02/18/2025
A great research and team building trip just completed by some of the AutoWIKI team members to the Kruger National Park (missed you, Nik Edmiidz). Working on downloadable content for areas with no signal. Kruger is our pilot site for this new development.
Unexpectedly it presented the opportunity to correct the false narrative about the origins of the park and its name - safari tour guides now will base their origins story on the following, anchored in my own family history and well documented in historical texts( my great-grandfather, Jacobus Stephanus van Wyk, was one of the men who started the idea of a reserve in the Sabie River area. )
The Real Story of Kruger National Park
People say Paul Kruger started Kruger National Park, but that’s not true. He was a president, a soldier and a big-game hunter, not a conservationist. The idea of a protected reserve in the Sabie region was actually introduced to the South African Republic (ZAR) parliament in 1895 by two opposition politicians who warned in 1895 that too many animals were being hunted. As a result, in 1898, the government set aside the Sabie Game Reserve—not as a park, but to control hunting.
After the Anglo-Boer War, when the British took over, they put James Stevenson-Hamilton in charge of the Sabie Reserve1902. He came from a gamekeeping background in Britain, where people protected deer and other grazing animals but killed predators. So, he ordered the mass killing of lions, leopards, hyenas, and wild dogs, believing that was the right thing to do.
Over time, people learned more about nature and stopped killing predators. In 1926, Kruger National Park was created, joining the Sabie and Shingwedzi reserves. They named it after Kruger—not because he started it, but because he was a famous leader in those times.
