Paul Kruger as part of our early 20th century South African history of course Paul Kruger was mostly 19th century but he's the link the entering link from the 19th century to 20th century so Paul Kruger was or Paul was born on his grandfather's farm at Bullhook, 10th of October, 1825. You'll recall we used to have Kruger Day, 10th of October was a public holiday. Paul's parents were Caspar Kruger and Elsie Stang. Drought and locusts and migrating herds of buck forced him to lead a nomadic existence in the Karoo. He is hardened by nature and he was schooled by the Bible. He received only three months of formal classroom-type education in his life. Mostly, he was homeschooled. He read the Bible daily. As a young boy of 10 years old, Paul Kruger set out on the great trek under Hendrik Potgieter. Now, the great trek Basically, of all the treks, Hendrik Potgieter's was about the first. Normally, we think of the Great Trek departing around 1837. This is 1836. His father, Caspar Kruger, joined the trek party of Hendrik Potgieter on one of the first expeditions that actually left in 1835. So the way ahead, we normally talk about the anniversary of the Great Trek being 1836, 1837, but they were pre-trekkers. At age 11, Paul Kruger was one of the men who successfully defeated the previously unbeaten Marabini impis of Mozilikazi at the Battle of Fejkop. You've perhaps seen this tapestry in the Fortrico monument. Asagai is coming through and there were 40 men, counting 11-year-old Paul Kruger. and they were fighting. Here's the battle site, Vechkop. This is an interesting, very Christian-rich imagery. Notice the fortrecker has one leg in a sort of kneeling position. He's holding his rifle up, but the barrel is pointed down. He's looking upwards towards heaven. He has his Bible held with his left hand close to his chest, and there's an Asagai in it. And this is the picture of the imagery of the shield of faith and you can see Ascars breaking as they come towards him. So the stacked stones at the base symbolizes the encompassing threat to the past and to the present. The total onslaught against Christian civilization from this hostile situation arises the powerful figure of a leader. Although one foot is rooted in the conflict, he has unflinching faith in victory. In his left arm he holds the Holy Bible, in his right hand a firearm, which, in noble submission to God, points downwards and against which hostile assagaos break and snap. The sculptor has embodied in this monument the words of Ephesians 6 verse 16, above all taking up the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. With this inspiring word of God in our hearts, and by accepting the responsibility to defend ourselves, we are assured of victory. Not often you get explicitly Christian monuments explained like this. Paul Krug had a rough upbringing on the trail, and in the wilderness he became proficient in horse riding and hunting. Rough is one of the words. As a young teenager, he had a misfire days away from home, hunting with his musket, and he had to amputate his thumb, his own thumb, with his pocket knife, cauterize the wound, and walk back. So, no sissy verse. After his baptism of fire at the Battle of Fekop against the previously unbeaten Matabele, he served in numerous campaigns against raiding tribes including the Makapane in 1854 and Mapele in 1858. He was a leader in the First Anglobor War of 1880 to 1881. Paul Kruger's father first settled close to what today is Potsdam and later moved to what is now Rustenburg. At age 16, Paul Kruger carved his own farm out of the wilderness at the foot of the Mahalysburg Mountains. 16 years old. At 17, he married Anna Maria Duprecy and his wife and child died in childbirth February 1846. So talk about a rough... He's not even 20 yet. He's still in his teens that he's fought how many battles, he's married, he's built a farm, he's lost his wife and child. He then married again in 1847 to Gesina Susanna du Plessis, no relationship with the previous du Plessis, at least no direct relation. Together they were blessed with seven daughters and nine sons. That's 16 children, 17 if you count the one that died from his previous wife. Before the end of his life he had over 144 grandchildren. in his lifetime. Phenomenal. Paul Kruger was a deeply devout believer who studied the scriptures daily, and he memorized most of the Bible by heart. He was a founding member of the Hereford Medekirk, which was founded in Rustenburg in 1859. The Doppers, as the Hereford Medekirk were known, separate from the nitty-gritty Hereford Medekirk over a new hymn book. was considered too liberal back then for Paul Kruger's type. And so, you also need to bear in mind that the Niederrichter Kreffe-Miederkirch forbade the Germanese to take part in the Great Trek. That may be a surprise to most people, because later, when it was so successful, they acted like it was their idea. But the NGK, at the time, forbade the Durmanis to go because it was considered rebellion against the government, even if it was the British government, still the government. So, the Great Czech had no Durmanis. Now, we know of Saul Saliers as a chaplain, but he was not a theologically trained man. He was just a well Bible-read, enthusiastic evangelical. And so, they had no Durmanis there. In fact, the first Durmanis to the Vortreckers was Andrew Murray, the first Dutch-formed Durmanis, that is. And that was where he spent his first 11 years of ministry as a minister to the Voortrekkers, primarily in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State. And he made a few missions across the Vaal to the Transvaal Voortrekkers. So Andrew Murray was the first NGAK Germany to the Voortrekkers. But before that time, they had formed the Hereford Medekirch. And the Hereford Medekirch was for the Voortrekkers, an alternative because the DRC didn't want to recognize them because they saw them as rebels. So they believed that the new NGK hymnbook contradicted some of the principles of their foundational document, the Synod of Dort, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession. So the Hertha Medekerk founded the Potsdam University College for higher Christian education. I remember seeing Potcherstrom University HCE sign on the road. Sadly they've taken away the HCE now. Now it's called University of the Northwest. Still quite a strong Khirif Amir presence at the university. It's probably one of the best universities in the country even now, and the University of Northwest still does an enormous amount to help Bible colleges. For example, Cedar College, Cedar Teacher Training College at Costa Banta Mission, is affiliated with Potsdam. In fact, Potsdam has a lot of out-of-campus affiliates who they provide cover affiliations for. The Bible Society, the Bible Institute, and all their degrees of accreditation from Northwest University to this day. Right, so they're still probably the most pro-Christian university in the country to this day, I would say. Although there's been inroads, it's a battle, but they've got a Christian core there. The Herefemede Kirke founded this university in Potsdam, and the Herefemede Kirke used only hymns from the Bible, mainly the Psalms, Psalm, and other scripted bemeanings directly drawn from the Bible. It's got to be only scripture that