Kruger House Museum, Pretoria The last house in which President
Paul Kruger was to live, between 1883 and 1901, before he left
South Africa to go into exile in Europe, the Kruger House Museum
lies just a few blocks from Church square, where his bronze
statue takes centre stage facing the Palace of Justice. The
beautiful Victorian style home was interestingly built using
milk instead of water for mixing the cement as the cement of the
time was deemed to be of a poor quality. Paul Kruger’s home was
one of the first in the city to use electricity, and he had one
of the first telephones installed in Pretoria in 1891. The
unpretentious home has been refurbished to reflect the time when
Kruger and his second wife, Gezina Kruger, lived here and,
amongst a number of bits and pieces is a knife that Oom Paul
(Uncle Paul), as he was fondly known, used to amputate his thumb
after a shooting incident. The lions on the verandah were given
to Kruger by Barney Barnato, the mining magnate, as a birthday
present in 1896. Paul