Cecil Rhodes: Racial Segregation in the Cape Colony and Violence in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article focuses on two key questions that have been central in debates following the Rhodes Must Fall protests at the University of Oxford in 2015–16: whether Rhodes supported and contributed to racial segregation in the Cape Colony, and how to characterise the violence in the conquest of Zimbabwe in the 1890s. With respect to the Cape, the evidence shows that Rhodes supported developments that intensified racial segregation in the late 19th century, including restrictions on the franchise, punitive racially based masters and servants legislation and a labour (poll) tax for African people only. He was involved as an employer in the beginning of coercive compounds for black workers and other racially restrictive practices. In respect of Zimbabwe, 1890–97, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company were responsible for extreme violence against African people. Unbridled use was made of the Maxim gun; cattle were looted by the Company and its agents on a large scale; grain stores and crops were appropriated or destroyed over a sustained period as a deliberate strategy; over a period of nine months in 1896–97, African men (including armed men), women and children sheltering in caves were blown up with dynamite. Rhodes was aware of these practices, at times participating or present while they were taking place and involved in strategic discussions. The article is based on published sources, and some of this is established in the historiography, but I do not know of an attempt to assess and quantify deaths in Zimbabwe. The material supports the argument that a celebratory statue of Rhodes at Oriel College is inappropriate and that it should be moved.