Today’s Tenniel Boer War cartoon is another one depicting Transvaal president Paul Kruger. It was published in June 1900.
Its title is SHIFTING HIS CAPITAL. The
caption reads :-
President Kruger had abandoned Pretoria on the near
approach of the British Forces, taking with him, it was reported, bullion to
the value of £2,000,000, which, he said, was simply required for State
purposes.
When I read the caption I picture Tenniel rubbing his chin
as he wrote it. The ‘he said’ might just as well have been followed by “but I
don’t believe him’. By the end of May 1900 British Empire forces were nearing
Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal. They
had captured Bloemfontein, the capital city of Orange Free State in March. Paul
Kruger left on the 31st March and the government on June 2nd,
a couple of days before Lord Roberts’ forces entered the city.
By September, Lord Roberts announced that the Transvaal was
now annexed to the British Empire, and that the war was over. Yet it wasn’t.
The Boers would continue to wage guerilla warfare until the war formally ended
on 31st May 1902.
Kruger did continue the business of the Boer Government
despite the scepticism of the cartoon. Only until September, though, when his
government voted for him to avoid capture by moving first to Laurenco Marques
in Portuguese Mozambique and thence to Europe. He would never return to
Pretoria, indeed he never returned to Africa at all. He did in July 1904 in
Switzerland, but in December British authorities gave permission for his body
to be buried in Pretoria in the Church Street Cemetery.
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