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.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[2]

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.^[4] 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”.^[5] 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.^[6]

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”.^[6] Kruger despised Rhodes, considering him corrupt and immoral—in his memoirs he called him “capital incarnate” and “the curse of South Africa”.^[7] 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.^[6] Failing to make headway in talks with the Portuguese, Kruger switched his attention to Kosi Bay, next to Swaziland, in late 1888.^[6]

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.^[8] 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”.^[1] 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.^[9] No university was built.

Kruger was obsessed with the South African Republic’s independence,^[10] 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.^[11] Kruger expressed great satisfaction at the new arrivals’ industry and respect for the state’s laws,^[4] 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.^[11] 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”,^[8] 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.^[8] Most deemed this inadequate, and even Kruger’s own supporters were unenthusiastic.^[8]

Rhodes and other British figures often contended that there were more uitlanders in the Transvaal than Boers.^[12] Kruger’s administration recorded twice as many Transvaalers as uitlanders, but acknowledged that there were more uitlanders than enfranchised burghers. According to the British Liberal politician James Bryce, most uitlanders saw the country as “virtually English” and perceived “something unreasonable or even grotesque in the control of a small body of persons whom they deemed in every way their inferiors”.^[13] On 4 March 1890, when Kruger visited Johannesburg, men sang British patriotic songs, tore down and trampled on the vierkleur at the city landdrost’s office, and rioted outside the house where the President was staying.^[14] One of the agitators accused him of treating the uitlanders with contempt; Kruger retorted: “I have no contempt for the new population, only for people like yourself.”^[9] The riot was broken up by police and the Chamber of Mines issued an apology, which Kruger accepted, saying only a few of the uitlanders had taken part. Few Boers were as conciliatory as Kruger; Meintjes marks this as “the point where the rift between the Transvaalers and the uitlanders began”.^[9]

Sourced from: Wikipedia

REFERENCES: 

1. Davenport 2004.
2. Meintjes 1974, pp. 151–153.
3. ^ Meredith 2007, pp. 201–202.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b Meintjes 1974, pp. 153–156.
5. ^ Meintjes 1974, pp. 151–152.
6. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Meintjes 1974, pp. 156–159.
7. ^ Kruger 1902, pp. 192–194.
8. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Meintjes 1974, pp. 159–160.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Meintjes 1974, pp. 161–163.
10. Meintjes 1974, p. 124.
11. ^ Jump up to:^a b Meredith 2007, pp. 294–296.
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b Meintjes 1974, pp. 184–187.
13. Meredith 2007, p. 307.
14. ^ Meintjes 1974, pp. 161–163; Meredith 2007, p. 294.

Kruger left the Transvaal by rail on 11 September 1900—he wept as the train crossed into Mozambique. He planned to board the first outgoing steamer, the Herzog of the German East Africa Line, but was prevented from doing so when, at the behest of the local British Consul, the Portuguese Governor insisted that Kruger stay in port under house arrest. About a month later Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands concluded a deal with Britain to extricate Kruger on a Dutch warship, HNLMS Gelderland, and convey him through non-British waters to Marseille. Kruger was delighted to hear of this but dismayed that Gezina, still in Pretoria, was not well enough to accompany him. Gelderland departed on 20 October 1900.^[2]

He received a rapturous welcome in Marseille on 22 November—60,000 people turned out to see him disembark.^[3] Accompanied by Leyds, he went on to an exuberant reception in Paris, then continued to Cologne on 1 December. Here the public greeted him with similar excitement, but Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to receive him in Berlin. Having apparently still harboured hopes of German assistance in the war, Kruger was deeply shocked. “The Kaiser has betrayed us”, he told Leyds.^[4] They went on to the Netherlands, which was strictly neutral and could not assist militarily, but would feel more like home. After another buoyant reception from the general public Kruger was cordially received by Wilhelmina and her family in The Hague, but it soon became clear to Leyds that it embarrassed the Dutch authorities to have them staying in the seat of government. The Kruger party moved to Hilversum in April 1901.^[5]

Gezina, with whom Kruger had had 16 children—nine sons, seven daughters (of whom some died young)^[1]—had eight sickly grandchildren transferred to her from the concentration camp at Krugersdorp, where their mother had died, in July 1901. Five of the eight children died within nine days, and two weeks later Gezina also died.^[6] Meintjes writes that a “strange silence” enveloped Kruger thereafter.^[6] By now partially blind and almost totally deaf, he dictated his memoirs to his secretary Hermanus Christiaan “Madie” Bredell and Pieter Grobler during the latter part of 1901,^[7] and the following year they were published.^[8] Kruger and his entourage relocated in December 1901 to Utrecht, where he took a comfortable villa called “Oranjelust” and was joined by his daughter Elsje Eloff and her family.^[9]

Rhodes died in March 1902, bequeathing Groote Schuur to be the official residence for future premiers of a unified South Africa. Kruger quipped to Bredell: “Perhaps I’ll be the first.”^[10] The war formally ended on 31 May 1902 with the Treaty of Vereeniging; the Boer republics became the Orange River and Transvaal Colonies. Kruger accepted it was all over only when Bredell had the flags of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State removed from outside Oranjelust two weeks later. In reply to condolences from Germany, Kruger would only say: “My grief is beyond expression.”^[11]

