title: Vacuole

text: Gas vesicles, also known as gas vacuoles, are nanocompartments which are freely permeable to gas, and occur mainly in Cyanobacteria, but are also found in other bacteria species and some archaea. Gas vesicles allow the bacteria to control their buoyancy. They are formed when small biconical structures grow to form spindles. The vesicle walls are composed of a hydrophobic gas vesicle protein A (GvpA) which form a cylindrical hollow, proteinaceous structure that fills with gas. Small variances in the amino acid sequence produce changes in morphology of the gas vesicle, for example, GvpC, is a larger protein.


title: Vacuole

text: Most mature plant cells have one large vacuole that typically occupies more than 30% of the cell's volume, and that can occupy as much as 80% of the volume for certain cell types and conditions. Strands of cytoplasm often run through the vacuole.


title: Vacuole

text: A vacuole is surrounded by a membrane called the tonoplast (word origin: Gk tón(os) + -o-, meaning “stretching”, “tension”, “tone” + comb. form repr. Gk plastós formed, molded) and filled with cell sap. Also called the vacuolar membrane, the tonoplast is the cytoplasmic membrane surrounding a vacuole, separating the vacuolar contents from the cell's cytoplasm. As a membrane, it is mainly involved in regulating the movements of ions around the cell, and isolating materials that might be harmful or a threat to the cell.


title: Vacuole

text: Transport of protons from the cytosol to the vacuole stabilizes cytoplasmic pH, while making the vacuolar interior more acidic creating a proton motive force which the cell can use to transport nutrients into or out of the vacuole. The low pH of the vacuole also allows degradative enzymes to act. Although single large vacuoles are most common, the size and number of vacuoles may vary in different tissues and stages of development. For example, developing cells in the meristems contain small provacuoles and cells of the vascular cambium have many small vacuoles in the winter and one large one in the summer.


title: Vacuole

text: Aside from storage, the main role of the central vacuole is to maintain turgor pressure against the cell wall. Proteins found in the tonoplast (aquaporins) control the flow of water into and out of the vacuole through active transport, pumping potassium (K) ions into and out of the vacuolar interior. Due to osmosis, water will diffuse into the vacuole, placing pressure on the cell wall. If water loss leads to a significant decline in turgor pressure, the cell will plasmolyze. Turgor pressure exerted by vacuoles is also required for cellular elongation: as the cell wall is partially degraded by the action of expansins, the less rigid wall is expanded by the pressure coming from within the vacuole. Turgor pressure exerted by the vacuole is also essential in supporting plants in an upright position. Another function of a central vacuole is that it pushes all contents of the cell's cytoplasm against the cellular membrane, and thus keeps the chloroplasts closer to light. Most plants store chemicals in the vacuole that react with chemicals in the cytosol. If the cell is broken, for example by a herbivore, then the two chemicals can react forming toxic chemicals. In garlic, alliin and the enzyme alliinase are normally separated but form allicin if the vacuole is broken. A similar reaction is responsible for the production of syn-propanethial-S-oxide when onions are cut.


title: Vacuole

text: Vacuoles in fungal cells perform similar functions to those in plants and there can be more than one vacuole per cell. In yeast cells the vacuole (Vac7) is a dynamic structure that can rapidly modify its morphology. They are involved in many processes including the homeostasis of cell pH and the concentration of ions, osmoregulation, storing amino acids and polyphosphate and degradative processes. Toxic ions, such as strontium (), cobalt(II) (), and lead(II) () are transported into the vacuole to isolate them from the rest of the cell.


title: Vacuole

text: Contractile Vacuoles is a specialized osmoregulatory organelle that is present in many free-living protists. The contractile vacuole is part of the contractile vacuole complex which includes radial arms and a spongiome. The contractile vacuole complex works periodically contracts to remove excess water and ions from the cell to balance water flow into the cell. When the contractile vacuole is slowly taking water in, the contractile vacuole enlarges, this is called diastole and when it reaches its threshold, the central vacuole contracts then contracts (systole) periodically to release water.


title: Vacuole

text: Food vacuoles (also called digestive vacuole) are organelles found in Ciliates, and Plasmodium falciparum, a protozoan parasite that causes Malaria.


