page_title: Paul Kruger
section_title: Exile and death
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Kruger / Exile and death
caption_attribution_description: English: President en:Paul Kruger of the en:South African Republic (left) leaving Delagoa Bay, Mozambique on 20 October 1900 aboard en:HNLMS Gelderland (1898), looking back towards the shore. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Europe and never saw South Africa again. His biographer Johannes Meintjes calls this "one of the most striking and moving photographs ever taken of President Paul Kruger." The man on the right is Manie Bredell, who served as the President's private secretary for the rest of his life. Kruger died in Switzerland in 1904.
context_page_description: Stephanus Johannes Paulus "Paul" Kruger 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 from 1883 to 1900. Nicknamed Oom Paul, he came to international prominence as the face of the Boer cause—that of the Transvaal and its neighbour the Orange Free State—against Britain during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He has been called a personification of Afrikanerdom, and remains a controversial and divisive figure; admirers venerate him as a tragic folk hero, and critics view him as the obstinate guardian of an unjust cause.
  Born near the eastern edge of the Cape Colony, Kruger took part in the Great Trek as a child during the late 1830s. He had almost no education apart from the Bible, and through his interpretation believed the Earth was flat. A protégé of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, he witnessed the signing of the Sand River Convention with Britain in 1852 and over the next decade played a prominent role in the forging of the South African Republic, leading its commandos and resolving disputes between the rival Boer leaders and factions.
context_section_description: Kruger left the Transvaal by rail on 11 September 1900—he wept as the train crossed into Mozambique. He planned to board the first outgoing steamer, the Herzog of the German East Africa Line, but was prevented from doing so when, at the behest of the local British Consul, the Portuguese Governor insisted that Kruger stay in port under house arrest. About a month later Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands concluded a deal with Britain to extricate Kruger on a Dutch warship, HNLMS Gelderland, and convey him through non-British waters to Marseille. Kruger was delighted to hear of this but dismayed that Gezina, still in Pretoria, was not well enough to accompany him. Gelderland departed on 20 October 1900.
  He received a rapturous welcome in Marseille on 22 November—60,000 people turned out to see him disembark. Accompanied by Leyds, he went on to an exuberant reception in Paris, then continued to Cologne on 1 December. Here the public greeted him with similar excitement, but Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to receive him in Berlin. Having apparently still harboured hopes of German assistance in the war, Kruger was deeply shocked. "The Kaiser has betrayed us", he told Leyds. They went on to the Netherlands, which was strictly neutral and could not assist militarily, but would feel more like home. After another buoyant reception from the general public Kruger was cordially received by Wilhelmina and her family in The Hague, but it soon became clear to Leyds that it embarrassed the Dutch authorities to have them staying in the seat of government. The Kruger party moved to Hilversum in April 1901.
  Gezina, with whom Kruger had had 16 children—nine sons, seven daughters (of whom some died young)—had eight sickly grandchildren transferred to her from the concentration camp at Krugersdorp, where their mother had died, in July 1901. Five of the eight children died within nine days, and two weeks later Gezina also died. Meintjes writes that a "strange silence" enveloped Kruger thereafter. By now partially blind and almost totally deaf, he dictated his memoirs to his secretary Hermanus Christiaan "Madie" Bredell and Pieter Grobler during the latter part of 1901, and the following year they were published. Kruger and his entourage relocated in December 1901 to Utrecht, where he took a comfortable villa called "Oranjelust" and was joined by his daughter Elsje Eloff and her family.
  Rhodes died in March 1902, bequeathing Groote Schuur to be the official residence for future premiers of a unified South Africa. Kruger quipped to Bredell: "Perhaps I'll be the first." The war formally ended on 31 May 1902 with the Treaty of Vereeniging; the Boer republics became the Orange River and Transvaal Colonies. Kruger accepted it was all over only when Bredell had the flags of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State removed from outside Oranjelust two weeks later. In reply to condolences from Germany, Kruger would only say: "My grief is beyond expression."
  Kruger would not countenance the idea of returning home, partly because of personal reluctance to become a British subject again, and partly because he thought he could better serve his people by remaining in exile. Steyn similarly refused to accept the new order and joined Kruger in Europe, though he did later return. Botha, De Wet and De la Rey visited Oranjelust in August 1902 and, according to hearsay, were berated by Kruger for "signing away independence"—rumours of such a scene were widespread enough that the generals issued a statement denying them.
  After passing October 1902 to May 1903 at Menton on the French Riviera, Kruger moved back to Hilversum, then returned to Menton in October 1903. In early 1904 he moved to Clarens, a small village in the canton of Vaud in western Switzerland where he spent the rest of his days looking over Lake Geneva and the Alps from his balcony. "He who wishes to create a future must not lose track of the past", he wrote in his final letter, addressed to the people of the Transvaal. "Thus; seek all that is to be found good and fair in the past, shape your i
caption: Kruger leaving for Europe in 1900—he would never return. At right is his secretary Madie Bredell.
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