Cecil Rhodes was a heartless British imperialist and racist who set the tone and requisite structures for the emancipation of Southern Africa through Colonialism. He amassed his wealth by taking advantage of the then British colonial structure, subjecting the African natives to slavery and extreme coercion tactics against the then traditional African leaders. In an interesting twist, this man is honored today by both his victims as well as his turn coat British masters. His escapades in the 19th century still continue to haunt southern Africa states like Zimbabwe and South Africa and his descendants and/or partners grip on the natural resources of southern Africa is still as strong as ever. Here is the story of one man who was supposed to be tried for crimes against humanity as early as 1880.
After independence, Rhodesia separated into the nations of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, later renamed Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively. South Africa's Rhodes University is named after him. He set up the provisions of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate.
Early Life in England
Rhodes was born in 1853 in England. He was the fifth son of the Reverend Francis William Rhodes and his wife Louisa Peacock Rhodes. His father was a Church of England Vicar who was proud of never having preached a sermon longer than 10 minutes. His siblings included Francis William Rhodes, who became an army officer.
A sickly, asthmatic teenager, Cecil Rhodes was taken out of grammar school and sent to Natal, South Africa because his family thought the hot climate would improve his health. They expected he would help his older brother Herbert who operated a cotton farm.
CECIL RHODES in South Africa
After a brief stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, Rhodes took an interest in agriculture. He joined his brother Herbert on his cotton farm in the Umkomanzi valley in Natal. When he first came to Africa, Rhodes lived on money lent by his aunt Sophia.
In October 1871, Rhodes left the colony for the diamond fields of Kimberley. Financed by N M Rothschild & Sons, over the next 17 years Rhodes succeeded in buying up all the smaller diamond mining operations in the Kimberley area. He would leave South Africa for studies at Oxford in 1873 and leave the business under the care of his business partner C D Rudd. Whilst at Oxford, Rhodes continued to prosper in Kimberley. Before his departure for Oxford, he and C.D. Rudd had moved from the Kimberley Mine to invest in the more costly claims of what was known as old De Beers (Vooruitzicht). It was named after Johannes Nicolaas de Beer and his brother, Diederik Arnoldus, who occupied the farm. After purchasing the land in 1839 from David Danser, a Koranna chief in the area, Fourie had allowed the de Beers and various other Afrikaner families to cultivate the land. The region extended from the Modder River via the Vet River up to the Vaal River
In 1874 and 1875, the diamond fields were in the grip of depression, but Rhodes and Rudd were among those who stayed to consolidate their interests. They believed that diamonds would be numerous in the hard blue ground that had been exposed after the softer, yellow layer near the surface had been worked out. During this time, the technical problem of clearing out the water that was flooding the mines became serious. Rhodes and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping water out of the three main mines. It was during this period that Jim B. Taylor, still a young boy and helping to work his father's claim, first met Rhodes.
On 12 March 1880, Rhodes and Rudd launched the De Beers Mining Company after the amalgamation of a number of individual claims. With £200,000 of capital, the company, of which Rhodes was secretary, owned the largest interest in the mine.
His monopoly of the world's diamond supply was sealed in 1889 through a strategic partnership with the London-based Diamond Syndicate. They agreed to control world supply to maintain high prices. Rhodes supervised the working of his brother's claim and speculated on his behalf. Among his associates in the early days were John X. Merriman and Charles Rudd, who later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company and Niger Oil Company.
During the 1880s Cape vineyards had been devastated by a phylloxera crop disease epidemic. The diseased vineyards were dug up and replanted, and farmers were looking for alternatives to wine. In 1892, Rhodes financed The Pioneer Fruit Growing Company at Nooitgedacht, a venture created by Harry Pickstone, an Englishman who had experience of fruit-growing in California. In 1896 he began to pay more attention to fruit farming and bought farms in Groot Drakenstein, Wellington and Stellenbosch. A year later, Rhodes bought Rhone and Boschendal and commissioned Sir Herbert Baker to build him a cottage there. The successful operation soon expanded into Rhodes Fruit Farms, and formed the cornerstone of the modern-day Cape fruit industry.
