The Claim
There’s been several tons of gold buried somewhere in south Africa since the Boer war
The Boer war was some nasty business, with Britain flexing its colonial muscle and the 2 Boer states in the region, the Orange free state and the South African Republic trying to hold onto the land they’ve previously claimed.
Unfortunately for the Boer, the British empire was incredibly strong during this time and managed to push the Boers back and took all of their land after introducing harsh tactics that forced them to surrender. Before this happened the Boers won a number of victories against the British and held them off for two and a half years before surrendering, and during this time their accumulated wealth was supposedly stashed somewhere to stop the British getting hold of it.
The story goes that on 4 June, 1990 south Africa’s state attorney sent a delivery of gold coins and bars to Pretoria that was received by south African president Kruger. From here the train carrying the president, a number of high ranking individuals and the gold left Pretoria and travelled to Machadodorp, then Waterval Boven and finally stopped at Hectorspruit.
A government employee known only as Mr J Kloppers is recorded as claiming to have seen a large quantity of minted gold coins when the presidents train was in Hectorspruit, but after it reached its next stop of Steenkampsberg he claims that no more of the gold was present on the train.
President Kruger sailed to Holland on the 19th October, 1900 and left the region to be captured by the British. Its recorded that he arrived in Holland with a large amount of minted gold coins, but the quantity he was seen with is nothing close to what was supposed to be on the train.
The exact amount of gold that’s apparently missing is unknown, but estimates have put it anywhere from a few box’s of coins, to an amount that would reach about half a billion USD in today’s money.
Could it be true?
There are those who seriously doubt there’s such a huge amount of gold buried somewhere in south Africa as it would take a large amount of people to move and bury such a quantity, and since not a single person has let slip the location of the loot this raises many questions as to how.
However on the other hand South Africa had some of the largest gold mines in the world at the time and since the native populations didn’t typically mine it themselves, there was enormous amounts of this precious metal ready for the taking. The region was one of the largest producers of gold and became insanely rich as a consequence, and the amount of documented gold they shipped was nothing close to the total amount they produced, which has never been accounted for.
Another point is that its very common throughout history for the losing, retreating force to bury their gold to stop the attacking forces from getting hold of it, and no type of loot slows you down as much as gold.
There have been several small finds over the years that people claim was the lost Kruger millions, such as a kayaker who accidentally found a load of gold coins at the bottom of a river bed that were worth several millions. Another find unearthed some small wooden chests that were filled with gold bars, but again the value is nothing close to what the Kruger millions is said to be.
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