Rhodes was good and bad. "Multi-dimensional and multi-faceted," as Robert Rotberg, author of a biographer, The Founder, described him. Rhodes was a natural leader with extraordinary
magnetism, yet moody and unfathomable. Blood on the Path attempts
to
bring alive the kind of arguments Merriman had in letters and diarised
dialogues with Rhodes and their mutual political contacts.
They were old friends who were brutally frank with each other, often
hyper-critical, as good friends can be.
Until mid-20th century, Cecil John Rhodes was
regarded in English literature as a leader of exceptional talent, the most
famous image of him being a cartoon depicting him bestriding Africa like the
Greek classical Colossus of Rhodes. He is still revered for his vision (or was
it J X Merriman’s vision?) of Oxford Scholarships that have been offered
internationally for the past century.
In recent times he has been seen as an evil imperialist; a
land-grabber and - to quote the most
popular modern epithet - a racist.
History continues to be fickle in its judgement of Rhodes;
and the debate still rages:
Was Cecil Rhodes an enlightened if ruthless
expansionist? Or was he the fore-runner of Hitler’s evil spirit, as proposed in
the 21st century in one of those heated debates about statues which
break out in Cape Town at almost regular intervals?
A letter published in the Cape Times (March 22,
2005) sums up the debate admirably – as well as the issue of politically
judgmental hindsights. It is worth
reproducing here, if only for the sentence: “Rhodes was very much a man of his time (as we are of ours)”.
FOR BETTER OR
WORSE
A reader suggested (Cape Times, March 14) that if the
mayor of Cape Town, Nomaindia Mfeketo, is serious in her wish to advance the
process of "transformation" in the city, she might begin by removing
the offensive statue of Cecil John Rhodes in the
Company's Garden pointing north and
proclaiming arrogantly that our hinterland lies there.
The inscription is, of course, deliberately provocative
and does indeed express Rhodes's dream of a union of southern African states
stretching up at least to the border of the Belgian Congo (Zaire) and perhaps
beyond up the east side of Africa, even to Cairo itself. All this he imagined and hoped might one
day be under what he saw as the benign and efficient government of Great
Britain.
The latter part of the 19th century was the time when
Britain's empire and confidence was at its peak and Rhodes was very much a man
of his time (as we are of ours) and he shared this British vision (though the
British government of his day viewed his schemes with alarm, envisaging they
would incur much expense).
Certainly Rhodes saw British culture and values as
superior to those of the indigenous peoples and assumed that they could only
benefit by such rule and the development it would bring.
It
is a view we no longer accept and it is
now fully realised that it is demeaning for people of any different culture to
be subject to the rule and the values of others. Such an attitude is now regarded as racist though it was perhaps not
necessarily so.
It seems ludicrous to compare him to Hitler. He had no
comparable plan to wipe out any of the country's peoples.
Despite our changed perceptions, however, we should
still be able to see that Rhodes, and even his vision for this country and the
continent, played an enormous role both for good and ill in our development and
history. Let us keep Rhodes where he is and build our own different future at
least with similar determination and vision. - Margaret Muir, Fish Hoek
Was Rhodes homosexual? - See 'homo or hetero'
Was Rhodes a racist? - See notes on General J C Smuts