title: Vacuole

text: In histopathology, vacuolization is the formation of vacuoles or vacuole-like structures, within or adjacent to cells. It is an unspecific sign of disease.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Strictly Come Dancing returned for its nineteenth series with a launch show on 18 September 2021 on BBC One, with the live shows beginning on 25 September. Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman returned as hosts, while Rylan Clark-Neal returned to host "", alongside new presenter Janette Manrara, who replaced Zoe Ball following her departure from the show. In June 2021, the BBC announced that Craig Revel Horwood, Shirley Ballas and Motsi Mabuse would return to the judging panel. It was also announced that original professional Anton Du Beke, who served as a guest judge in the previous series, would join the panel in place of Bruno Tonioli, who did not return for the second year in a row due to travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: In July 2021, the show's executive producer, Sarah James, said the show would return for a "full-length series", with fifteen celebrities, themed weeks, pre-recorded professional group dances and a Christmas special, but not a Blackpool Tower Ballroom special. From this series, the contestants were no longer restricted to perform one of the "couple's choice" categories contemporary, theatre/jazz or street/commercial and could instead incorporate the routine however they wished. In September, a row broke out over whether dancers should be vaccinated against COVID-19. Reports had suggested that three dancers had refused to be vaccinated, with one unnamed celebrity already having to self-isolate since the show's launch night had been filmed.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: The series was won by Rose Ayling-Ellis and her professional partner Giovanni Pernice. Ayling-Ellis was also the first deaf contestant to appear on the programme. The series also featured the first all-male partnership of John Whaite and Johannes Radebe, who finished as runner-up. AJ Odudu also qualified for the final with partner Kai Widdrington, but was forced to withdraw the day prior after injuring her ankle.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: In March 2021, the BBC announced that all sixteen professional dancers from the eighteenth series would return in 2021. However, in June, the BBC revealed that Janette Manrara and Anton Du Beke would not be reprising their dancing roles: Manrara was announced as a new co-host of "", succeeding Zoe Ball, while Du Beke was revealed to be replacing Bruno Tonioli on the judging panel.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: In July 2021, the BBC announced that four new professional dancers would be joining the fourteen remaining returning pros. These are: six-time Italian Latin and Ballroom Champion Nikita Kuzmin, who was also a professional dancer on the German version of the show in 2020; reigning South African Latin Champion Cameron Lombard, who was also a finalist on "South Africa's Got Talent" in 2012; Polish Open Latin Champion Jowita Przystał, who won "The Greatest Dancer" in 2020; and World Junior Latin American Champion Kai Widdrington, who was also a "Britain's Got Talent" finalist in 2012 and former professional and two-time finalist on the Irish version of "Dancing with the Stars".


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Graziano Di Prima received a celebrity partner for the first time since the sixteenth series whilst Nadiya Bychkova and Neil Jones received a celebrity partner for the first time since the seventeenth series. Nancy Xu received a celebrity partner for the first time, as did new professionals Nikita Kuzmin and Kai Widdrington, while Luba Mushtuk and other new professionals Cameron Lombard and Jowita Przystał did not receive a partner.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: On 4 August 2021, the first three celebrities participating in the series were revealed to be Tom Fletcher, Robert Webb and AJ Odudu. The following day, it was announced that John Whaite would feature in the first all-male same-sex couple, after Nicola Adams and Katya Jones became the first all-female couple the previous series. Celebrity contestants continued to be revealed until 13 August 2021, when the full line-up was announced. On 13 October it was announced that Robert Webb had been advised to withdraw from the competition due to health problems. On 17 December, the day before the final, it was announced that AJ Odudu had withdrawn from the competition after suffering ligament damage in her right ankle, making this the first series to have two withdrawals. It was also the first series since series 7 to only feature two finalists.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: "Unless indicated otherwise, individual judges scores in the charts below (given in parentheses) are listed in this order from left to right: Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas, Anton Du Beke".


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Due to testing positive for COVID-19, Tom & Amy were unable to perform. Under the rules of the show, they were given a bye to the following week.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Due to a back injury sustained by Ugo, Ugo & Oti were unable to perform. Under the rules of the show, they were given a bye to the following week. Robert & Dianne withdrew from the competition earlier in the week, due to ill health.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Due to Judi testing positive for COVID-19, Judi & Graziano were unable to perform. Under the rules of the show, they were given a bye to the following week.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: "Individual judges scores in the chart below (given in parentheses) are listed in this order from left to right: Cynthia Erivo, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas, Anton Du Beke."


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: On 15 November it was announced Craig Revel Horwood had tested positive for COVID-19, was self-isolating following the latest government guidelines and would therefore miss week 9 of the competition. On 19 November, it was announced Cynthia Erivo would replace him on the judging panel for that week.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: "Individual judges scores in the chart below (given in parentheses) are listed in this order from left to right: Craig Revel Horwood, Cynthia Erivo, Shirley Ballas, Anton Du Beke."


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: On 26 November it was announced Motsi Mabuse had come into contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. Whilst Mabuse was double vaccinated (which would mean exemption from the self-isolation guidelines), the UK government did not recognise her vaccines so would not be able to travel back from Germany. It was announced that Cynthia Erivo would return to the judging panel, replacing Mabuse for that week.


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: "For the Dance Off, Rhys & Nancy chose to dance their Samba, while John & Johannes chose to dance their Jive."


title: Strictly Come Dancing (series 19)

text: Lottie Townend of "Glasgow University Guardian" said it "the series provided a place of escape and comfort from the difficulties of the outside world. You become personally invested in each contestant’s journey, root for their success and feel the warmth through their shared love for dance". Jane Rackham of "Radio Times" was positive towards this season's unpredictability writing "This must be the most unpredictable series of Strictly ever. And not only because several participants had to miss a show after testing positive for Covid".


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Eugene Cordero is an American actor, writer, and comedian. Frequently appearing in comedic roles, he has been featured as a series regular on the comedies "Other Space" (2015), "Bajillion Dollar Propertie$" (2017–2019), "Tacoma FD" (2019–present), and "" (2020–present). His television appearances also include recurring roles on "House of Lies" (2014), "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" (2015–2017), "The Good Place" (2016–2020), and "Wrecked" (2018). Outside of comedy, he has been a series regular on the Disney+ series "Loki" since 2021. Cordero's film roles include the comedy-drama "The Kings of Summer" (2013), the monster adventure "" (2017), and the crime drama "The Mule" (2018).


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Cordero grew up in the northern suburbs of Detroit. He later moved to New York City to attend Marymount Manhattan College.


title: Eugene Cordero

text: He began improv with Chicago City Limits before taking classes at Upright Citizens Brigade and performing as a member of ASSSSCAT.


