Stephanus Johannes Paul Kruger (October 10, 1825 - July 14 1904), a.k.a. "Oom" (Uncle) Paul, was born in Cradock in the Colesberg district, Cape Colony, to a family of Prussian descent. He was a prominent Boer resistance leader against British rule and became president of the Transvaal Republic on December 30, 1880. He was elected president four times, the last in 1898.

Kruger traveled to England in 1883 to revise the Pretoria Convention of 1881, the agreement between the Boers and the English that ended the First Boer War.

On October 11, 1899, the Second Boer War started. In October 1900, he left South Africa by the battleship De Gelderland, sent by the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina. His wife, Gezina Kruger, was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa, dying on July 20, 1901. Kruger went to Marseilles and stayed for a while in The Netherlands, before moving to Clarens in Switzerland, where he died on July 14, 1904. He was buried on December 16, 1904 in the Church Street cemetery, Pretoria.

His former Pretoria residence is now the Kruger House Museum.

The Kruger National Park is named after him, as is the Krugerrand coin, which features his face, and the Oom Paul pipe, named after the style of pipe he smoked.

In 2004 he was voted 27th in the Top 100 Great South Africans ( see List of South Africans)

External links

• The Kruger Millions http://www.zarcoins.com/html/kruger_millions_.html
• Brief biography on the Kruger National Park web page http://www.krugerpark.co.za/paul-kruger-history.html
• Longer biography at the Kruger House Museum web site http://www.nfi.org.za/KM/khkruger.htm