[1] The statue was first sculpted in 1896 by Anton Van Wouw following a commission by Sammy Marks, an industrialist who made his fortune in the South African Republic, who was an enthusiastic supporter of President Paul Kruger.

Marks had his chief accountant draft a proposal to the President and Executive Council offering £10,000 to the city of Pretoria to build a marble statue of Kruger at a place of its subject's choice.

On 5 September Marks got his reply: the Government thanked him "for his rich gift" and informed him that Kruger deemed Burgers Park an ideal site and pledged for any surplus money to be spent to found the Pretoria Zoo.

The Dutchman Van Wouw came to the ZAR as a young man and settled in Pretoria, teaching drawing classes at the state gymnasium and a girls' school after a brief stint as a store clerk.

His sketch model portrayed Kruger in formal state attire, standing quietly on the pedestal, in what Van Wouw considered a paternal attitude.

They were meant not to be trained soldiers but typical citizen militias: sedentary but watchful, surrounding Van Wouw's central figure and symbol of Kruger's position as father in the heart of his people and of the Republic's freedom.

On 7 October 1896, more than thirteen months after Marks' initial donation, he and Kruger agreed to have Van Wouw leave for Europe to supervise the work in France and Italy.

When Van Wouw began modeling the Voortrekker figures under fire, he did not know what they looked in full regalia, unlike the familiar Kruger himself and the two modern Boers he simply showed as he had seen them since arrival, namely with a beard, a bandolier, and a Martini–Henry gun.

Unable to find surviving photos or other information from this time, Van Wouw got permission to instead start with the signing of the 1881 peace accord ending the First Boer War at O'Neill's Cottage in Laing's Nek.

The second bronze panel also posed problems, and Van Wouw considered scrapping it until the State Secretary of the South African Republic persuaded him to keep the scene of the 29-year-old commandant of Rustenburg leaping into the fray among enemy soldiers at the Battle of Makapansgat.

A diptych of bronze panels were to depict events related to the First Boer War, since it was Kruger's resistance to annexation then that set the stage for his future statesmanship.

Once again, visual evidence was lacking, with no photos available from the Paardekraal event and only a drawing from The Illustrated London News of the 1881 treaty signing at O'Neill's Cottage that Van Wouw considered a poor depiction of the moment.

In the meantime, Marks had hired an architect, W. J. de Zwaan, to build a pedestal; once the plans were approved, he had a Scottish firm secure and sand the appropriate granite slabs.

This provoked bitter Afrikaner protest, led by Gen. Louis Botha and his Het Volk party, who complained to the Lieutenant-Governor and told the council that "we are deeply disappointed...and...this can be considered nothing but an insult to our people."

He vowed that "We know that there are many today who are eager to see our people's traditions dragged through the mud, but we would never have expected such behavior from the City Council of Pretoria, least of all given that so many of you not only knew him but were among his closest friends in the capital."

Kitchener eventually transferred Church Square (previously Transvaal federal territory) to the council with the express condition "that no buildings, statues or memorials of any description be erected on, or other improvements effected to the ground, without the sanction of the Lieutenant-Governor being first obtained".

Kruger died in 1904, and the Transvaal Colony elected Botha, Commandant-General of Boer forces in the War and then leader of the Het Volk, as its Prime Minister, a post in which he would continue from 1910 on for South Africa at large.

Both former Orange Free State President Martinus Theunis Steyn and Botha were absent, the former due to illness and the latter to attend to urgent parliamentary matters.

In August 1920, Edward P. Mathers, editor of the newspaper South Africa, began a press campaign to return the statue with the help of former President Francis William Reitz.

Mathers also pointed out that South Africa and England had fought on the same side in World War I and that "spoils of conquest" from Afrikaners should be replaced with "trophies of our enemies" there.

The Mayor of Chatham replied that the statues belonged not to the council but to the Royal Engineers, who in turn said returning the artwork required the consent of the full membership.

Succeeding Botha after the latter's death in 1919 as Prime Minister of the Union, Smuts was popular in Britain for his contributions to the war effort and the Paris Peace Conference.

Smuts enlisted Milner in November 1920, appealing to the latter's desire to mend his unpopularity post-Boer-War with a gesture of gratitude to the Afrikaners' newly proven loyalty.

B. M. Hertzog unveiled the statue on 10 October 1925, the centennial of Kruger's birth, while surrounded by the flags of the Orange Free State and ZAR in front of a crowd of 25,000.

Van Wouw's approval was followed by that of the full society, which proceeded to arrange for an unveiling on Church Square on 10 October 1941, by Mrs. Rachel Isabella Steyn, widow of the last president of the Orange Free State.

At this point, the city council declared the new pedestal architecturally out of step with Church Square, a matter probed by two architects (Gordon Leith and Vivian Sydney Rees-Poole) and their colleagues from the Kruger Society.

Van Wouw took the Kruger Society's position in two firm letters stating: It is my vision for the pedestal, the Boers, and the President's likeness to coexist as one unit, according to architect's plans in consultation with myself, on Church Square where the fountain and fishpond are currently.

The center of Church Square is the designated place and there it must be built.In his other letter, Van Wouw claimed that Kruger himself had personally told the artist in the presence of several Volksraad members that it belonged at that location.

Both organizations agreed, the latter on the condition that a majority of the judges would have the final say on the chosen design, but the PIA by-laws prohibited its members from participating in outside competitions.

The Economic Freedom Fighters initially claimed responsibility but later retracted this when the City of Tshwane stated its intent to open a criminal case of malicious damage against the perpetrators.