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Cordero has worked largely in comedy, appearing in such televisions shows as "Drunk History", "Kroll Show", "Silicon Valley", "The Office", "Brooklyn Nine-Nine", "Bajillion Dollar Propertie$", "Veep", "The Good Place", and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend". Cordero landed a guest role on "Hawaii Five-0" after making a sketch about the show's lack of diversity. Cordero was one of the main characters in Yahoo!'s 2015 sci-fi comedy series "Other Space". In 2019, Cordero began a starring role on "Tacoma FD" and made an appearance on "The Mandalorian". In April 2021, it was announced that he would be joining the cast of the Disney+ series "Loki".


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Beginning in 2013, Cordero voiced Jamie in the Cartoon Network series "Steven Universe". He also voiced Sawyer D. and Brian on "Bob's Burgers". He voiced Ensign Sam Rutherford on "", which premiered in 2020.


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Cordero has appeared in films such as "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates", "", "The Kings of Summer", and "Ghostbusters".


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Cordero has appeared several times on the "Comedy Bang! Bang!" podcast and television show. Cordero is the co-host of a fitness podcast with Ryan Stanger called "The Dumbbells".


title: Eugene Cordero

text: Cordero is of Filipino descent. He lives in Los Angeles. Cordero was high school classmates with comedian Andy Juett at Brother Rice High School in Michigan, whom he later collaborated with at Sexpot Comedy. Cordero is married to comedy writer Tricia McAlpin. They have two children.


title: R. Ajay Gnanamuthu

text: R. Ajay Gnanamuthu (born 15 September 1988) is an Indian film director and screenwriter works primarily in Tamil cinema. He started his career assisting producer-filmmaker A. R. Murugadoss in the films "7aum Arivu" and "Thuppakki". In 2015, he debuted as director with the horror-thriller film "Demonte Colony". His second fim was "Imaikkaa Nodigal".


title: R. Ajay Gnanamuthu

text: Gnanamuthu completed his schooling at St. John's High School and St. Patrick's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School and later joined Loyola College. During his college days as a student of the visual communications department, he enjoyed making short films.


title: R. Ajay Gnanamuthu

text: Gnanamuthu was selected to contest in the short film making show, "Naalaya Iyakunar" Season-1 in 2010 where he finished as one of the finalists. He then joined filmmaker A. R. Murugadoss as an assistant director, and worked in films such as "7aum Arivu" (2011) and "Thuppakki" (2012).


title: Sabaeans

text: The Sabaeans or Sabeans (Sabaean:, ; ; ) were an ancient group of South Arabians. They spoke the Sabaean language, one of the Old South Arabian languages. They founded the kingdom of Sabaʾ () in modern-day Yemen, which was believed to be the biblical land of Sheba and "the oldest and most important of the South Arabian kingdoms".


title: Sabaeans

text: The exact date of the foundation of Sabaʾ is a point of disagreement among scholars. Kenneth Kitchen dates the kingdom to between 1200 BCE and 275 CE, with its capital at Maʾrib, in what is now Yemen. On the other hand, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman believe that "the Sabaean kingdom began to flourish only from the eighth century BC onward" and that the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is "an anachronistic seventh-century set piece." The Kingdom fell after a long but sporadic civil war between several Yemenite dynasties claiming kingship; from this, the late Himyarite Kingdom arose as victors.


title: Sabaeans

text: Sabaeans are mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. In the Quran, they are described as either (, not to be confused with , ), or as ().


title: Sabaeans

text: The origin of the Sabaean Kingdom is uncertain. Kenneth Kitchen dates the kingdom to around 1200 BCE, while Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman write that "the Sabaean kingdom began to flourish only from the eighth century BCE onward". Originally, the Sabaeans were one of the "shaʿbs" (), "communities", on the edge of the Sayhad desert. Very early, at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, the political leaders () of this tribal community managed to create a huge commonwealth of shaʿbs occupying most of South Arabian territory and took the title , "Mukarrib of the Sabaeans".


title: Sabaeans

text: Several factors caused a significant decline of the Sabaean state and civilization by the end of the 1st millennium BC. Saba' was conquered by the Himyarites in the first century BCE; but after the disintegration of the first Himyarite Kingdom of the Kings of Saba' and Dhū Raydān, the Middle Sabaean Kingdom reappeared in the early second century. Note that the Middle Sabaean Kingdom was different from the Ancient Sabaean Kingdom in many important respects. The Sabaean kingdom was finally conquered by the Ḥimyarites in the late 3rd century, and at that time, the capital was Ma'rib. It was located along the strip of desert called Sayhad by medieval Arab geographers, which is now named "Ramlat al-Sab'atayn".


title: Sabaeans

text: The Sabaean people used an ancient Semitic tongue of their own, Sabaean or Himyaritic, which are closely linked to Ethiopian. Each of these peoples had regional kingdoms in ancient Yemen, with the Minaeans in "Wādī al-Jawf" to the north, the Sabeans on the southwestern tip, stretching from the highlands to the sea; the Qatabānians to the east of them, and the Ḥaḑramites east of them. The Sabaeans, like the other Yemenite kingdoms of the same period, were involved in the extremely lucrative spice trade, especially frankincense and myrrh. They left behind many inscriptions in the monumental ancient South Arabian script or "Musnad", as well as numerous documents in the related cursive Zabūr script.


