Cecil rhodes who is he

Cecil Rhodes memorial. Related commemorations See all commemorations. Alfred, Viscount Milner b. Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston William Birdwood Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer Hugh Trenchard There is no indication that the impi Jamseon reported on had ever existed.

I am tired of hearing nothing but lies. What Impi of mine have your people seen and where do they come from? I know nothing of them. It was however far too late for Lobengula. With the permission to engage in defensive action from the British Government Rhodes joined Jameson in Matabeleland and his group of mercenary soldiers struck a quick and fatal blow at the Ndebele.

The Ndebele Impis were helpless in the face of this brutal killing technology and were slaughtered in their thousands. Lobengula himself realised he could not face the British in open combat and so he burnt down his own capital and fled with a few warriors.

He is presumed to have died shortly afterwards in January of from ill health. Most of the money to pay for this war came directly from Rhodes Consolidated Goldfields Company, which by this point had begun to produce excellent yields from the deeper lying gold fields. The conquered lands were named Southern and Northern Rhodesia, to honour Rhodes. Today, these are the countries of Zimbabwe and Zambia. By the s these conquered territories were being called Southern and Nothern Rhodesia. In July Rhodes became the Prime Minister of the Cape colony , after getting support from the English-speaking white and non-white voters and a number of Afrikaner-bond, whom he had offered shares in the British South Africa Company.

One of Rhodes most notorious and infamous undertakings as Prime Minister in South Africa, was his institution of the Glen Grey Act , a document that is often seen as the blueprint for the Apartheid regime that was to come. On 27 July , Rhodes gave a rousing speech, full of arrogance and optimism, to the Parliament of Cape Town that lasted more than minutes.

This land shortage coupled with a tax for not engaging in wage labour would push thousands of Africans into the migrant labour market. These were all measures essentially designed to ensure a system of labour migration which would feed the mines in both Kimberley and the Rand with cheap migrant labour. This section of the act instigated the terrible migrant-labour system that was to be so destructive in 20th century South Africa. Another pernicious outcome of the Glen Grey Act was its affected on African land rights claims and restricted and controlled where they could live.

This act was eventually to become the foundation of the Natives Land Act , a precursor to much of the Apartheid policy of separate development and the creation of the Bantustans. Lastly the Glen Grey Act radically reduced the voting franchise for Africans. A unified South Africa was an incredibly important political goal for Rhodes, and so when the Afrikaner Bondsmen came to Rhodes to complain about the number and rise of propertied Africans, who were competing with the Afrikaners and characteristically voted for English, rather than Afrikaans, representative.

To disenfranchise Africans the Act raised the property requirements for the franchise and required each voter to be able to write his own name, address and occupation before being allowed to vote. This radically curtailed the number of Africans who could vote, essentially marking the beginning of the end for the African franchise.

This new law allowed for the voter-less annexation of Pondoland. The Glen Grey Act also denied the vote to Africans from Pondoland no matter their education or property. Although Rhodes' policies were instrumental in the development of British imperial policies in South Africa, he did not, however, have direct political power over the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. He often disagreed with the Transvaal government's policies and felt 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 , Rhodes precipitated his own spectacular fall from power when he supported an attack on the Transvaal under the leadership of his old friend, Leander Jameson. Despite his meteoric loss of power and prestige Rhodes nonetheless continued his political activities.

In mid the Shona and Ndebele people in Southern Rhodesia, present day Zimbabwe, rose up against their colonial oppressors in a bid for freedom. Rhodes personally travelled to the region to take charge of the colonial response. In his attacks on the Ndebele and Shona he was vindictive, resorting to a scorched earth policy and destroying all their villages and crops.

After months of fighting Rhodes decided that conciliation was the only option. Looking to negotiate a peace settlement with the Ndebele and Shona he headed into the Matopo Mountains where a great indaba was held. Rhodes asked the chiefs why the Africans had risen up in war against the colonisers. The chiefs replied that the Africans had for decades been humiliated by the white settlers, subjected to police brutality and pushed into forced labour.

The chiefs saw this as a promise that the conditions for them and their countrymen would be improved, and so they agreed with Rhodes that they would end their hostilities. As a part of their agreement Rhodes spent many days in the Matopo hills, and every day the Ndebele would come to him and voice all their complaints.

In belief that their worries and complaints would be given just recognition, the Ndebele and Shona chiefs laid down their arms and returned to their fields. Thereafter, Rhodes was in ill-health, but he began concentrating on developing Rhodesia and especially in extending the railway, which he dreamed would one day reach Cairo, Egypt. After the Anglo-Boer war that broke out in October , Rhodes rushed to Kimberley to organise the defence of the town. However, his health was worsened by the siege, and after travelling to Europe he returned to the Cape in February Rhodes was buried at the Matopos Hills, Rhodesia Zimbabwe.

Rhodes never married and he did not have any known children and there is some suggestion that he was homosexual. This suggestion is based on the care and concern he showed to some men, but it is not enough to offer any solid truth. Source Rhodes fell ill shortly after leaving school and, as his lungs were affected, it was decided that he should visit his brother, Herbert, who had recently immigrated to Natal.

He wrote of this society, Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire.

Source A few months later, in a confession written at Oxford in , Rhodes articulated this same imperial vision, but with words that clearly showed his disdain for the people whom the British Empire should rule: "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.

Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human being, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence The Statesman In Rhodes prepared to enter public life at the Cape. For Rhodes is BSAC with its Royal charter was the means whereby which to expand the British Empire, which a timid government and penurious British treasury were not about to accomplish Rhodes reclining on one of his many voyages to the north.

The end of the Matabele In conceding Mashonaland to the BSAC Lobengula had avoided going to war with the British and had kept his people alive, and much of his territory intact.

The Precursor to Apartheid In July Rhodes became the Prime Minister of the Cape colony , after getting support from the English-speaking white and non-white voters and a number of Afrikaner-bond, whom he had offered shares in the British South Africa Company. Now, I take a different view. When I see the labour troubles that are occurring in the United States, and when I see the troubles that are going to occur with the English people in their own country on the social question and the labour question, I feel rather glad that the labour question here is connected with the native question.

The university will soon make a final decision on the statue's fate. The students calling for its removal have already attacked it. The tag RhodesMustFall has been tweeted many times.

Rhodes was an imperialist, businessman and politician who played a dominant role in southern Africa in the late 19th Century, driving the annexation of vast swathes of land. He founded the De Beers diamond firm which until recently controlled the global trade.

Scholarships allowing overseas students to come to Oxford University still bear his name. Many institutions, including Cape Town University itself, benefited from his largesse. But in , when the BBC conducted a poll on the greatest Britons, Rhodes failed to make the list. That was despite it being the centenary of his death. Those who want the statue removed object to Rhodes as the ultimate representation of colonialism. Adekeye Adebajo, executive director of South Africa's Centre for Conflict Resolution, and a former Rhodes Scholar, has said the demands to remove the statue appear to be "a metaphorical call for the transformation of the university's curriculum, culture and faculty, which many blacks feel are alienating and still reflect a Eurocentric heritage".

Rhodes' detractors see him as a racist, and one of the people who helped prepare the way for apartheid by working to alter laws on voting and land ownership. In Zimbabwe, there are still calls to have Rhodes's remains moved to the UK, where he was born. In South Africa, which has large disparities in wealth between ethnic groups , discussion of Rhodes has become strongly linked in recent weeks to a wider social debate. It's clear that Rhodes thought of the English as a "master race".