they sing, and so they would regard MGK as the liberal sister church. His involvement in politics began at age 25, when Paul Kruger represented the Transvaal at the Sand River Convention, 1852, which was important in recognizing the independence of the Orange Free State, because shortly after the Boers took the Orange Free State, the British annexed them and they became the Orange River Colony. And it took quite a lot of negotiations, which Andrew Murray was key to, to get the British to withdraw from the Orange Free State and make the Orange River Colony a free country again. So that was interesting that they were both involved in it, Andrew Murray. and Paul Kruger. By the way, Andrew Murray also turned to Paul Kruger when he needed a base for the first mission. The first South Africa general mission, missionaries being sent out from Wellington's African Institute, were welcomed onto Paul Kruger's farm in the Mochalisburg near Rustenburg, and therefore his farm provided a free base for the first missionaries from the African Institute of Wellington to establish their work in the Transvaal. Paul Kruger was a field coronet in the commandos and eventually became Commandant General of the South African Republic. He was appointed member of the commission of the Volksrat, or Parliament, to draw up the constitution of the Transvaal Republic, what later became the South African Republic. He was present at the Sand River Convention of 1852, where the British government recognized the independence both of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free State. In 1875, Paul Kruger was elected as a member of the Executive Council and shortly after that he became Vice President of the Council. Here's the inside of the magnificent building of the Volksrat of Church Square in Pretoria. When President T.F. Burgess came to power in 1872, Paul Kruger could not support his liberal policies and resigned in early 1873. We'll learn more about President Burgess and a key role he played in the First Anglo-Boer War. It was the declining popularity of President Burgess that led Lord Shepston to seize the Transvaal Republic and annex it to the British Empire. So unpopular was Burgess and his policies were so unpopular that not one Boer responded to his call for commanders to defend the independence when the British very boldly sent 11 Natal mounted police, including Rider Haggard, who later became Sir Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon's Mines and She. 11 Natal Mounted Police rode into Church Square in front of the Folk Front, brought down the fair clear, hoisted up the Union Jack and said, this is now the Transvaal colony. And Burgess wanted the people to defend themselves and the commander said, forget it. They weren't interested because Burgess was trying to tax them. Can you imagine? However, as the British began to tax the farmers, Paul Kruger became the most vocal leader of the resistance to foreign rule. And at a historic meeting at Pader Kral in December 1880, the citizens restored the republic electing Paul Kruger, Pieter Behr and M. W. Pretorius to form a triumvirate to lead their republic. And this has a whole lot of the original stones piled underneath where the such very much like in the days of Joshua, each one came put a stone there and this symbolized their joint determination to regain their independence. So after the Transvaal was annexed by Britain in 1877, it was Paul Kruger who led the resistance movement. He visited Britain as the leader of a deputation protesting the violation of the Sand River Convention, which the British, of course, had authorised and signed. He demanded the restoration of the Transvaal independence, which neither Queen Victoria nor her ministers were responsive to. But after Boer victory at the Battle of Majuba in 1881, Paul Kruger played a vital role in the negotiations with the British, which led to the restoration of Transvaal independence. On the 30th of December 1880, at age 55, Paul Kruger was elected president of the Transvaal, and so he would be for the next more than 20 years. He visited Europe on a number of occasions. He was received with great honor in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. In the elections of 1883, 1888, 1893, 1898, Paul Kruger was victorious, each time defeating his main rival, Pieter Behr. Not much variety in the politics at that stage. Do you want Pieter Behr or do you want Paul Kruger? That was basically the simple choice. But he won each time. The discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand in 1884 had far-reaching political repercussions for the Oatlanders who were pouring into the Transvaal. The gold dramatically changed the demographics. It threatened to overwhelm the independence of the poor republics. This is quite a picture showing Market Square in Johannesburg shortly before the turn of the century. Chaos. In his memoirs, Paul Kruger declared that instead of rejoicing at the discovery of gold, they should have wept. because of how it had caused the land to be soaked in blood. There'd never been a second Anglo-Boer war if there hadn't been gold in Transvaal. It was a war over gold. That was what it was. Well, for the Boers, it was for the independence. For the British, it was for the gold. And so you can say about many countries. I think of South Sudan. It's a tragedy they discovered oil in South Sudan. Otherwise, the independence might be more secure. But because there's oil, there's ongoing warfare over it. Paul Kruger was farsighted in his concern for nature conservation, and he is credited with the establishment of the initial Sabi Game Reserve in the Eastern Transvaal, which has grown to the greatest game reserve on earth, the Kruger National Park. Paul Kruger displayed tremendous wisdom and restraint in how he handled the treachery of some of the prominent miners in the attempt to foment revolution and the failed Jamison raid. Led by Cecil John Rhodes's most trusted leader, Leander Starr Jamieson, the first administrator of Rhodesia. in 1895, an attempt to bring about revolution. They had some of the miners in Transvaal asked for intervention, and then all, of course, rigged, you know, creating a demand. And then Glenn Starr Jamieson led the raid. They thought, well, you know, Ryder Haggard and co. could have taken Transvaal with just 11 men. Back in 1877, maybe we could do something like that with a few hundred men. But times have changed. and Paul Kruger was more popular and the commanders came. Instead of hanging the plotters, or imprisoning the invaders, which would be what most countries would have done, and what his people demanded, Paul Kruger handed them over to the British government to deal with. Here you can see there's Leander's Todd Jamieson and part of his group, who had been captured by the Boers, released in the hands of British, another on board ship going back to Britain for trial where Everyone was basically let off. So nothing happened to him, but he averted war. He didn't just follow the book in a legalistic way. The way people often describe Paul Kruger, you get the impression he has a narrow-minded person who's got no vision, no understanding of the world, but he was very wise. He didn't enforce justice. He gave mercy and he brought some more years of peace for the