title: Sabaeans

text: Muslim writer Muhammad Shukri al-Alusi compares their religious practices to Islam in his Bulugh al-'Arab fi Ahwal al-'Arab:


title: Sabaeans

text: According to heresiographies Shahrastain, Sabaeans accept both the sensible and intelligible world, but do not follow religious laws, but center their worship on spiritual entities.


title: Sabaeans

text: Sabaeans are mentioned many times in the Baha’i Writings as regional people and of their religious practice. The religion is considered among the true religion of God as an early part of a historical process of progressive revelation where God guides humanity by sending Divine Educators throughout time to teach people of the religion of God. They have also been mentioned in the book Secrets of Divine Civilization by `Abdu’l-Bahá’ as those peoples who have possibly contributed to the foundations of the science of logic.


title: Sabaeans

text: Sabaeans are mentioned in the biblical books of Genesis, 1 Kings (which includes the account of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba), Isaiah, Joel, Ezekiel and Job. The latter mentions Sabaeans as having slain Job's livestock and servants. In Isaiah they are described as "tall of stature".


title: Sabaeans

text: The name of Saba' is mentioned in the Qur'an twice, in the 27th and 34th "sūrahs", with the latter being named after the area. The former refers to the area in the context of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, whereas the latter refers to the "Sayl al-ʿArim" (Flood of the Dam), in which the historic dam was ruined by flooding. As for the phrase "Qawm Tubbaʿ" ("People of Tubbaʿ"), which occurs in the 44th and 50th Chapters, "Tubbaʿ" was a title for kings of Saba', like for Himyarites.


title: Hassie Harrison

text: Hassie Harrison is an American actress. She was born in Dallas, Texas. She is known for "Yellowstone", "Tacoma FD" and "The Iron Orchard".


title: Hassie Harrison

text: Harrison was born in Dallas, Texas. Her mother was heavily involved with the children’s theater in Dallas, where Harrison found her love in acting. She started college at age 15, studying European Cinema in Copenhagen, Denmark. She later attended a drama school headed by acting coach Ivana Chubbuck, where she learned modern methods of film performance and creativity. She also joined the Upright Citizens Brigade, an American improvisational theatre which teaches comedy skills.


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: Sydney Park (born October 31, 1997) is an American actress and comedian. She is best known for her roles as Cyndie in AMC's "The Walking Dead", Gabby Phillips in "Instant Mom", Caitlin Park-Lewis in "" and Makani Young in the Netflix film "There's Someone Inside Your House".


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: Park was born in Berkeley, CA and moved to Los Angeles when she was five-years-old where she went to various performing arts/magnet schools all over the city. Her mother is from Philadelphia and her father was born in Seoul, Korea, then moved to Brooklyn, NY, and eventually San Francisco, CA. Park currently resides in Los Angeles.


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: Park got her start in 2003 when she was the "Youngest comedian to ever perform at the famous Hollywood Improv (now The Improv)". In 2006, she auditioned for the first season of American reality competition "America's Got Talent" under the stage name "Syd the Kid", where she had advanced on to the semi-finals. Park had to drop out due to her acting career. She made her television debut on the teen sitcom "That's So Raven" in 2006.


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: In 2010, Park was hired to play Ellie Danville, the adopted daughter of Detective Jo Danville on "". In 2010, Park also starred as "Tootsie Roll" in the independent dark-comedy "Spork".


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: In 2017, Park starred as Meredith in the supernatural horror film "Wish Upon". In the same year, she starred on the YouTube science fiction series "Lifeline".


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: In March 2018, it was announced the Park would be starring in the new television series "" as Caitlin Park-Lewis. It premiered in March 2019 on Freeform. In September 2019, Freeform canceled the series after one season.


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: In 2019, Park appeared as Winter in the third season of the Netflix horror-comedy series "Santa Clarita Diet". In the same year, she was cast as Makani Young in the slasher film "There's Someone Inside Your House", and as Kiera Pascal in the comedy "Moxie" directed by Amy Poehler, both released by Netflix in 2021.


title: Sydney Park (actress)

text: In May 2021, Park was announced to be starring as a lead in the romantic drama "First Love" alongside Hero Fiennes Tiffin. Park has also appeared on The Wayne Ayers Podcast.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (; 10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904) was a South African politician. He 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 figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger was appointed Vice President in March 1877, shortly before the South African Republic was annexed by Britain as the Transvaal. Over the next three years he headed two deputations to London to try to have this overturned. He 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 completely independent state.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Following the influx of thousands of predominantly British settlers with the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1886, "uitlanders" (foreigners) 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 (1801–1852), a farmer, and his wife Elsje (Elisa; "née" Steyn; 1806–1834). The family was of Dutch-speaking Afrikaner background, of German, French Huguenot and Dutch stock. Also counted amongst its ancestry was some Khoi blood, which came down to it from his ancestress Krotoa. The Kruger 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. Over the following generations, Kruger's paternal forebears moved into the interior. His mother's family, the Steyns, had lived in South Africa since 1668 and were relatively affluent and cultured by Cape standards. Kruger's great-granduncle Hermanus Steyn had been president of the self-declared Republic of Swellendam that revolted against Company rule in 1795.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 Kruger and Steyn families were acquainted and Casper occasionally visited Bulhoek as a young man. He and Elsie married in Cradock in 1820, when he was 19 and she was 14. A girl, Sophia, and a boy, Douw Gerbrand, were born before Paul was born in 1825. His first two names, Stephanus Johannes, were chosen after his paternal grandfather, but rarely used. The provenance of the third given 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."