In 1873, Rhodes left Kimberley and sailed to England to complete his studies. He was admitted to Oriel College, Oxford, but stayed for only one term in 1873. He returned to South Africa and did not go back for his second term at Oxford until 1876. He was greatly influenced by John Ruskin's inaugural lecture at Oxford, which reinforced his own attachment to the cause of British imperialism. Among his Oxford associates were Rochefort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls College and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. Due to his university career, Rhodes admired the Oxford "system". Eventually he was inspired to develop his scholarship scheme: "Wherever you turn your eye—except in science—an Oxford man is at the top of the tree".
While attending Oriel College, Rhodes became a Freemason in the Apollo University Lodge. Although initially he did not approve of the organization, he continued to be a Freemason until his death in 1902. The failures of the Freemasons, in his mind, later caused him to envisage his own secret society with the goal of bringing the entire world under British rule.
Entry into Politics in South Africa
In 1880, Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. With the incorporation of Griqualand West into the Cape Colony in 1877, the area obtained six seats in the Cape House of Assembly. Rhodes chose the constituency of Barkly West, a rural constituency in which Boer voters predominated. Barkly West remained faithful to Rhodes even after his support of the Jameson Raid against the Transvaal. He continued as its Member until his death.
When Rhodes became a member of the Cape Parliament, the chief goal of the assembly was to help decide the future of Basutoland. The ministry of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after the 1880 rebellion known as the Gun War. The ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its disarmament policy to the Basuto. In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and implemented laws that would benefit mine and industry owners. He introduced the Glen Grey Act to push black people from their lands and make way for industrial development. He also introduced educational reform to the area.
Rhodes' policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa, such as the Hut tax (The hut tax was a type of taxation introduced by British colonialists in Africa on a per hut or household basis. It was variously payable in money, labor and grain or stock and benefited the colonial authorities in four related ways: it raised money, it supported the currency, it broadened the cash economy, aiding further development and/or exploitation; and it forced Africans to labour in the colonial economy. Households which had survived on, and stored their wealth in, cattle ranching now sent members to work for the colonialists in order to raise cash with which to pay the tax. The colonial economy depended upon black African labour to build new towns and railways and in southern Africa to work in the rapidly developing mines). He did not, however, have direct political power over the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the Transvaal government's policies. He believed he could use his money and his power to overthrow the Boer government and install a British colonial government supporting mine-owners' interests in its place.
In 1895, Rhodes supported an attack on the Transvaal, the infamous Jameson Raid, which proceeded with the tacit approval of Governor Joseph Chamberlain. The raid was a catastrophic failure. It forced Cecil Rhodes to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, sent his oldest brother Col. Frank Rhodes to jail in Transvaal convicted of high treason and nearly sentenced to death, and led to the outbreak of both the Second Matabele War and the Second Boer War.
Rhodes the Imperialist
Rhodes used his wealth and that of his business partner Alfred Beit and other investors to pursue his dream of creating a British Empire in new territories to the north by obtaining mineral concessions from the most powerful indigenous chiefs. Rhodes' competitive advantage over other mineral prospecting companies was his combination of wealth and astute political instincts, also called the 'imperial factor', as he used the British Government. He befriended its local representatives, the British Commissioners, and through them organized British protectorates over the mineral concession areas via separate but related treaties. In this way he obtained both legality and security for mining operations. He could then win over more investors. Imperial expansion and capital investment went hand in hand.
The imperial factor was a double-edged sword: Rhodes did not want the bureaucrats of the Colonial Office in London to interfere in the Empire in Africa. He wanted British settlers and local politicians and governors to run it. This put him on a collision course with many in Britain, as well as with British missionaries, who favored what they saw as the more ethical direct rule from London. Rhodes won because he would pay to administer the territories north of South Africa against future mining profits. The Colonial Office did not have the funds to do it. Rhodes promoted his business interests as in the strategic interest of Britain: preventing the Portuguese, the Germans or the Boers from moving in to south-central Africa. Rhodes' companies and agents cemented these advantages by obtaining many mining concessions, as exemplified by the Rudd and Lochner Concessions.