Transvaal. There are numerous amusing stories of Umpaul on state visits overseas. On one occasion he walked into a French banquet hall in Versailles only to immediately turn around and walk out saying, I'm sorry, I was not aware that you women weren't dressed yet. And he is protesting against the immoral fashions prevalent in Paris and had to find some shawls before he could go back into the room. When President Kruger announced that any church in Pretoria could receive an acre free to build their house of worship on, He was approached by a Jewish rabbi who requested his acre. So Paul sat there, doubtless sucking on his pipe, staring at this man. And after a while he responded, the rabbi can have half an acre because the Jews only believe half the Bible. When the rabbi invited the president to dedicate the synagogue, Uwe and Paul solemnly removed his top hat and declared, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I dedicate this synagogue to the glory of God. So this may be the only synagogue in the world dedicated in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is the actual synagogue, yes. That's Pretoria. It's on Church Street. It's almost directly facing where Paul Kruger's house is in Pretoria. Oh, I doubt that they put that into... I think the Jewish rebbe was completely embarrassed. But that's the historic fact. With the radical economic and political challenges that followed the discovery of gold on the Bat Vodashron, President Kruger was concerned that the miners would soon be outvoted by the farmers. In fact, one of his descriptions was, if I'm traveling in my Orsovar and I see you and your family walking by the side of the road and I offer you a lift, a ride on my Orsovar, it doesn't give you the right to say, well, now we outnumber you, so hand over the reins and the Orsovar's now ours. And to him, the Oatlanders were, they were gust arbeiters, they were guest workers, they're welcome to come and to work, but you don't have the right to take over our country. To counter this possibility made the conditions of naturalization more demanding, and he started to build these forts, which you've got on every side around Pretoria, because he realized the British were going to attack again after all they'd done before. In 1890, the government restricted the Oatlander franchise for presidential and folksribe elections to only naturalized citizens who'd been in the country for at least 14 years. It's not too extreme. Some countries are far more than that. The state of Israel today is far more stringent than that. You have to be a Jew. to be able to immigrate and become a citizen of Israel. And even if your family's lived there for 14 centuries, you don't have citizenship if you're not Jewish and so on and so forth. So there are many countries like that. I know friends of mine who's at university with me who lives in Hong Kong and his son was born in Hong Kong, but his son couldn't get Chinese citizenship because he said, you're not Chinese. He was born there. There's a lot of countries with much more stringent immigration and naturalization conditions than the Transvaal had. However, not like the British cared about the miners, they wanted the gold. So this is a pretext. A second false right was created to represent outlander interests to be elected by naturalized citizens of at least two years. So an outlander, a British miner, for example, who might be a member of Communist Party. Remember, we've got the second oldest Communist Party in the world in South Africa, founded really on the diamond mines of Kimberley. in the 1860s, so many of them actually were members of the Freemasons or the Communist Party and so on, and were working for the subversion of the government. For him to have allowed them even at two years to have a vote, even though it's for a separate house, you would think they were doing what they could, but not good enough for the British. Sir Alfred Milner, you would have noticed as he came here today, you had to drive on a road called Milner Road, named after this warmonger. The British High Commissioner in South Africa was an ardent imperialist and committed to agitating outlander dissent and opposition to Kruger's government in the Transvaal and to absorb both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State into British South Africa. At that stage, you can see here the red. The British controlled not just the Cape Colony and the Transkei and Natal, the Kingdom of Zuland, but also both Sutu Land, what today we call the Sutu, Betjiana Land, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Naasa Land, what today is Malawi. Plainly, the Transvaal and the Free State were being encircled by the British. The only access they had to the sea was through Portuguese East Africa, what today we call Mozambique, and Lorenzo Marx, what today we call Maputo. As the British invaded the Transvaal in May 1899, President Kruger was sent overseas to raise support for the Boer cause. He fled through Portuguese East Africa, Mozambique, then he boarded the Dutch warship, the Gelderland. sent by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, a very brave woman. Queen Wilhelmina was only 18 years old. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. And as many people said at the time, she's the bravest man in Europe. Because all the heads of state of Europe were terrified of making an overt stand against Great Britain, who had the greatest navy in the world. controlled one-fifth of the world's land surface, and Queen Wilhelmina openly defied the British. She sent her battleship through the Royal Navy, who of course could destroy the Netherlands Navy in a short time, but she had the boldness to defy the British naval blockade. to transport President Paul Kruger safely to Europe. And here you can see a whole lot of the newspapers, in this case French ones, showing President Paul Kruger being greeted at the dockside by Queen Wilhelmina. And the travel over there, and you see the Dutch flag very openly displayed, the Helderland landing, and then being received by for example, the President of France in this case. And all over Europe, the Boer flags were being flown. You can see the fair clear in the foreground here, here in France. And Paul Kruger was honored and respected throughout the world. It's extraordinary to think that 118 years ago, the Boers were the most respected people in the world. And the British were the most despised. And in just 60 years, the Afrikaner was turned to being the most hated people in the world, at least from the media's perspective. Intriguing how the press can make such a difference, changing public perception. I got all these from Krugerhaus. You've got to go to Krugerhaus in Church Street in Pretoria, and this is one of the rooms. Here's a model of the Helderland, and there's a model of the room that he died in in Switzerland in 1904, a bust of him. And they've got posters and banners all around in different rooms, not in this one, but the The different accolades and awards and pro-Boer sentiment from all over the world is recorded there. It's absolutely remarkable to see all over the world the people were respecting the Boers. So this is Kruger House, which is, they've built some halls behind the original presidential house, which is very