title: Paul Kruger

text: Paul Kruger was baptised at Cradock on 19 March 1826. 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. His mother died when he was eight; his father Casper soon remarried and had more children with his second wife, Heiletje ("née" du Plessis). Beyond reading and writing, which he learned from relatives, the only education Kruger received was three months of study under a travelling tutor, Tielman Roos, and Calvinist religious instruction from his father. In adulthood, Kruger would claim to have never read any book apart from the Bible.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 on the far side of the Orange and Vaal rivers. Many Boers had been expressing displeasure with the British Cape administration for some time, but the Krugers were comparatively content. They had always co-operated with the British, and had not owned slaves. They had given little thought to the idea of leaving the Cape.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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, the trekkers made improvised classrooms, marking them with reeds and grass. The more educated emigrants took turns in teaching.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The Voortrekkers faced indigenous competition for the area they were entering from Mzilikazi and his Ndebele (or Matabele) people, a branch 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. The Zulu King Dingane concluded a land treaty with Potgieter. But he reconsidered and massacred first Piet Retief's party of settlers, then others at Weenen. Kruger later recounted his family's group coming under attack from Zulus soon after the Retief massacre, describing "children pinioned to their mothers' breasts by spears, or with their brains dashed out on waggon wheels". 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."


title: Paul Kruger

text: Because of the attacks, the Krugers returned to the highveld, where they took part in Potgieter's campaign that forced Mzilikazi to move his people north, across the Limpopo River, to what became Matabeleland. Kruger and his father settled at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountains in the Transvaal. 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 the Day of the Vow.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Boer tradition of the time dictated that men were entitled to choose two farms—one for crops and one for grazing—upon becoming enfranchised burghers at the age of 16. Kruger set up his home at the farm Boekenhoutfontein, near Rustenburg in the Magaliesberg area. Kruger later became the owner of a piece of farmland named Waterkloof, on 30 September 1842. 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. The same year Kruger was elected a deputy field cornet—"a singular honour at seventeen", Meintjes comments. This role combined the civilian duties of a local magistrate with a military rank equivalent to that of a junior commissioned officer.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger was already an accomplished frontiersman, horseman, and guerrilla fighter. In addition to his native Dutch, he could speak basic English and several African languages, some fluently. He had shot a lion for the first time when he was a boy—in old age he recalled being 14, but Meintjes suggests he may have been as young as 11. During his many hunting excursions, Kruger was nearly killed on several occasions. 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. 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 on his arm up to his shoulder, he placed the hand in the stomach of a freshly killed goat, a traditional Boer remedy. 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." The wound took more than six months to heal, but he did not wait that long to start hunting again.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 was settled upon as the border between Boer and Portuguese lands. Maria and their first child died of fever in January 1846. In 1847 Kruger married her cousin, Gezina du Plessis, from the Colesberg area. Their first child, Casper Jan Hendrik, was born on 22 December that year.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Concerned by the exodus of so many whites from the Cape and Natal, and taking the view that the Boers 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". Pretorius led a Boer commando raid against this, and they were defeated by Smith at the Battle of Boomplaats. Like the Krugers, Pretorius 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. "Kruger's political awareness can be dated from 1850", Meintjes writes, "and it was in no small measure given to him by Pretorius." Like Pretorius, Kruger wanted to centralise the emigrants under a single authority and win British recognition for their territory 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Henry Douglas Warden, the British Resident in the Orange River area, 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, under which Britain recognised "the Emigrant Farmers" in the Transvaal as independent: they called themselves the "Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek" ("South African Republic"). In exchange for the Boers' pledge not to introduce slavery in the Transvaal, the British agreed not to make an alliance with any "coloured nations" there. Kruger's uncle Gert was also present; his father Casper would have been as well but he was ill and unable to attend.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The Boers and the local Tswana and Basotho chiefdoms were in near-constant conflict, mainly over land. Kruger was elected field cornet of his district in 1852, 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 (edema). Kruger narrowly escaped death twice—first a piece of shrapnel hit him in the head but knocked him out without cutting him; later a Tswana bullet swiped across his chest, tearing his jacket but not wounding him. The commando wrecked David Livingstone's mission station at Kolobeng, destroying his medicines and books. Livingstone was away at the time. 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. Whatever the truth, Livingstone wrote about the Boers in strongly condemnatory terms thereafter, depicting them as mindless barbarians.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Livingstone and many others criticised the Boers for abducting women and children from tribal settlements and taking them home to work as slaves. The Boers argued that they did not keep these captives as slaves but as "inboekelings"—indentured "apprentices" who, having lost their families, were given bed, board and training in a Boer household until reaching adulthood. Modern scholarship widely dismisses this as a technical ruse by the Boers to enforce a means of inexpensive labour for them while avoiding overt slavery. Gezina Kruger had an "inboekeling" maid for whom she eventually arranged marriage, and paid her a dowry.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. Meintjes says 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".


title: Paul Kruger

text: Pretorius did not name a successor as Commandant-General; his eldest son, Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, was appointed in his stead. The younger Pretorius elevated Kruger to the rank of commandant. 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. 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. 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").


title: Paul Kruger

text: Bloemfontein, the former British garrison town, became the Free State's capital; the Transvaal seat of government became Pretoria, named after the elder Pretorius. The South African Republic was in practice split between the south-west and central Transvaal, where most of Pretorius' supporters were, and regionalist factions in the Zoutpansberg, Lydenburg and Utrecht districts that viewed any central authority with suspicion. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. When he learned that Boshoff had called on Schoeman to lead a commando against Pretorius from Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg, he realised that disbanding was no longer enough and that they would have to make terms.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. Over the next year Kruger helped to negotiate a peace agreement between the Free State and Moshoeshoe I of the Basotho, and persuaded Schoeman to take part in successful talks regarding constitutional revisions, after which Zoutpansberg accepted the central government with Schoeman as commandant-general. On 28 June 1858 Schoeman appointed Kruger Assistant Commandant-General of the South African Republic. "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."