Treaties, concessions and charters
Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a mining concession from Lobengula, king of the Ndebele of Matabeleland. In 1888 he tried again. He sent John Moffat, son of the missionary Robert Moffat, who was trusted by Lobengula, to persuade the latter to sign a treaty of friendship with Britain, and to look favorably on Rhodes' proposals. His agent Francis Thompson, who had travelled to Bulawayo in the company of Charles Rudd and Rochfort Maguire, assured Lobengula that no more than ten white men would mine in Matabeleland. This limitation was left out of the document which Lobengula signed, known as the Rudd Concession. Furthermore it stated that the mining companies could do anything necessary to their operations. When Lobengula discovered later the true effects of the concession, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government ignored him.
Armed with the Rudd Concession, in 1889 Rhodes obtained a charter from the British Government for his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to rule, police and make new treaties and concessions from the Limpopo River to the great lakes of Central Africa. He obtained further concessions and treaties north of the Zambezi, such as those in Barotseland (the Lochner Concession with King Lewanika in 1890, which was similar to the Rudd Concession); and in the Lake Mweru area (Alfred Sharpe's 1890 Kazembe concession). Rhodes also sent Sharpe to get a concession over mineral-rich Katanga, but met his match in ruthlessness: when Sharpe was rebuffed by its ruler Msiri, King Leopold II of Belgium obtained a concession over Msiri's dead body for his Congo Free State.
Rhodes also wanted Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) under the BSAC charter. But three Tswana kings, including Khama III, travelled to Britain and won over British public opinion for it to remain governed by the British Colonial Office in London. Rhodes commented: "It is humiliating to be utterly beaten by these niggers."
The British Colonial Office also decided to administer British Central Africa (Nyasaland, today's Malawi) owing to the activism of Scots missionaries trying to end the slave trade. Rhodes paid much of the cost so that the British Central Africa Commissioner Sir Harry Johnston, and his successor Alfred Sharpe, would assist with security for Rhodes in the BSAC's north-eastern territories. Johnston shared Rhodes' expansionist views, but he and his successors were not as pro-settler as Rhodes, and disagreed on dealings with Africans.
The BSAC had its own police force, the British South Africa Police which was used to control Matabeleland and Mashonaland, in present-day Zimbabwe. The company had hoped to start a "new Rand" from the ancient gold mines of the Shona. Because the gold deposits were on a much smaller scale, many of the white settlers who accompanied the BSAC to Mashonaland became farmers rather than miners. When the Ndebele and the Shona—the two main, but rival peoples—separately rebelled against the coming of the European settlers, the BSAC defeated them in the two Matabele Wars (1893–94; 1896–97). Shortly after learning of the assassination of the Ndebele spiritual leader, Mlimo, by the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, Rhodes walked unarmed into the Ndebele stronghold in Matobo Hills. He persuaded the Impi to lay down their arms, thus ending the Second Matabele War.[19]
By the end of 1894, the territories over which the BSAC had concessions or treaties, collectively called "Zambesia" after the Zambezi River flowing through the middle comprised an area of 1,143,000 km² between the Limpopo River and Lake Tanganyika. In May 1895, its name was officially changed to "Rhodesia", reflecting Rhodes' popularity among settlers who had been using the name informally since 1891. The designation Southern Rhodesia was officially adopted in 1898 for the part south of the Zambezi, which later became Zimbabwe; and the designations North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia were used from 1895 for the territory which later became Northern Rhodesia, then Zambia.
Rhodes decreed in his will that he was to be buried in Matobo Hills. After his death in the Cape in 1902, his body was transported by train to Bulawayo. His burial was attended by Ndebele chiefs, who asked that the firing party should not discharge their rifles as this would disturb the spirits. Then, for the first time, they gave a white man the Matabele royal salute, Bayete. Rhodes was buried alongside Leander Starr Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in the Shangani Patrol.
"Cape to Cairo Red Line"
This enterprise was not without its problems. France had a rival strategy in the late 1890s to link its colonies from west to east across the continent. The Portuguese produced the "Pink Map", representing their claims to sovereignty in Africa.