humble, actually, in Church Street in Pretoria, where President Kruger was when he was president of the Transvaal. And so most of my pictures of this I've taken right there in this magnificent, I've been there many times, including just in June. Whenever we pass through Pretoria, I take our teams and I'm taking around the country for part of history. Krugerhaus is well worth a visit. You can see the Helderland was a very humble battleship by the estimations of the day, but Netherlands was willing to defy Great Britain at that time very, very bravely. So in Europe... Queen Victoria was still Queen of England in 1900, and her granddaughters defying her effectively, which is a very brave woman. And she set her greatest heroes, Paul Kruger. Owen Paul was greatly loved and revered. He was honoured as the principled leader of a courageous people who had been most unjustly invaded and abused by the British Empire. Visitors to Kruger Haus in Church Street, Pretoria can see many of the trophies awarded by the Russian Tsar. In fact, there's the most magnificent right here in the middle here, they've now moved to the side, a huge statue, gold and other kinds of valuable gems. from the Russians are the Emperor of Austria, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the Dutch, the French, the Italians, the Swiss, the Americans, and many of the pictures I took of those magazines, newspapers, are right from this hall. So this is Paul Kruger's honors, you could say. Umpel died in exile in Clarence, Switzerland, 14th of July, 1904. And they've basically replicated what the bedroom looked like over here at one end of this hall, showing the exact furnishing that was in his room, and so on. On the 16th of December, 1904, his remains were reburied in Heeresacker in Church Street Cemetery in Pretoria. And you can see some of the turnouts in Victoria for this event. The British were still in control, the Transvaal was a colony, no self-government yet, that only came in 1906, but you could see the resistance was still there. The statue of Paul Kruger and his characteristic formal dress stands in the centre of Church Square, Pretoria. Magnificent monument, actually. And you can see the Falkstraat just behind, with the Eindrach-Mark-Mark up in the top banner over the Basically where the foxtrot met. Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger. So Paul Kruger, but Paul was his third name. Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger. And he has different honor guard statues around him. You can see from those using muskets from the Fortrecker days through to the bandoliers from the first Anglo-Boer war of 1880. And you'll see one of these exact four-lies muskets outside we've got for the children to see. in the meeting area outside. And then you can see the more modern weapons being used here. This would also be the first Anglo-Boer war. You can see the kind of weaponry that would have been used in the days of Martini-Henrys and so on. Then you've got different clocks representing his time on commando, his time as a politician, going on the campaign trail, and then sitting down and doing negotiations as part of cabinets and all of the various political things he's involved in from Sand River Convention onwards and the establishment of this monument. He never returned. No, not alive. So he believed he could not live under the British and he was willing to stay and fight, but the man was almost 80 at that stage. So President Steyn said, no, you're more valuable for us overseas as our ambassador to speak up for them. And in fact, that's what he was doing, he was mobilizing pressure against the British and support for the Boers. So, he was a far more effective freedom fighter in the Second Anglo-Boer War as an exile. And so, he was able to freely say what he wanted over in Europe, but if he had come back into British-controlled territory, he would have been muzzled effectively. So, you see here the Folks' Right. This is the Parliament of the Transvaal Republic. And then you've got the Supreme Court, also on Church Square. And just magnificent. You can see the Transvaal emblem there. You'd have to look very closely. I've got a closer up of that. The Krugerrand gold coin is named in his honor and features his face. And I must say these are some of the most sought after gold coins for collecting. And they're more valuable than the one ounce. I think one ounce Krugerrand now is worth, what, something like At least, that sounds about right. Because I think it's about $1,600 that you can get for a good condition one. Fine gold, very, very fine gold. Considered one of the best coins. A street in St. Gellin, Switzerland, Krugerstrasse is named after him. His greatest monument, I think, is the Kruger National Park. So this is Kruger House. He was the only president to ever stay in here. This is our monument. A very, very humble building. Okay, you've got these weird lines. Interesting. Gifts from Barney Mbato, who was one of the real, what should we call them? Banksters, gangsters. involved in Cecil Rhodes and so on. He was a competitor to Cecil Rhodes but he was one of the diamond speculators and he had saloons and who knows what else. These days we'd call him a gangster or a member of the mob but he presented the president with these two lions. This is the emblem of the Transvaal Republic. You see the eagle above, you see the lion, you see the lady holding the anchor. It's always a symbol of Cape Town, the mother city of South Africa. You've got the Ossavaal, the wagon. Ein Dirach macht Macht, in unity is strength. This was the battle cry, the motto of Andres Pretorius at the Battle of Blood River, the then commander, the victory commander, defeat the Zulus in 1838. This year will be the anniversary, the 180th anniversary is it, of the Battle of Blood River, this December the 16th. And, of course, the Feerklaer. The Feerklaer is the Dutch flag with a green banner added to it. His rooms were furnished very humbly and you can see the wallpaper at that stage, very popular with the Victorian era. And not a very big dining room table, but considering he had 16 children and 144 grandchildren, they obviously couldn't all fit around the table at the same time. His desk, again a very humble table for President of the Transvaal, and I'm sure he wouldn't have had that bust on it when he was using this desk, but a bookcase with some of the Transvaal Republic specially important government documents and so on. The telephone, this is one of the first telephones installed in Pretoria, October 1891. Similar to the one placed in President Kruger's house. This isn't the original one, but it's one just like the one that doubtless was looted when the British took it. Some of the laying the foundation stone of different important buildings, even churches around Pretoria that were particularly made for him. kept as commemoration. He did do some hunting, so you've got some of the horns of animals that he or others may have hunted. Not a very big bed, considering he's a tall, big man, and that's meant to be a double bed. Their double beds in those days are not very big, as you'll see when you look at, for example, Huguenot Monument in the front. Notice it leads directly to the kitchen. The furniture is all true to what would have been used at that