultaneously, it was expected that 3.5 kilometres (2.2 miles) complete with lining could be achieved annually, with the whole tunnel completed in four years.[1]
Tunnelling on the subsidiary tunnels and external earthworks commenced immediately, but start of work on the long tunnel was delayed due to special equipment that had to be designed and ordered in 1946. While awaiting the special equipment, the western (Cape Town side) and eastern (Johannesburg side) portals were established by heading and benching, and short 20 metres (66 feet) sections of tunnel were driven at both ends by 1948. The original eastern portal (coordinates 33.405814°S 19.9008°E) was dug immediately adjacent to the N1 national road some 15 kilometres (9 miles) west of Touws River and took the form of a cutting into a gradient to sufficient depth to commence tunnelling.[1]
First postponement[edit]
In April 1950, however, work on the whole Hexton scheme was deferred for reasons of economy. Instead, the existing line through the pass was electrified by 1954 and operated with the Class 4E electric locomotives that had been ordered for use through the tunnels. At the time the project was halted, altogether 1,170 metres (3,839 feet) of tunnel had been excavated and 540 metres (1,772 feet) of concrete lining had been placed in the shorter tunnels.[1][11]
Second and third postponements[edit]
Southwestern portal of tunnel no. 1, the twin tunnels, of which only one is in use
The tunnel scheme was briefly resuscitated in 1965 but was deferred once again in 1966. Work was eventually resumed in 1974 and included the remodelling of the lower section of the deviation between De Doorns and Osplaas stations as well as the construction of tunnel no. 1, the twin tunnels. This was completed in 1976, at which point financial constraints resulted in yet another postponement. Authority to proceed was only given once again in late 1979.[1]
The twin tunnels bored through a hill that was skirted around the western and northern sides by the original alignment to Osplaas. When completed, the south-eastern of the twin tunnels became part of the new alignment of the De Doorns-Osplaas section. The north-western of the twin tunnels was initially used for construction trains working on the rest of the tunnel system and became part of the new route when the tunnel system opened. The south-eastern of the twin tunnels eventually fell into disuse along with the old Hex River Railpass.[1]
Hexton completion[edit]
In most respects the scheme as eventually completed was the same as that envisaged in 1945. Before proceeding in 1979, however, a sophisticated evaluation of the capacity of the whole Hexton scheme had been carried out using train diagrams and computer-devised train running times. The conclusion was that, with only two passing loops between De Doorns and Kleinstraat compared to the three at Osplaas, Tunnel and Matroosberg on the existing line, the capacity would be 31 trains, but with an additional passing loop it would increase to 42 trains. It was therefore decided to place a third passing loop, called Hexton, inside the long tunnel in addition to the two loops between tunnels no. 1 and 2 at Almeria and between tunnels no. 3 and 4 at Salbar respectively.[1][12]
Construction[edit]
The passing siding inside the longest tunnel, looking west
When tenders were invited, two routes had been selected for tunnel no. 4, the longest tunnel. One would be straight and more or less on the original location, but with the eastern portal relocated further away from the N1 national road. The other would be curved to pass through shale material, that would make the use of a tunnel boring machine an economical proposition. Tenderers were invited to quote for circular or horseshoe profiles and concrete or shotcrete linings for each of the two profiles and for each of the proposed routes. After the engineering, geological and economic factors had been analysed, the straight route with a horseshoe profile and concrete lining was finally selected.[1]
The tunnel was constructed by Compagnie Interafricaine De Travaux (Comiat), a division of Spie-Batignolles in Paris, France.
The contract for tunnel no. 4 was awarded on 13 August 1980 at a tender price of R26,770,082 and with the completion date four years later on 12 August 1984. The contractual completion date was later extended to 25 February 1986. Construction commenced in September 1980, with tunnel excavation commencing in January 1981. As a result of unforeseen adverse sub-surface conditions [13] that were encountered during the execution of the contract, however, the tunnel was only completed in November 1988.[14]
Tunnels no. 2 and 3 are similar in construction to the long tunnel, but were completed under a separate contract at a cost of R9 million. Both of them had been partly excavated when work was suspended in 1949, the 1.1 kilometres (0.68 miles) tunnel no. 2 to a distance of 583 metres (1,913 feet) of which most was concrete lined, and the 1.2 kilometres (0.75 miles) tunnel no. 3 to a distance of 467 metres (1,532 feet), but only lined in areas of poor ground. The contract called for both to be widened to new design standards to allow for overhead electrification and broader loading gauge clearances.[15]
Completion[edit]
The eastern portal of tunnel no. 4
The western portal (coordinates 33.415182°S 19.765646°E) of tunnel no. 4, as established in 1948, enters directly into the mountain face, which is nearly vertical at that point. The eastern portal (coordinates 33.40843°S 19.908717°E) was relocated a short distance to the southeast of the original 1948 portal and is in a 600 metres (1,969 feet) long and 16 metres (52 feet) deep cutting. The tunnel is 13.5 kilometres (8.4 miles) long and has a maximum cover of 250 metres (820 feet). The gradient is mainly 1 in 66, except at the passing loop where it decreases to 1 in 200. Five ventilation shafts of 1.8 metres (5 feet 11 inches) diameter and with a combined length of 1,000 metres (3,281 feet) were sunk. The cross-sectional area of the horseshoe profile single line tunnel is 30 square metres (323 square feet), but this increases to 66 square metres (710 square feet) at the passing loop. Tunnel no. 4 also contains relay rooms for signalling equipment.[1][2]
The tunnel system became operational in April 1989, more than forty years after the first portals were sunk, and was officially opened on 27 November 1989. The completed four-tunnel system now boasts the longest railway tunnel system in Africa.[2][3]
Tunnel 4 was the longest railway tunnel in Africa until 2009. The present longest single railway tunnel in Africa is 15.5 kilometres (9.63 miles) long, on the Gautrain line between Johannesburg Park Station and Marlboro Portal, which was broken through in September 2009.[16]
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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who was imprisoned and then became a politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.
A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended the Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the South African National Party came to power in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Although initially committed to non-violent protest, he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1961 in association with the South African Communist Party, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.
Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife. Mandela published his autobiography and opened negotiations with President F.W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory. As South Africa's first black president Mandela formed a Government of National Unity in an attempt to defuse racial tension. He also promulgated a new constitution and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Continuing the former government's liberal economic policy, his administration introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator between Libya and the United Kingdom in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, and oversaw military intervention in Lesotho. He declined to run for a second term, and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela subsequently became an elder statesman, focusing on charitable work in combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Although Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life, he became widely popular during the last two decades following his release. Despite a minority of critics who continued to denounce him as a communist and/or terrorist, he nevertheless gained international acclaim for his activism, having received more than 250 honours, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Soviet Order of Lenin and the Bharat Ratna. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, or as Tata ("Father"); he is often described as "the father of the nation". Mandela died following a long illness on 5 December 2013, aged 95, at his home in Johannesburg.