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger considered Providence his guide in life and referred to scripture constantly; he knew large sections of the Bible by heart. He understood the biblical texts literally and inferred from them that the Earth was flat, a belief he retained firmly to his dying day. At mealtimes he said grace twice, at length and in formal Dutch rather than the South African dialect that was to become Afrikaans. In late 1858, when he returned to Boekenhoutskloof, 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, 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger belonged to the "Doppers"—a group of about 6,000 that followed an extremely strict interpretation of traditional Calvinist doctrine. 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. 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. They formed the "Gereformeerde Kerke van Zuid-Afrika" (GK), thereafter known informally as the "Dopper Church", and recruited the Reverend Dirk Postma, a like-minded traditionalist recently arrived from the Netherlands, to be their minister. This act also had secular ramifications as according to the 1858 constitution only NHK members could take part in public affairs.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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, though Lydenburg and Utrecht did now accept the central administration. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. Peace returned to Zoutpansberg in 1869, following the intervention of the republic's Swazi allies.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. "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." 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 pace, 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The impression of Kruger garnered by the British envoys in Pretoria during early 1877 was one of an unspeakably vulgar, bigoted backveld peasant. 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. 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". They did not consider him a major threat to British ambitions.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Shepstone had the Transvaal's annexation as a British territory formally announced in Pretoria on 11 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. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: During the voyage to England Kruger encountered a 19-year-old law student from the Orange Free State named Martinus Theunis Steyn. 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. 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. 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". Carnarvon dismissed Kruger's idea of a general plebiscite and concluded that British rule would remain.


title: Paul Kruger

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


title: Paul Kruger

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


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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." 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. One English sympathiser gave Kruger a gold ring, bearing the inscription: "Take courage, your cause is just and must triumph in the end." Kruger was touched and wore it for the rest of his life.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Like its predecessor, the second deputation went on from England to continental Europe, visiting the Netherlands, France and Germany. 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." The pilot asked who Kruger was and, on their descent, gave him a medal "to remind me of my journey through the air". 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. Chelmsford thought the campaign would be a "promenade" and did not take Kruger's advice. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. Wolseley blunted the Zulu military threat by splitting the kingdom into 13 chiefdoms, and crushed Sekhukhune and the Bapedi during late 1879. He had little success in winning the Boers over to the idea of federation; his defeat of the Zulus and the Bapedi had the opposite effect, as with these two long-standing threats to security removed the Transvaalers could focus all their efforts against the British. Most Boers refused to co-operate with Wolseley's new order; Kruger declined a seat in the new executive council.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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), prompting many burghers to consider rising up there and then—Kruger persuaded them not to, saying this was premature. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: In early 1880 Hicks Beach forwarded a scheme for South African federation to the Cape Parliament. Kruger travelled to the Cape to agitate against the proposals alongside Joubert and Jorissen; by the time they arrived the Liberals had won an election victory in Britain and Gladstone was prime minister. In Cape Town, Paarl and elsewhere Kruger lobbied vigorously against the annexation and won much sympathy. Davenport suggests that this contributed to the federation plan's withdrawal, which in turn weakened the British resolve to keep the Transvaal. 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. Wolseley was replaced as governor and high commissioner by Sir George Pomeroy Colley.


title: Paul Kruger

text: In the last months of 1880, Lanyon began to pursue tax payments from burghers who were in arrears. 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. 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. 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."


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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!" 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. 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. The assembly approved a proclamation announcing the restoration of the South African Republic.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. Lanyon refused and mobilised the British garrison.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. The first major clash, a successful Boer ambush, took place on 20 December 1880 at Bronkhorstspruit. By the turn of the year the Transvaalers had all six British garrison outposts, including that in Pretoria, under siege. Colley assembled a field force in Natal, summoned reinforcements from India, and advanced towards the Transvaal. Joubert moved about 2,000 Boers south to the Drakensberg and repulsed Colley at Laing's Nek on 28 January 1881. After Colley retreated to Schuinshoogte, near Ingogo, he was attacked by Joubert's second-in-command Nicolaas Smit on 8 February and again defeated.


title: Paul Kruger

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


title: Paul Kruger

text: Colley's death horrified Kruger, who feared it might jeopardise the peace process. 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. 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—but Gladstone wanted peace, and Wood was instructed to proceed with talks. 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. Kruger pressed on how the British intended to withdraw and what exactly "suzerainty" meant. 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. The final treaty was concluded on 23 March 1881.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 , 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." This statement was to be ignored by many writers, but Manfred Nathan, one of Kruger's biographers, stresses it as one of his "most notable utterances". 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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—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. To counteract the influx of uitlanders, the residency qualification to vote was raised from a year to five years. 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". He defeated Joubert by 3,431 votes to 1,171, and was inaugurated as president on 9 May 1883.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. Joubert remained commandant-general under Kruger and also became vice-president. 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. These states were tiny but they occupied land of potentially huge importance—the main road from the Cape to Matabeleland and the African interior.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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 Ewald Esselen 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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". 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. 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. Kruger now held that Burgers had been "far ahead of his time"—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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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. 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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". 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.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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". Kruger despised Rhodes, considering him corrupt and immoral—in his memoirs he called him "capital incarnate" and "the curse of South Africa". 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. Failing to make headway in talks with the Portuguese, Kruger switched his attention to Kosi Bay, next to Swaziland, in late 1888.