time, not necessarily the furniture of his at the time, because again, there was a lot of looting. The kitchen, they did a lot of hospitality, but it gives you a good insight to the kind of tools and cutlery and lovely copperwork. The Boers were very industrious people, and just the stove itself is really a work of art. and the tools that they made. You can imagine somebody who lived a nomadic existence in his childhood. hacked farms out of the wilderness. Apparently his wife, Gesina, was in the kitchen every day. They didn't have much staff. They did things themselves. You could meet with the President any time in the afternoon for cook sisters, rusks and coffee on the stoop and people would come and chat to the President about what their complaints were. He's very accessible. It's just hard to imagine. It's obviously another world, another age. very advanced kind of materials here. I mean, you can see everything from minces to coffee grinders. They've got all kinds of tools. Industrious people. Outside the back of Kruger house, you'll see some wall planks commemorating. This is part of Kruger's carrying a rock and they're building a pile of rocks sort of like in the days of Joshua, the termination. And then another major event when the Transvaal Republic succeeded in building the railway through to Lorenzo Marx, LM, what today we call Maputo, through Portuguese East Africa, meant they couldn't be totally blocked by the British, where the British said you've got to trade through us. Now they had an alternative going through Portuguese East Africa, and so that guaranteed the independence of Transvaal better economically. This is the actual wagon that Paul Kruger traveled in. And they tracked it down, brought it back, repaired it, and it's in Kruger house, or at least in the annex behind it. His house was too small. This you see in the presidential carriage that he traveled. And this is Railway 1. This was the president's own railway carriage. And everywhere, in every room, you see Bibles. Obviously that was Wim Paul's main book and you can see in this sort of cabinet room and you can see the Bibles absolutely everywhere. Extraordinary. The Kitchen on Board, Railway 1 and you can get an idea of also this is now a replication of the bedroom where he died in Switzerland, St. Clarence. presidential chair that some loving supporters made for him in Switzerland, and different woodwork that people presented him, representing, of course, the Boers fighting, the key weapons. This is a footdress made by sailors of the Helderland to enable him to reach his bed. Of course, the man was old, and this is a gift from Her Majesty's Helderland to President Kruger and interesting thoughtfulness, ingenuity. So all of these come from Krugerhaus and the last bust made of him when he is in exile in Switzerland. Again, a vision of men looking forward to the future. Germany made a film, Urm Kruger, which was during the Second World War. One of the films made by Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda, where they were showing the brutality of the British to the Boers and Paul Kruger's courage. Well worth getting hold of and seeing that film online. It is available in German. You might be able to get a version with English subtitles. Of course, Oom Paul was featured on our stamps. I wrote an article for Jooch Teitschrift on Paul Kruger and we've got this, everything I've given you, as one of the chapters in our Sketches from South African History book. So, of course, we're trying to build up South African history books and we've also got quite a few excellent books written by Stephen Mitford Goodson on Vavut and Smuts and on the Genocide of the Boers. Coen Elgin's written an excellent book, a historic novel on South African history called Bulala. Two of the best videos that we know of on South African history would be Andrew Murray and David Livingston, excellent documentaries. And then Aaliyah Nell has written excellent South Africa's Forgotten Revival, and she's brought out some new Andrew Murray novels as well. My contribution is sketches from South African history so far, translated Afrikaans, waiting for the funds, ready to go to the printer, hopefully before the end of this year. Yes, about time indeed. Quite a lot of lectures we've given at the Reformation Society on the Great Trek and on South African history are available in audiovisual as well. So South African history, we've also got all the audios and MP3 audio together. Christian Liberty Books shop next door. A lot of things are on the web. I put a lot of our history lectures on reformationessay.org website and this includes PowerPoints, sermon audio lectures. when it says sermon audio, it includes lectures on history, a lot of lectures on history. So if you go on the reformationessay.org website, you get a lot of historical articles that I've written over the years. And if you go for social media, I'm regularly uploading things like this. For example, a video of this morning's presentation, which I've done by screen capture, will be on the Reformation 500. We'll share it on the social media page as well. A lot of our history and materials on the Reformation page, but current issues on the Christian Action website. So, are there any questions, any comments on Uyghur? Yes. I love the policy of the Dutch, and it was like 14 years before some of you get nationalized. How do you think Uyghur and what phase are you in? Today? He is a wise man, but of course he wanted things decentralized. Today we're living in an age where a lot of governments want to centralize things. More power, more opportunity for corruption. Decentralized is better. And so, yes, I think this is the thing. Umpur, I call him, he is a fortrecker, a commando, and he was a conservationist. to think that he was thinking so far ahead before anybody else, even before Kaiser Wilhelm II proclaimed Etosha Pan a game reserve in Southwest Africa, and even before President Teddy Roosevelt in America, of whom he is a contemporary, had launched the American National Park, such as Yellowstone and so on. Umpur saw the need for conservation. Okay, no hunting, this whole area, Sabi Game Reserve, that's the bottom block of Kruger Park, the sort of square rectangular sort of section at the bottom by the Crocodile River and so on. and the Sabi Rivers. That was Paul Kruger's vision. Of course, since then, they've elongated way north, right up to the Zimbabwe border. But to think he was thinking ahead. At that stage, people were like, there's no end of land, there's no end of animals. What's the problem? But he saw the need for conservation over 120 years ago. And so that sort of foresight and thoughtfulness, I think that's the thing he was thinking of future for his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren. Have you noticed how today Europe's run by people who don't have children? Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, she doesn't have children. Theresa May of England doesn't have children. And you could go the same with the, who is the president in Ireland and Macron, the leader of France, he doesn't have children. So you've got a whole lot of these leaders in Europe today who don't have children or grandchildren. They've got no personal investment in the future. And they're making short-term plans that aren't thinking about what's going to be good for my great-grandchildren. We should, as Christians, be thinking of, well, we worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Multi-generational. We should be thinking multi-generationally at all times. Just to think for me and myself in my time, I've heard some people who talk and said, well, that won't happen in my lifetime. You know, what kind of thoughtfulness is that? What a selfish mentality. We need to continually be laying excellent foundations that we hand over to our grandchildren a better world than we inherited. I mean, that should be our goal. I don't think our present politicians can say that. They're making things worse for the future. So that's why Umpaul is so respected, I think, to this day, because he's an honorable man. He didn't steal anything from anyone. Nobody could say there was any corruption. His presidential house was so humble. You can walk through it, it's much smaller than this mission house. So Paul Kruger's lifestyle was very, very humble and basic. You compare him with presidents and so on today, it's just, well, they don't come out looking so good. Paul Kruger comes out looking outstanding. There wasn't a hint of scandal with him. And this is one of the criticisms of Cecil Rhodes about dealing with Paul Kruger. The man's totally disinterested in money. He couldn't buy him. He didn't have a price. Gee, that should make him rare. So you understand the difference between a politician and a statesman. Who in Paul was a statesman? Not a politician. Yes. All my life, in the history books, they haven't taught us this so far. All the other times, they taught us about wars, about negotiation, about how people suffered, but not about how people, you know, worked hard for their land or how they triumphed, how they saw themselves further in life. I think that many countries are suffering because they don't know what their forefathers have done to secure their land. And I think this is the problem that we face. that governments lie and they distract people. So it's important to distract people, also important not to tell them the truth. My first history teacher in high school, Mr. East Davies, so that would have been grade eight, first high school history lecture, he said, beware the victor's version. Now, this man, Mr. East Davies, was a member of Parliament in Rhodesia, and his father had been a member of Parliament in Britain during the Second World War. In fact, Mr. East Davies' dad had been a very outspoken critic of Winston Churchill's policies. And so, Mr. East Davies said, we know that the British government's lying now about us in Rhodesia today. Why would you trust their version of history dealing with, for example, the Second World War, the First World War, the Anglo-Boer War? He said, governments lie. Wartime propaganda becomes peacetime textbooks. Never regurgitate the textbook. Always ask why. Look at the context. Think outside the box. And that was good emphasis to get because today so many people have the statute. It must be true. It's sort on TV or in the newspaper. It's in the textbook. But in fact, that's almost a guaranteed evidence that it's false because we've got politicians looting countries, stealing millions and billions. and destroying people's heritage. And they produce textbooks, and they make statements, and they are the ones behind the media. And why would you think they'd be telling the truth? The average politician does not want an informed populace. It's against their interests. Do you know that throughout all of history, education has come from churches and missions? All the universities started out as Christian institutions, monasteries run by missionaries. The first lecturers were the missionary monks of the Middle Ages and so on. And governments only got into education in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Do you know who advocated government's control of textbooks, government sponsoring of schools, licensing of teachers and all that? Karl Marx, 1848, Marxist Manifesto. In the Communist Manifesto, government control of teachers, textbooks, curriculums, and compulsory education in state-controlled schools. Now, governments historically couldn't care about education. Maybe for a few of their people, but not for the general population. And so, you would have a situation where, in most of history, you could have 2% literacy in a country, and that was quite normal. Whereas the Protestants made it 98 to 100% literacy. Protestants always right up there. And then the Catholic countries were somewhere around the 30% to 36% literacy. When you got to Buddhist and Muslim countries, it was down to the 5 and 2%. And got to Hindu countries, even less than that. Of course, animus countries, zero. They didn't have a written language yet. So I'm quoting stats now from the Edinburgh 1910, the first World Mission Conference. So the Protestants have always put the biggest emphasis on literacy and of course on education and universal education. And the reason is we want people to be able to think for themselves and read for themselves and study the Bible for themselves. But governments, secular agencies don't want an informed thinking, critically thinking population. They want people to be dumbed down. So you may think, well, isn't it wonderful governments have changed? Now they're putting billions into education. Well, no, they're putting billions into indoctrination, not education. Education is teaching people how to think critically. Indoctrination is teaching people what to think. That's why they've gotten into education. No one knows how to study history and study the primary sources, or you just are given a textbook and, okay, you want to know how to study the other side. Sadly, they might call it the Ministry of Education, but correctly speaking, it's the Ministry of Indoctrination. They're not teaching people to think critically, and that's why, well, of course, if you're busy, imagine you're a pickpocket. How do you pick somebody's pockets or handbags on? You need to distract them. So either you distract them while you pick their pocket or a team member distracts them while you pick their pocket. Governments are involved in the biggest theft and looting in the history of mankind. And therefore, they need to distract people. And, you know, interesting, we just had Zuma, for example, with the state capture and looting of the country. And he's convincing people, if you could just get rid of Jan van Riebeeck's statue and Cecil Rhodes' statue and Paul Kruger's statue, then all the problems are solved. I mean, how's that for distraction? Somebody who died 100 years ago is to blame for the mess we're in now. from a government that's been ruling for how many years and you know just extraordinary this is distraction on a high order and so right now you see in America they are running around trying to pull down statues of honorable Christian people from a century and a half ago. Why? Distract people from what's going on now and I think it's better to learn from history so for example Consider the fact that under Queen Victoria, 30,000 farms were destroyed in the Transvaal, and not just destroyed, houses blown up, wells poisoned, women in concentration camps, all that. When the Boers gained