Explore the Shattered dreams about the History of this artwork.
Van Wouw arrived in Pretoria to find a pedestal on Church Square, halfway between the Ou Raadsaal and the new Palace of Justice and just west of the church in the middle of the square. Correspondence from the Gauteng office of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa show an agreement between Van Wouw and Marks that the latter would choose the best of several exemplars of Scottish granite for material, but given Marks' supervision of the pedestal carving, it's not clear how much input Van Wouw had. Marks also preferred to substitute Kruger's intended Burgers Park with a more accessible location, "in the center of the city" where every visitor would see it, ideally "just west of the church building on the church square and right between the House of Parliament and the Supreme Court." The Executive Council (of which Kruger was chair) debated siting for five months and concurred with Marks on 2 June 1899. In the meantime, Marks had hired an architect, W. J. de Zwaan, to build a pedestal; once the plans were approved, he had a Scottish firm secure and sand the appropriate granite slabs. Sytze Wierda, head of the ZAR Department of Public Works: to him a Transvaal President's statue belonged on Transvaal granite, and only the machinery needed to be imported. He was overruled, however, and Marks had 200 tons of red, smooth-polished Aberdeen granite ready on July 1899 to house the statue.
Van Wouw was eager to put up the statue, but Kruger said it had to wait until the war was over, and so it would never be raised in the ZAR. On 11 October 1899, shortly before the cast models and panels were due to arrive in South Africa, the Second Boer War broke out. While they were gradually imported, they could not go past Delagoa Bay, since they were not priority items. Marks had to pay a king's ransom to salvage them and felt it wasn't worth the cost, losing interest when he realized the Boers would lose the war after the British took Pretoria. Marks spent the war on his farm, Zwartkoppies, as a passive spectator, but did receive a visit from Lord Kitchener. Kitchener, on Marks showing him Van Wouw's photographs of the statues, asked Marks to keep them as souvenirs of the people he conquered; Marks replied: "They are in Delagoa Bay and cost an arm and a leg, take them off my hands!" Kitchener sent the sculptures off on the first ship home with two exceptions: a chest containing the Kruger sculpture and a wooden model of a gun, of no interest to Kitchener, which stayed in the sheds of the African Boating Company in Lourenço Marques. Kitchener hoisted the sentinel statues on either side of the driveways leading into the Woolwich and Sandhurst Royal Military Academies, moving them after complaints to a pedestal in front of the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham near the Boer War Memorial Arch. Placing them under the care of the Royal Engineers, he later gifted two of them to that branch of the military and took the other two to his estate at Broome Park.
Kitcehener was determined that the remaining Kruger statue never be raised on African soil, considering him the personification of what the British called "Krugerism." The Pretoria City Council thus received a brief in the name of the Lieutenant Governor of the Transvaal Colony stipulating that the pedestal be removed from its central location and that the council say where they were moving it, be it Burgers Park or elsewhere. The Council decided on Prince's Park and so there the pedestal was erected. This provoked bitter Afrikaner protest, led by Gen. Louis Botha and his Het Volk party, who complained to the Lieutenant-Governor and told the council that "we are deeply disappointed...and...this can be considered nothing but an insult to our people." He vowed that "We know that there are many today who are eager to see our people's traditions dragged through the mud, but we would never have expected such behavior from the City Council of Pretoria, least of all given that so many of you not only knew him but were among his closest friends in the capital." Kitchener eventually transferred Church Square (previously Transvaal federal territory) to the Council with the express condition "that no buildings, statues or memorials of any description be erected on, or other improvements effected to the ground, without the sanction of the Lieutenant-Governor being first obtained".
Gauteng Lourenço Marques Ou Raadsaal Boer Royal Engineers Lord Kitchener Pretoria Chatham South Africa Sytze Wierda Second Boer War Royal School of Military Engineering Broome Park Burgers Park Sandhurst Palace of Justice Church Square Woolwich National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Transvaal Colony Delagoa Bay Het Volk Scottish granite Louis Botha Boers