Kruger would not countenance the idea of returning home, partly because of personal reluctance to become a British subject again, and partly because he thought he could better serve his people by remaining in exile.^[11] Steyn similarly refused to accept the new order and joined Kruger in Europe, though he did later return.^[12] Botha, De Wet and De la Rey visited Oranjelust in August 1902 and, according to hearsay, were berated by Kruger for “signing away independence”—rumours of such a scene were widespread enough that the generals issued a statement denying them.^[13]

After passing October 1902 to May 1903 at Menton on the French Riviera,^[14] Kruger moved back to Hilversum, then returned to Menton in October 1903. In early 1904 he moved to Clarens, a small village in the canton of Vaud in western Switzerland where he spent the rest of his days looking over Lake Geneva and the Alps from his balcony.^[15] “He who wishes to create a future must not lose track of the past”, he wrote in his final letter, addressed to the people of the Transvaal. “Thus; seek all that is to be found good and fair in the past, shape your ideal accordingly and try to realise that ideal for the future. It is true: much that has been built is now destroyed, damaged, levelled. But with unity of purpose and unity of strength that which has been pulled down can be built again.”^[16] After contracting pneumonia, Paul Kruger died in Clarens on 14 July 1904 at the age of 78. His Bible lay open on a table beside him.^[17]

Kruger’s body was initially buried in The Hague, but was soon repatriated with British permission. After ceremonial lying in state, he was accorded a state funeral in Pretoria on 16 December 1904, the vierkleur of the South African Republic draped over his coffin, and buried in what is now called the Heroes’ Acre in the Church Street Cemetery.^[18]

Sourced from: Wikipedia

REFERENCES:

1. Meintjes 1974, p. 22.
2. Meintjes 1974, pp. 247–250.
3. ^ Meintjes 1974, pp. 250–252.
4. ^ Meintjes 1974, pp. 252–254.
5. ^ Meintjes 1974, pp. 254–256.
6. ^ Jump up to:^a b Meintjes 1974, p. 256.
7. Meintjes 1974, pp. 256–257.
8. ^ Kruger 1902, pp. v–vi.
9.  Meintjes 1974, p. 258.
10. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 259.
11. ^ Jump up to:^a b Meintjes 1974, p. 260.
12. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 264.
13. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 261.
14. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 262.
15. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 265.
16. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 266.
17. ^ Meintjes 1974, p. 267.
18. ^ Davenport 2004; Meintjes 1974, p. vii; Picton-Seymour 1989, p. 164.

When the British occupied Pretoria on June 5, 1900, Lord Alfred Milner esta­blished that gold to the value of approxi­mately £800 000 (about R8-million in today’s terms, but bear in mind that the price of gold has gone up manyfold since 1900) had been removed from the S A Mint and National Bank between May 29 and June 4, 1900.

Gold to the value of £2,5-million was confiscated from gold mines and, according to documentary proof, £1 294 000 was removed from the S A Mint and National Bank. Gold to the value of about £2 million had disappeared ! Milner did everything in his power to find the gold but rumors began to circulate that the gold was buried somewhere and this fired the imagination of many, in­cluding that of the writer, Gustav Preller.

Armed with a pistol, he dramatically com­mandeered a mule wagon in Sunnyside. That night one load of gold was transported by the mule wagon, and four loads by a horse cab, to a waiting train on Pretoria station.

In the Preller collection, in the State Archives in Pretoria, there is a typed copy of the article in which Preller says: “I think it was on 28 May 1900, because on 31May I left Pretoria. Let’s say it was 28 May. In any case it does not seem that the precise date is important now”.

Ernest Meyer, Master of the Mint in 1900, was involved in the removal of the money and gold from Pretoria. On October 25, 1949, as a result of what Preller wrote, Meyer drew up a document in which the removal of the money and gold on June 4, 1900, is described.

In Meyer’s version of the events General Smuts, who was State Attorney at that time, was left behind in command at Pre­toria, while the government head-quarters moved quietly and almost unobserved to Machadodorp. On June 2, the British forces were approaching Pretoria from the South. The mint was still in operation and, as was usual, was closed on Saturday June 2.

Apart from the account of the gold from the mint being loaded, there was supposed to be gold bullion in bar form from the gold mines that was also loaded. In 1930, according to Historian Hedley Chilvers however,  most of the bar gold was never accounted for !

He maintains that the total value of the bar gold was £2 million (approximately 480,769 ounces or 1,202 bars) which would have a value of 26 million dollars (R6.6 billion) today – consisting of 183,138 ounces of bar gold (457 bars) was taken from the Witwatersrand mines : Robinson Mine (198 bars), Ferreira Deep (104 bars), Ferreira Mine (96 bars) and other small mines (60 bars).

12 years after the end of the war the State Mining Engineer Jan Munnik said at a public meeting : “I would ask General Botha what has been done with the 134 gold bars, worth roughly £750,000, which he had recovered from the mines, and which, at President Kruger’s departure, were left in the hands of the Commandant-General, General Botha, and two others, by government resolution. Thus far the gold has never been accounted for, and if General Botha can give a satisfactory explanation, and if there is any gold left, I would say: Hand it over to help the Empire.”

Sourced from: Sabie