control of the country, did they pull down all the statues of Queen Victoria? Did they rename Milner Road, for example, or any of the other architects of that hideous policy? They didn't. Because even if you don't like this, you can learn from it. And so you don't need to remove reminders of the history, you need to learn from it, apply it. So I don't think Lord Milner is a good person, but I don't think they necessarily need to change the name of the road, even though we've got to drive on it every day. It's important to know who Milner was, and who he worked for, and what his interests were, and the hideous consequences of his evil policies. I don't think Queen Victoria is a bad person, but she allowed some very bad things to be done under her government. And she had obviously, since the death of her husband, lost track of a lot of what Britain was doing. So a lot of evil was done in the name of Queen Victoria, especially in the latter part of her reign. in deep mourning from the time her husband Prince Albert died. So it was, it was actually quite bad to think that a Christian empire with a Christian queen could be committing so many atrocities in the field. But that's what happens when you lose track or when you trust the wrong people. And she certainly had evil people in the government. Lord Chamberlain just, colonial secretaries as being one of them. But I wouldn't advocate for pulling down Queen Victoria's statues just because evil things were done under her name, for example. Any other comments? Yes? I think part of the problem with the textbooks is that they are teaching it from actually very ignorant people of facts. And they are teaching it also through a worldview that wants to justify what's being said. parents here was being taught at school, you either oppose it or you carry on with that story, because in, you know, especially in the case of N, people are still telling their kids how badly they have been treated by other people, the same as my grandfather told me how bad the English people were, and though my perception is not that, because I'm a few generations after, but the poison phase. influence is by saying like you said, that there's not many people to interpret history. And if you sit in a classroom and you hear that you should actually question and say, but is this representative of everyone or is it the view of this one person? My son had a teacher who said, you know, it's only when a fetus is 12 days old that you can actually decide on the gender. He said, ma'am, no, you're born XX or XY. And she said, oh, OK, no, you know, that might be true. So even the teachers are many of the times ignorant, and they do not actually bother with studying a bit more and a bit wider. So don't take your textbook as face value. You've got all the rights in the world to ask questions and tell them and say, you know, my daughter's history teacher's got that a politician oversees the department that chooses the textbook writers and approves what gets in the textbook and approves what becomes part of the curriculum and so on. I don't like the idea of some politician who might be a Marxist-Leninist, a secular humanist, an atheist, an evolutionist, a New Ager, or who knows whatever else things. Why would I want that to come? I can't write anything without injecting my Protestant evangelical, missionary worldview into it. I wouldn't waste my time writing a letter to editor without making sure my principles are in that letter, because I'm a Protestant, I'm evangelical, I'm a missionary. That's going to affect everything. I'm anti-communist. I've seen what communism does to countries. I've smuggled Bibles behind my own curtain. Many of my friends were victims of communism in Eastern Europe. Right now, many friends suffering under Islam in Sudan, for example. So you can't expect me, and I don't expect me, to ever be unbiased when it comes to these issues. I'm going to come from my Christian perspective. Now, why would I expect an evolutionist or an atheist or a Muslim or a communist not to bring their... Of course they bring their views in. And you can see it with Hollywood, you can see it with films, and I'm afraid you can see it seriously with textbooks. You go into a museum and what do you see? Billions of years ago, or 16 billion years ago, or 400 million. How do they know? Where did they get this date from? Did they look underneath the fossil and there was the date? 16 billion BC. This is just insane that so many people take this for granted. How do they know? And there's no end of missing links. Well, I've seen the museum, the missing links. Yes, but you know, it's basically plaster of Paris reconstruction. This is imagination. Well, it must be based on something. Yes, somebody's worldview and perception and they took a tooth of an extinct pig and built a Nebraska man or something you know it's just or Piltdown man was a complete and utter fraud they took the jawbone of an ape and the skull of a man they artificially aged him and it was it's been proven a fraud even though there's how many people got doctorates on the basis of this total fraud so there's a lot of lies in history and in biology and in geology, a lot of textbooks are packed full of lies. And so, how many of you would have read or know of 1984, the book by George Orwell? Okay. In 1984, they've got these different ministries. Now, what does the Ministry of Truth deal with? Lies and propaganda. What does the Ministry of Plenty do? Ministry of Plenty deals with rationing and starvation, ensuring people are always starving. What does the Ministry of Love do? They do the torturing. What does the Ministry of Peace do? They run the wars. That is brilliant insight. In fact, everything about George Orwell was brilliant. He understood communism because he was a communist, and he had gone to the Soviet Union under Stalin, and he saw the end result of their beliefs. And so he writes these brilliant exposés, Animal Farm in 1984, and the fact is that's how communism works. Do you know what KGB in Russian stood for? Ministry of Homeland Security. Ministry of Homeland? How nice. I mean, what a innocuous surname. And they did the tortures, the gulags, the concentration camps. In fact, in Cuba, the people who ran the concentration camps and did the massacres were Internal Affairs. Internal Affairs, sounds okay. I mean, gee, what's wrong with that? And so it carries on. They have lies, lies, more lies. In our country, Ministry of Education is just a ministry of indoctrination, propaganda, and lies. the amount of lies, lies, and lies in the textbooks. I'm horrified by textbooks. That's why when I was homeschooling my children, I was pulling out my red pen, I was correcting, and I was marking, and crossing out things. My older daughter had no problem with that. My second daughter was horrified. How can the textbook be wrong? Well, they weren't there. Many of these people are government appointees who were commissioned to write this version. And next question, good question, well, dad, how do you know that you're right? Well, I lived in Rhodesia. I was brought up in Rhodesia. I have visited Zimbabwe many times. I met Ian Smith many times in the last 20 years of his life. Our mission continues to work in Zimbabwe. We know what's going on on the ground. And this person who