In practice, the exercise of authority often involved force as, for instance, against the Ndebele in [4]. Rhodes was a pragmatic politician.
His treatment of educated or powerful Africans, whose support he needed, could be cordial, and he financed a newspaper for a largely black readership [5]. His government also passed the Franchise and Ballot Act which, by raising the property qualification for voters and introducing a literacy test, excluded most Africans from the franchise. By the s Rhodes was one of the most powerful men in the British empire [6]. In Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate of law.
The building was completed in and decorated with a number of statues, including one of Rhodes himself. Alfred Mosely, a diamond merchant and friend of Rhodes, gained permission from the College to erect a plaque to him on the house in King Edward Street where Rhodes had lived in In and 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 and he and Rudd obtained the contract for pumping the water out of the three main mines. Rhodes had come to the realisation that the only way to avoid the cyclical boom and bust of the diamond industry was to have far greater control over the production and distribution of diamonds.
And so, in April , in search of an oligopoly over diamond production, Rhodes and Rudd launched the De Beers Consolidated Mines mining company. With pounds capital the Company, of which Rhodes was secretary, owned the largest interest in mines in South Africa. Of the encounter Barnato later wrote:. No one else in the world could have induced me to into this partnership.
But Rhodes had an extraordinary ascendancy over men: he tied them up, as he ties up everybody. It is his way. In the early s gold was discovered in the Transvaal, sparking the Witwatersrand Gold Rush.
Rhodes considered joining the rush to open gold mines in the region, but Rudd, convinced him that the Witwatersrand was merely the beginning, and that far greater gold fields lay to the north, in present day Zimbabwe and Zambia. As a result Rhodes held back while other Kimberley capitalists hastened to the Transvaal to stake the best claims. In when Rhodes finally did act and formed the Goldfields of South Africa Company with his brother Frank, most of the best claims were already taken.
Goldfields South Africa performed very poorly, prompting Rhodes to look towards the north for the gold fields that Rudd had assured him were lying in wait. In Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. Rhodes chose the constituency of Barkley West, a rural constituency in which Boer voters predominated, and at age 29 was elected as its parliamentary representative.
Barkley West remained faithful to Rhodes even after the Jameson Raid and he continued as its member until his death. The chief preoccupation of the Cape Parliament when Rhodes became a member was the future of Basutoland , where the ministry of Sir Gordon Sprigg was trying to restore order after a rebellion in The ministry had precipitated the revolt by applying its policy of disarmament to the Basuto.
Seeking expansion to the north and with prospects of building his great dream of a Cape to Cairo railway, Rhodes persuaded Britain to establish a protectorate over Bechuanaland now Botswana in , eventually leading to Britain annexing this territory. Rhodes seemed to have immense influence in Parliament despite the fact that he was acknowledged to be a poor speaker, with a thin, high pitched voice, with little aptitude for oration and a poor physical presence.
What made Rhodes nonetheless so incredibly convincing to his contemporaries has remained much of a mystery to his biographers. In Rhodes looked further north towards Matabeleland and Mashonaland, in present day Zimbabwe.
Matabeleland fell squarely in the territory which Rhodes hoped to conquer, from the Cape to Cairo, in the name of the British Empire. It also was believed to hold vast, untapped gold fields, which Rudd believed would be of far greater value than those discovered in the Witwatersrand. In pursuit of his imperial dream and in his desire to make up for the failure of his Gold Fields Mining Company, Rhodes began to explore ways in which to exploit the mineral wealth of Matabeleland and Mahsonaland.
The King of Matabeleland, King Lobengula, who was believed by the British to also rule over Mashonaland, had already allowed a number of British miners mineral rights in his kingdom. He had also sent a number of his men to labour in the diamond mines, thus setting a precedence for engagement with him.
However, the King had consistently stated quite clearly that he wanted no British interference in his own territory.
These fears made Rhodes rapidly mobilise in order to get Matabeleland under British control. Although the British government at the time was against further colonial expansion to the north of South Africa, Rhodes was able to use the threat of other imperial powers, such as Germany, taking over the land to push the British Government to take action.
The result was the Moffat Treaty of February , essentially a relaxed British protection treaty. The Moffat Treaty was however between Lobengula and the British Government, Rhodes himself was hardly a relevant player in this. Worried that the Moffat Treaty was too weak to hold Matabeleland, and convinced that the Dutch and Germans were making plans to take the territory and desperate for exclusive mining rights in the region, Rhodes concocted to his own plan to take control of the territory.
The BSAC was a commercial-political entity aiming at exploiting economic resources and political power to advance British finance capital. Through Rhodes influence however, Rudd was able to win over the support of the local British officials staying with Lobengula, a move which ultimately convinced Lobengula that Rudd had more power and influence than any of the other petitioners seeking concessions from him. After much negotiation Rudd was eventually able to get Lobengula to sign a concession giving exclusive mining rights to the BSAC in exchange for protection against the Boere and neighbouring tribes.
This concession became known as the Rudd Concession. Lobengula however feared his people would be defeated if they attacked the whites, and so it is likely that he signed the Rudd Concession in the hopes of gaining British protection and thereby preventing a Boer migration into his lands which would then incite his warriors to battle. For Lobengula his options were essentially to either concede to the British or to the Dutch. In the belief that he was protecting his interests he sided with the seemingly more lenient and liberal British.
Like so many documents signed by Africans during the colonial period, the Rudd Concession was however not what it claimed to be, but rather became a justifying document for the colonisation of the Ndebele and the Shona.
Rhodes was forced to resign as Prime Minister of Cape Colony. Cecil John Rhodes died in as one of the wealthiest men in the world. Having no family, Rhodes provided in his last will and testament a large portion of his estate to the establishment of the Rhodes Scholarships.
Rhodes Scholars study one to two years at the University of Oxford in England. Each issue has a destination update, loads of information about conservation and wildlife, specials offers, traveller tips, community projects, website highlights and tons more Find out more about our Bush Telegraph.
Don't worry. Your e-mail address is totally secure. Apartheid was introduced in and ended in , but it has taken until now for there to be momentum behind removing statues of Rhodes. But the targeting of the statue has in fact been going on for years, says Saul Dubow, professor of African history at Queen Mary University of London, and a former student at Cape Town. Rhodes is disliked by most black South Africans, Afrikaners and those of British heritage, Dubow suggests. Rhodes, born the son of a vicar in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, in , was dogged by ill health as a child.
He first came to Africa, where the climate was deemed better for him, aged He grew cotton in Natal, but moved into diamond mining, gradually outwitting his rivals to become the dominant force in the trade. The reason Rhodes's statue sits at the centre of the University of Cape Town's campus is that he bequeathed the land on which it was built. Another of the reasons his name is well known today is the Rhodes Scholarships created via his will. These allow 83 students from the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Zimbabwe and several Commonwealth countries - including a number of southern African nations - to come each year to Oxford University.
Many buildings still bear his name, as does Rhodes University, set up in in Grahamstown, South Africa. Few leaders in the countries affected by Rhodes, including Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, have chosen to dismantle monuments to him, notes Sebe.
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