title: Paul Kruger

text: 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. 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". 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. No university was built.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger was obsessed with the South African Republic's independence, the retention of which he perceived as under threat if the Transvaal became too British in character. 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. Kruger expressed great satisfaction at the new arrivals' industry and respect for the state's laws, but surmised that giving them full burgher rights might cause the Boers to be swamped by sheer weight in numbers, with the probable result of absorption into the British sphere. 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", 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. Most deemed this inadequate, and even Kruger's own supporters were unenthusiastic.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Rhodes and other British figures often contended that there were more uitlanders in the Transvaal than Boers. 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". 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. 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." 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".


title: Paul Kruger

text: In mid-March 1890 Kruger met the new British High Commissioner and Governor Sir Henry Brougham Loch, Loch's legal adviser William Philip Schreiner, and Rhodes, who had by now attained a dominant position in the Transvaal's mining industry and a royal charter for his British South Africa Company to occupy and administer Matabeleland and Mashonaland. A group of Transvaalers planned to emigrate to Mashonaland—the so-called Bowler Trek—and Rhodes was keen to stop this lest it interfere with his own plans. He and Loch offered to support Kruger in his plan to acquire a port at Kosi Bay and link it to the Transvaal through Swaziland if in return the Transvaal would enter a South African customs union and pledge not to expand northwards. Kruger made no commitments, thinking this union might easily turn into the federation Britain had pursued years before, but on his return to Pretoria forbade any Boer trek to Mashonaland.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Rhodes became prime minister of the Cape Colony in July 1890. A month later the British and Transvaalers agreed to joint control over Swaziland (without consulting the Swazis)—the South African Republic could build a railway through it to Kosi Bay on the condition that the Transvaal thereafter supported the interests of Rhodes's Chartered Company in Matabeleland and its environs. Kruger honoured the latter commitment in 1891 when he outlawed the Adendorff Trek, another would-be emigration to Mashonaland, over the protests of Joubert and many others. This, along with his handling of the economy and the civil service—now widely perceived as overloaded with Dutch imports—caused opposition to grow. The industrial monopolies Kruger's administration granted became widely derided as corrupt and inefficient, especially the dynamite concession given to Edouard Lippert and a French consortium, which Kruger was forced to revoke in 1892 amid much scandal over misrepresentation and price gouging.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger's second volksraad sat for the first time in 1891. Any resolution it passed had to be ratified by the first volksraad; its role was in effect largely advisory. Uitlanders could vote in elections for the second volksraad after two years' residency on the condition they were naturalised as burghers—a process requiring the renunciation of any foreign allegiance. The residency qualification for naturalised burghers to join the first volksraad electorate was raised from five to 14 years, with the added criterion that they had to be at least 40 years old. During the close-run campaign for the 1893 election, in which Kruger was again challenged by Joubert with the Chief Justice John Gilbert Kotzé as a third candidate, the President indicated that he was prepared to lower the 14-year residency requirement so long as it would not risk the subversion of the state's independence. The electoral result was announced as 7,854 votes for Kruger, 7,009 for Joubert, and 81 for Kotzé. Joubert's supporters alleged procedural irregularities and demanded a recount; the ballots were counted twice more and although the results varied slightly each time, every count gave Kruger a majority. Joubert conceded and Kruger was inaugurated for the third time on 12 May 1893.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Kruger was by this time widely perceived as a personification of Afrikanerdom both at home and abroad. When he stopped going to the government offices at the Raadsaal by foot and began to be conveyed there by a presidential carriage, his coming and going became a public spectacle not unlike the Changing of the Guard in Britain. "Once seen, he is not easily forgotten", wrote Lady Phillips. "His greasy frock coat and antiquated tall hat have been portrayed times without number ... and I think his character is clearly to be read in his face—strength of character and cunning."