wrote this about Rhodesia and Zimbabwe probably has never even been to the country. Where did they get their information from? Wikipedia? I don't know. But they weren't there. When you get to things like the Anglo-Zulu War, well, I've got many Zulu friends. I've been to every one of the battle sites. I've got hordes of friends in Zuland. I've been many, many times to Battle of Blood River, Isilwana, Rook's Drift, Gungun-Gungluvo, Ulundi. We know these places. We know the people involved. No, even people from the royal family of the Zulus. And so I feel I know more about the Zulus than these idiots I see writing chapters and textbooks on the Zulu War and things like that. And so it goes on, you know, when you think of, well, my dad fought in the Second World War all six years. And I've met many people who were in the Second World War. And in fact, when I was younger, I knew people who fought in the First World War. I even met people who fought in the Anglo-Boer War. I was ministering with a lady in an old age home, many times this term, and was talking to her, who rode with President Martina Steyn in the Anglo-Boer War on commander with him and with Christian Tibet. I've met people who were in the concentration camps. Of course, they'd be dead now, but I mean, in my lifetime, I was born 1960, I've met people who were involved in, one of the men I knew in Boulevard, he traveled up in 1890 with a pioneer column with, he knew Cecil Rhodes, or Mr. Rhodes, as he always called him. And he had extraordinary, you think of it, it's so long ago, but I was born closer to the Second World War than my son Calvin was to the Rhodesian War. The Rhodesian War ended in 1980. Calvin was born in 1999, 19 years later. I was born in 1960, just 15 years after the Second World War ended. And to me, the Second World War was so far away. But for my parents, it was really, really close. Really close. They lived through it. My mom endured 62 aerial bombardments. She was there in Berlin for the thousand bomber raids and so on. And so, to me, I thought my parents were so far from it. But I remember the Rhodesian War like it was yesterday. I mean, I was just a child growing up there. My brother was in the army there. It's burned into my upbringing. As a teenager, I was brought up in the middle of it, traveling on the farm roads where there could be landmines, where there could be ambushes. Don't switch on the light without first closing the curtains. Never open the front door without switching off the lights. You could be a target in any farm. And we were brought up like that. Our teachers carrying machine guns and so on. And just, there was loaded rifle by the door in the farms. Loaded. And as a kid, Of course, you want to touch a loaded rifle, but I mean, we knew not to. I spoke to policemen who would be older than me and went through the whole time on the BSAP and I've asked several of them, did you hear of accidental discharges, kids getting shot or something like that? I mean, we had so many loaded firearms all over the place. And the BSAP for the whole war saying, nope, never heard of it. I mean, it didn't happen. So, you know, we had the weapons around, but we didn't have the accidents because we were disciplined early on to know you don't touch and so on and so forth. Also, I suppose some of our natural curiosity was dealt with because we'd be taken out to the farm. We'd do shooting. We had shooting at school with tutus and so on. We had cadets. So, it was a different world. I remember getting on planes in Rhodesia. and internal flights. And hearing the stewardess, there didn't have flight attendants and there were stewardesses, please ensure that your firearms are on safe and securely holstered and all rifles and machine guns in the overhead compartments. You'd see people walking into Air Asia flight, putting their FN and Uzis and so on in the overhead compartments. Nobody blinked an eyelid. I mean, that was just like normal. Now, I've lived through several revolutions. Of course, as a missionary, I've been to 37 countries, been ministering as far north as Poland and as far south as Albania and Eastern Europe, know the people behind the Iron Curtain, back in the days when that was closed. And so, these things sort of affect one. And, you know, I met Ian Smith, P. W. Porter, met Nelson Mandela, spent an hour arguing and discussing with him, and different people to know. Had to meet F. W. de Klerk a few times, sadly. And so in dealing with these different people, even met B. J. Foster. I was only 16 at the time, but I remember meeting him and hearing him say that he had never ended the day without reading a chapter of the Bible. His mother told him he must never let a day pass without reading at least one chapter of the Bible. I thought that's interesting. I didn't perceive him as a born again man, but interesting that this politician had a religious element to him, which surprised me. And so we could carry on. But the point is, we know some people who've experienced history. Brother Andrew, met him a few times. key people, George Verve and so on, in missions. And if we can try and cross-check, history and anything else is like jigsaw puzzles and detective work. You've got to see how many of these pieces fit, do the numbers add up, and does this gel with what I know? I mean, there's some things you know, there are other things you believe, there's some things you've been told. You don't know if it's true or not. So you've got to line these things up. And so it's been a lifelong investigation for me to try and find reliable history. And one of the things is, forget the new books. Forget the textbooks. I go to secondhand bookshops. I try and find the old, the first editions, pre-politically correct, and so on. So in this boardroom, we had a while ago, a Hospital Christian Fellowship gathering. a whole lot of different people, and one person had just produced a new t-shirt, and she put the quote on there of C.C. Stud, only one life, it'll soon be past, only what's done for God will last. I said, the quote's actually, only what's done for Christ will last. No, she said, I checked on Wikipedia, and it said, only what's done for God will last is the correct quote. Well, I've got original first editions from 19th century and what C.T. Studd said is only what's done for Christ the lost. No, she said, but I checked on Google and no, I've got a first edition book by C.T. Studd with this quote. No, she said, but Google says, I've got a doctorate in missiology on 19th century missionary history, and I've got the first edition book of C.T. Stubb where he said, only one life, it'll soon be passed, only what's done for Christ's love. No, she says, but I checked, the computer says it's only what's done for God's love. What do you do with people who can't tell the difference between a primary source document and some, it's not even secondhand, it's like what, 10th hand? You can't establish a fact from a previous century from Google. Computers are, well, garbage in, garbage out. What you get in the computer is only as good as the programmer and the person that uploaded the information. If they made a mistake, they made a mistake. And this is the problem. If you've got to choose between a primary source document and a school textbook, there's no contest.