Apart from learning a little reading and writing, mostly from relatives and the religious instruction from his father, Paul Kruger had no education.\u00a0 Paul Kruger\u2019s father Casper joined the Great Trek in 1836 and the family moved to the Transvaal to join the effort of those trying to establish an independent state.\u00a0 The Kruger family settled in the Rustenburg area and at the tender age of sixteen, Paul Kruger was entitled to choose his own farm.\u00a0 He chose a farm at the base of the Magaliesberg Mountains. In 1842 he married his first wife Maria.<\/p>\n
Due to his leadership qualities, Paul Kruger eventually became Commandant-General of the South African Republic which was later known as the Transvaal.\u00a0 He would also become a member of a commission of the Volksraad and was involved with the drawing up of a constitution.\u00a0 In 1895 Jakob Louis Van Wyk a member of the Volksraad introduced the motion of creating a game reserve.\u00a0 Paul Kruger, then president of the Transvaal Republic, proclaimed the Government Wildlife Park in 1898.\u00a0 The park was later known as the Sabi Game Reserve.\u00a0 It was initially created to protect the animals that were diminishing due to overhunting.<\/p>\n
This effort became what we know today as the Kruger National Park.<\/h3>\n
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Paul Kruger left South Africa for Europe in 1900 and never returned again.\u00a0 In 1904 he moved to Clarens in Switzerland, where after contracting pneumonia he died on the 14 July at the age of 78. Initially, his body was buried in The Hague but is was repatriated with British permission.\u00a0 He was given a state funeral in Pretoria on the 16th<\/sup> of December 1904 with the Vierkleur flag of the South African Republic draped over his coffin.\u00a0 He was buried in the Church Street Cemetery in what is now called Heroes Acres.<\/p>\n Dressed in Dopper suit and top hat a bronze statue of Paul Kruger was erected in Church Square, Pretoria in 1954. He is surrounded by four crouching Boers from different time periods.\u00a0 Kruger Rands, made in his likeness, were minted some 13 years after that and a gold bullion coin is still minted today.\u00a0 Preserved in his era, his house in Pretoria and farm at Boekenhoutfontein are provincial heritage sites.<\/p>\n Legend has it that there was a hoard of gold hidden by or for President Paul Kruger to avoid it being seized by the British during the Anglo-Boer War.\u00a0 According to a legend, about two million pounds of gold and diamonds lie hidden somewhere in the area between Machadodorp and Waterval Onder in Mpumalanga.<\/p>\n The story goes that as the Anglo-Boer war was reaching its peak, Lord Alfred Milner and his troops were going to invade Pretoria.\u00a0 President Kruger realised that his cabinet had no chance against the English and started making preparations for exile.\u00a0 On the 4th<\/sup> of June, they left Pretoria by train at night, making their way to Machadodorp.\u00a0 The train was set up with offices and apartments and they were to remain aboard the train until they crossed the border to Mozambique. From there they would leave for Europe.<\/p>\n According to legend, the train also carried a large number of gold coins and bars.\u00a0 Credibility was added to this legend when Lord Milner found that large amounts of money were missing from the SA Mint and National Bank.\u00a0 It is recorded that when Lord Milner took over the Republic, over 1.5 million pounds were unaccounted for.\u00a0 Sources revealed that President Kruger\u2019s government took possession of gold before the war even started to ensure it did not end up in enemy hands.<\/p>\n To this day, the gold has never been found. It became the stuff of legend and while there are many theories about where the gold could be, not a soul has come close to discovering its true hiding place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After the establishment of the park, James Stevenson-Hamilton became the first warden in the park in 1902. South African Railways took tourist to the Sabi Game Park in 1923.\u00a0 Tours included an overnight stop at Sabie Bridge (now Skukuza) and a short escorted walk in the bush.\u00a0 The tours supported the campaign to proclaim a National Park.\u00a0 \u00a0The Sabi Game Reserve and Shingwedzi Game reserve and farms were all combined and in 1926 to create the Kruger National Park.<\/p>\n More about Paul Kruger Born Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, Paul Kruger was born on the 10 October 1825 on the family farm named Bulhoek in the Steynsburg area of the Cape Colony.\u00a0 He was the third child of a farmer named Casper Jan Hendrik Kruger.\u00a0 In 1826, his parents relocated to their own farm near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-of-the-kruger-national-park"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}LEGEND OF THE KRUGER MILLIONS<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Kruger National Park is a legacy that we still honour and preserve. Kruger Park safaris<\/a> happen each day, throughout the year, giving guests from all over the world an opportunity to see this ancient conservation effort. We’re still benefitting from the efforts of those who founded the park.<\/h3>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"