Paul Kruger

This monument is just outside the Paul Kruger gate to the Kruger National Park.
The Kruger National Park was established in 1926.
The surface area of Kruger National Park is 19,633 km².

The park was first proclaimed in 1898 as the Sabie Game Reserve by the then president of the Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger.

He first proposed the need to protect the animals of the Lowveld in 1884, but his revolutionary vision took another 12 years to be realised when the area between the Sabie and Crocodile Rivers was set aside for restricted hunting.


He received only three months' formal education, his master being one Tielman Roos, but became knowledgeable from life on the veld.On 30 December 1880, at the age of 55, Kruger was elected President of the Transvaal.

In 1898, Kruger was elected President for the fourth and last time.Kruger was a large squarely built man, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. In later years his hair went snowy white. He wore a beard, but never a moustache. He mostly went dressed in a black frock coat with a top hat. Never far from his pipe, he was a chain smoker.

The image of Kruger in his top hat and frock coat, smoking his pipe was used to great effect in the Anglo-Boer war by British cartoonists.