After the abortive Jameson Raid, the government of the ZAR became concerned about the safety of its capital city, Pretoria, both from foreign invasion as well as from the growing number of uitlanders ('foreigners') on the Witwatersrand.

The plan recommended that eight strategic positions around the city should be fortified by means of armoured turrets equipped with artillery.

The positions identified were Schanskop, Kwaggaspoort, Daspoortrand, Magaliesberg-wes, Wonderboompoort, Derdepoort, Strubenkop and Klapperkop.

The armoured turrets were subsequently found to be unacceptable, and thus the plan of two German engineers, Otto Albert Adolph von Dewitz and Heinrich C Werner to build forts instead, was accepted.

To address technical aspects such as the electrical connections between forts, German and Dutch experts were consulted.

Water was supplied from a pump station in the Fountains Valley which was shared with the nearby Fort Klapperkop.

Both the garrison and the armaments were gradually reduced during the course of the Second Anglo-Boer war until there was only one man and no guns left over on 5 June 1900, the day on which British forces occupied Pretoria.

[4] The fort was briefly occupied in 1993 by Willem Ratte to protest the multi-racial government of South Africa at the cost of Boer and Afrikaner heritage.

A scale model replica of the Trek Monument that was inaugurated on 16 December 1954 in Tanzania (then known as Tanganyika) is also situated on the perimeter of the fort.

Park Acoustics[8] changes its lineup every month and features a wide range of South African acts.

Running water was supplied from a pump station in the Fountains Valley which was shared with the nearby Fort Schanskop.

It includes a statue of a soldier holding a R1 rifle, in memory of all members of the South African Defence Force who died serving their country.

[14] Fort Daspoortrand was initially manned by twenty-five gunners and was armed with a 155mm Creusot gun ("Long Tom") and two 37 mm Maxim-Nordenfeldt cannons.

The roofs of both forts were later demolished; it was speculated that General Jan Smuts gave the orders for this during World War II, but this has never been proven.

Fort Daspoortrand turned into a Leper Colony and was eventually abandoned and currently stands ruined on the outskirts of Pretoria.