Political views and Ideology
Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. In his last will and testament, Rhodes said of the British, "I contend that we are the first race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race." He wanted to make the British Empire a superpower in which all of the British-dominated countries in the empire, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony, would be represented in the British Parliament. He supported the ideas of lebensraum and mercantilism, which were popular at the time, even if they were expressed more politely by others. Rhodes included American students as eligible for the Rhodes scholarships. He said that he wanted to breed American elite of philosopher-kings who would have the United States rejoin the British Empire. As Rhodes also respected the Germans and admired the Kaiser, he allowed German students to be included in the Rhodes scholarships. He believed that eventually Great Britain, the USA and Germany together would dominate the world and ensure peace.
On domestic politics within the United Kingdom, Rhodes was a supporter of the Liberal Party. Rhodes' only major impact on domestic politics within the United Kingdom was his support of the Irish nationalist party, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891). He contributed a great deal of money to the Irish nationalists, although Rhodes made his support conditional upon an autonomous Ireland's still being represented in the British Parliament. Rhodes was such a strong supporter of Parnell that, after the Liberals and the Irish nationalists disowned him because of adultery with the wife of another Irish nationalist, Rhodes continued his support.
Rhodes was more tolerant of the Dutch-speaking whites in the Cape Colony than were the other English-speaking whites in the Cape Colony. He supported teaching Dutch as well as English in public schools in the Cape Colony and lent money to support this cause. While Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, he helped to remove most of the legal disabilities that English-speaking whites had imposed on Dutch-speaking whites. He was a friend of Jan Hofmeyr, leader of the Afrikaner Bond, and it was largely because of Afrikaner support that he became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Rhodes advocated greater self-government for the Cape Colony, in line with his preference for the empire to be controlled by local settlers and politicians rather than by London (see "Rhodes and the imperial factor" above).
Confusingly for the modern reader, self-government of the type Rhodes supported was known as "colonialism". The opposed policy, direct control of a colony from London, was known as "imperialism".
Death and legacy
Funeral of Rhodes in Adderley St, Cape Town on 3 April 1902
Cecil Rhodes died of heart failure. He was laid to rest at World's View; a hilltop located approximately 35 kilometers south of Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia. Today, his grave site is part of Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe.
In 2004, he was voted 56th in the SABC3 television series Great South Africans.
At his death he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the world. In his first will, of 1877, (before he had accumulated his wealth), Rhodes wanted to create a secret society that would bring the whole world under British rule. The exact wording from this will is:
‘’To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.’’
Rhodes' final will left a large area of land on the slopes of Table Mountain to the South African nation. Part of this estate became the upper campus of the University of Cape Town, another part became the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, while much was spared from development and is now an important conservation area.
Rhodes Scholarship
In his last will and testament, he provided for the establishment of the famous Rhodes Scholarship, the world's first international study program. The scholarship enabled students from territories under British rule, formerly under British rule, and from Germany, to study at the University of Oxford.
Memorials
Rhodes Memorial stands on Rhodes' favorite spot on the slopes of Devil's Peak, Cape Town, with a view looking north and east towards the Cape to Cairo route. Rhodes' house in Cape Town, Groote Schuur, has recently been inhabited by the President of the R.S.A. Jacob Zuma.
His birthplace was established as a museum in 1938, now known as Bishops Stortford Museum. The cottage in Muizenberg where he died is a South African national monument.
Rhodes University College, now Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, was established in his name by his trustees and founded by Act of Parliament on 31 May 1904.
The residents of Kimberley elected to build a memorial in Rhodes' honor in their city, which was unveiled in 1907. The 72-ton bronze statue depicts Rhodes on his horse, looking north with map in hand, and dressed as he was when met the Ndebele after their rebellion.
Quotations
• "To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far."
• “Pure philanthropy is very well in its way but philanthropy plus five percent is a good deal better.”
• "I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race...If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible..."
• "In order to save the forty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, our colonial statesmen must acquire new lands for settling the surplus population of this country, to provide new markets... The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question"
• "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.
• "Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambezi
• "To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life.
• “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.
This man was one of the worst things that ever happened to black Africans. And his transgressions still breed conflicts across southern Africa.
So what should CECIL RHODES Legacy be?
This man was one of the worst things that ever happened to black Africans. And his transgressions still breed conflicts across southern Africa.
ReplyDeleteAgreed but if it had not been Rhodes, it would have been someone else.
History is what it is, better to look back dispassionately, and learn from it rather than try to rewrite or change it.