Rhodes to resign from Chartered Company

The Rhodesia Herald,

 13 May 1896

GREAT consternation was evinced here this morning when it became known that there was a possibility of Mr Cecil John Rhodes resigning from the Directorate of the Chartered Company.

To people, this will mean a loss of faith in the country, and that will ensue a general exodus.

Mr Rhodes cannot be spared from the country, and as a private citizen would not be half as useful. A petition is being got up asking the London Board to refuse to accept his resignation, and calling upon the Secretary for the colonies to inform Mr Rhodes that he must keep his word, and make Rhodesia a big British colony.

There would be a great agitation here should Mr Rhodes be removed, and a great withdrawal of capital. His resignation, it is roundly stated would be far worse in its consequences than the native rising, the rinderpest, or anything else, and would pull the country down for five years.

Mr Rhodes is indispensable to Rhodesia, and if he went, hundreds would leave the country.

It is believed that Mr Rhodes will pull the country through the present crisis, and as such all interests will command a good price.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

When the extended family was very strong in Zimbabwean society, it was quite common for parents to take a child in poor health to go and stay with an aunt or maternal grandparents. But those children never did the unthinkable: take over their host’s homestead, fields and animals.

When Francis and Louisa Rhodes sent their sickly son Cecil John Rhodes to South Africa to join his brother Herbert,  an already successful cotton grower, they never imagined that apart from turning into a politician and mining magnate who created the de Beers mining company and the Rhodes Scholarship, he would also be a Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and an imperialist who occupied Zimbabwe and Zambia and named them after himself (southern and northern Rhodesia).

Rhodes’ insatiable imperialistic footprint continues to felt in Zimbabwe and the whole continent 118 years after his death in 1902.

Despite gaining independence, the question is how should Zimbabwe and the continent deprogramme themselves of the lingering imperialistic tendencies that have kept them tied to former colonisers, making them look like they have solutions to all the challenges facing the continent?

It is about time that the people of Africa identify the abundant opportunities in the country’s vast natural resources before they turn to the West, that developed its systems using resources from the continent.

The Rhodes Scholarship for example, has been funded by mineral wealth that Rhodes stole from Africa, but it remains one of the most prestigious scholarships that Africans fight for.

What will it also take for African governments to remove Rhodes’ remaining mementos in Zimbabwe and South Africa?

This means rebranding Zimbabwe without any imperialistic traces at all.