Kruger's memory lingers in his Boekenhoutfontein farmhouses

Lucille Davie visits Kedar Heritage Lodge in North West to see the farmhouses Paul Kruger owned.

- Lucille Davie

A statue of Paul Kruger stands tall and proud in Church Square in Pretoria. If he were still alive, he might stand tall and proud outside his farmhouses at Boekenhoutfontein beyond Rustenburg in North West – they still pretty much look how they would have when he lived there in the 1860s and 1870s.

Kruger still elicits mixed opinions more than 100 years after his death, but the legacy of his farmhouses, in the grounds of the Kedar Heritage Lodge, is solid. They point to the modest lifestyle of those early Boers: peachpip and cow-dung floors, corrugated iron or thatch roofs, small rooms, simply decorated, thick mud-brick walls and small windows.

They are on land some 20km north-west of Rustenburg, a game reserve of 500ha with giraffe, wildebeest, eland, blesbok, waterbuck, zebra, and more. Hunting is offered at the lodge, and for South African War history enthusiasts, cabinets bursting with war memorabilia. Kruger’s small tin bath sits in the foyer, a tight fit for him. Game drives, two restaurants and a spa complete the picture of a relaxed stay in the bushveld.

There are four farmhouses on the site, tucked against the koppie of scattered thorn and boekenhout (beechwood) trees. The first one, built by Rudolph Bronkhorst, now called the Bronkhorst House, is a simple three-room structure of mud brick and thatch roof, built sometime after 1840, when the first Voortrekkers reached the then Transvaal.

Kruger bought this house in 1862 but soon built his own house alongside it. It’s an attractive whitewashed house with thatch roof, consisting of several rooms, with its original peach-pip and dung floors. It now acts as a museum, packed with artefacts and farm implements.