title: Paul Kruger

text: By 1894 the Kosi Bay scheme had been abandoned and the Delagoa Bay line was almost complete, and the railways from Natal and the Cape had reached Johannesburg. Chief Malaboch's insurgency in the north compelled Joubert to call up a commando and the State Artillery in May 1894. Those drafted included British subjects, the large majority of whom indignantly refused to report, feeling that as foreigners they should be exempted. Kotzé's ruling that British nationality did not preclude one from conscription as a Transvaal resident prompted an outpouring of displeasure from the uitlanders that manifested itself when Loch visited Pretoria the following month. Protesters waited for Kruger and Loch to enter the presidential coach at the railway station, then unharnessed the horses, attached a Union Jack and raucously dragged the carriage to Loch's hotel. Embarrassed, Loch complied with Kruger's request that he should not go on to Johannesburg. Kruger announced that "the government will, in the meantime, provisionally, no more commandeer British subjects for personal military service". In his memoirs, he alleged that Loch secretly conferred with the uitlanders' National Union at this time about how long the miners could hold Johannesburg by arms without British help.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The following year the National Union sent Kruger a petition bearing 38,500 signatures requesting electoral reform. Kruger dismissed all such entreaties with the assertion that enfranchising "these new-comers, these disobedient persons" might imperil the republic's independence. "Protest!" he shouted at one uitlander deputation; "What is the use of protesting? I have the guns, you haven't." The Johannesburg press became intensely hostile to the President personally, using the term "Krugerism" to encapsulate all the republic's perceived injustices. In August 1895, after gauging burghers' views from across the country, the first volksraad rejected the opposition's bill to give all uitlanders the vote by 14 ballots to 10. Kruger said this did not extend to those who had "proved their trustworthiness", and conferred burgher rights on all uitlanders who had served in Transvaal commandos.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The Delagoa Bay railway line was completed in December 1894—the realisation of a great personal ambition for Kruger, who tightened the final bolt of "our national railway" personally. The formal opening in July 1895 was a gala affair with leading figures from all the neighbouring territories present, including Loch's successor Sir Hercules Robinson. "This railway changed the whole internal situation in the Transvaal", Kruger wrote in his autobiography. "Until that time, the Cape railway had enjoyed a monopoly, so to speak, of the Johannesburg traffic." Difference of opinion between Kruger and Rhodes over the distribution of the profits from customs duties led to the Drifts Crisis of September–October 1895: the Cape Colony avoided the Transvaal railway fees by using wagons instead. Kruger's closure of the drifts (fords) in the Vaal River where the wagons crossed prompted Rhodes to call for support from Britain on the grounds that the London Convention was being breached. The Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain told Kruger if he did not reopen the drifts Britain would do so by force; Kruger backed down.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Understanding that renewed hostilities with Britain were now a real possibility, Kruger began to pursue armament. Relations with Germany had been warming for some time; when Leyds went there for medical treatment in late 1895, he took with him an order from the Transvaal government for rifles and munitions. Conferring with the Colonial Office, Rhodes pondered the co-ordination of an uitlander revolt in Johannesburg with British military intervention, and had a force of about 500 marshalled on the Bechuanaland–Transvaal frontier under Leander Starr Jameson, the Chartered Company's administrator in Matabeleland. On 29 December 1895, ostensibly following an urgent plea from the Johannesburg Reform Committee (as the National Union now called itself), these troops crossed the border and rode for the Witwatersrand—the Jameson Raid had begun.


title: Paul Kruger

text: Jameson's force failed to cut all of the telegraph wires, allowing a rural Transvaal official to raise the alarm early, though there are suggestions Kruger had been tipped off some days before. Joubert called up the burghers and rode west to meet Jameson. Robinson publicly repudiated Jameson's actions and ordered him back, but Jameson ignored him and pushed on towards Johannesburg; Robinson wired Kruger offering to come immediately for talks. The Reform Committee's efforts to rally the uitlanders for revolt floundered, partly because not all of the mine-owners (or "Randlords") were supportive, and by 31 December the conspirators had raised a makeshift "vierkleur" over their headquarters at the offices of Rhodes's Gold Fields company, signalling their capitulation. Unaware of this, Jameson continued until he was forced to surrender to Piet Cronjé on 2 January 1896.


title: Paul Kruger

text: A congratulatory telegram to Kruger from Kaiser Wilhelm II on 3 January prompted a storm of anti-Boer and anti-German feeling in Britain, with Jameson becoming lionised as a result. Kruger shouted down talk of the death penalty for the imprisoned Jameson or a campaign of retribution against Johannesburg, challenging his more bellicose commandants to depose him if they disagreed, and accepted Robinson's proposed mediation with alacrity. After confiscating the weapons and munitions the Reform Committee had stockpiled, Kruger handed Jameson and his troops over to British custody and granted amnesty to all the Johannesburg conspirators except for 64 leading members, who were charged with high treason. The four main leaders—Lionel Phillips, John Hays Hammond, George Farrar and Frank Rhodes (brother of Cecil)—pleaded guilty in April 1896 and were sentenced to hang, but Kruger quickly had this commuted to fines of £25,000 each.


title: Paul Kruger

text: The Jameson Raid ruined Rhodes's political reputation in the Cape and lost him his longstanding support from the Afrikaner Bond; he resigned as prime minister of the Cape Colony on 12 January. Kruger's handling of the affair made his name a household word across the world and won him much support from Afrikaners in the Cape and the Orange Free State, who began to visit Pretoria in large numbers. The President granted personal audiences to travellers and writers such as Olive Schreiner and Frank Harris, and wore the knightly orders of the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and France on his sash of state. Jameson was jailed by the British but released after four months. The republic made armament one of its main priorities, ordering huge quantities of rifles, munitions, field guns and howitzers, primarily from Germany and France.


title: Paul Kruger

text: In March 1896 Marthinus Theunis Steyn, the young lawyer Kruger had encountered on the ship to England two decades earlier, became President of the Orange Free State. They quickly won each other's confidence; each man's memoirs would describe the other in glowing terms. Chamberlain began to take exception to the South African Republic's diplomatic actions, such as joining the Geneva Convention, which he said breached Article IV of the London Convention (which forbade extraterritorial dealings except "vis-a-vis" the Orange Free State). Chamberlain asserted that the Transvaal was still under British suzerainty, a claim Kruger called "nonsensical". Kruger and Steyn concluded a treaty of trade and friendship in Bloemfontein in March 1897, along with a fresh military alliance binding each republic to defend the other's independence. Two months later Sir Alfred Milner became the new high commissioner and governor in Cape Town.