At the end of the 19th century, the domain of the south-eastern tip of Africa was divided between the British Crown and the Boers or Afrikaners , settlers of Dutch origin, successors of the first Europeans who had colonized the region in the 17th century. In 1886, Queen Victoria –after successive conquests, exactions and a war with the Boers– ruled over the Cape colonies , to the south, and Natal , to the south east. The Afrikaners , meanwhile, still governed two republics bordering each other:the Orange Free State and Transvaal , both located northeast of the Cape Colony.
The discovery of the fabulous gold deposit in the Witwatersrand region (the Land of White Water , in the Afrikaner language), in Transvaal lands, generated a massive displacement of British settlers to the region... the so-called uitlanders (foreigners) by the Boers. Fearful of that «invasion » - they had already suffered their insults and land theft for eighty years - and in defense of the Boer citizens, the Transvaal government, headed by Paul Kruger -a tough and determined Afrikaner, of proverbial physical strength and great ascendancy over his people- enacted a series of protectionist and exclusionary laws regarding the activity of British citizens within its borders:they did not have the right to vote, they required several years of residence before being able to access a mining franchise and levied heavy taxes on the profits they could obtain from it. Despite these limitations, the Uitlander population soon surpassed that of the Boers in the Witwatersrand:60,000 compared to 30,000 adult males in 1895. Protests by the British majority spread and became radicalised.
Cecil Rhodes
The catalyst for that unstable situation was Cecil John Rhodes . This British man who had come to Africa at the age of 17, with borrowed money, in search of a more beneficial climate for his health and became, in less than two decades, one of the richest men on the planet. He amassed his fortune in the diamond fields of New Rush (later called Kimberley ), buying small concessions at ridiculous prices from miners who could no longer afford the exploitation costs. In 1888 he founded the famous De Beers Company in partnership with other mining concession owners such as Barney Barnato and Charles Rudd. In 1890, Rhodes was elected Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and from that moment he had, in addition to his personal wealth, the political power necessary to promote his dream:that British rule in Africa would extend from the Cape , in the south, to Cairo, in the north . In that sense, he promotes the expansion towards the North, towards Matabelelandia , named after the natives who populated the area. That campaign covered the two most important aspects of his vision:the expansion of Queen Victoria's domains and the search for economic gains through obtaining mining concessions from the native kings. The company that obtained the concession from the British government for this “colonization ” was the British South Africa Company , whose main shareholder was Cecil Rhodes. The territories occupied by the British were called Rhodesia … He himself called the settlers of that region:my Rhodesians . One sentence sums up his philosophy of life...
We have to find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap labor of the natives in the colonies. The colonies would also provide an outlet for surplus goods produced in our factories
In 1895, the situation of the British settlers in the mining area of the Witwatersrand had reached an intolerable level for them and they began to speak of an uprising. Rhodes sees an opportunity to seize control of the goldfields and annex the Transvaal to the British Empire through a daring coup. Along with his henchman, the General Manager of Matabeleland, Leander Starr Jameson , hatch a plan to invade the Transvaal with an armed force that would join the rebels in the city of Johannesburg and overthrow the Boer government. Jameson prepares the invasion force on the Transvaal border with Matabeleland:600 men armed with Maxim rifles and machine guns waiting for the signal to intervene. But that notice is delayed due to differences between the leaders who were to lead the uprising within the Transvaal. Frustrated by the wait, worried that the whole plan would be discovered and convinced that the raid would force the rebels to act, on December 29, 1895 Jameson gives the order to advance without the approval of Rhodes. Joseph Chamberlain , the British Colonial Secretary, who fears that this action will not be approved by the Crown, decides to cover his back and sabotage it:he sends telegrams to the English colonists in the Transvaal warning them not to support the invading column and warns Rhodes that his position may seriously compromised if their involvement in the raid is discovered. So Jameson, overnight, became a pariah, an individual who was acting on his own account without the slightest official support.
Jameson's invading force pushes into the Transvaal but fails to accomplish a critical action:cutting the telegraph lines to Pretoria , the Boer capital. That allows their movements to be tracked from the precise moment they crossed the border allowing Boer forces to ambush them and thin their ranks. On January 2, 1896, after three days of fighting, Jameson and his troops surrender to General Piet Cronje and are driven to Pretoria. Later, the Boer government will return them to the British Government for trial. As for the uitlanders who were supposed to lead the rebellion from within, they were sentenced to death by hanging although the sentence was later commuted to 15 years in prison.
Despite not being able to obtain the desired loot, Jameson's raid caused consequences that were ultimately favorable to the interests of the Crown. First of all, the men who took part in the raid had come from the body of the newly created Matabeleland Police . Faced with this bleeding of troops, the Matabele natives, of warrior lineage, took advantage of the occasion to rebel against the white occupants. The British troops took more than a year to put down the rebellion that cost thousands of lives on both sides but it served as an excuse to establish an iron and brutal domain. Secondly, the disputes between the British colonists of the Transvaal and the government of Paul Kruger intensified and in 1899 the Boer republics declared war on the Empire, thus beginning the Second Anglo-Boer War which would culminate in British victory and the annexation of both states to English rule.
Due to suspicions about his support for the raid, Rhodes had to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Thereafter, he dedicated the last years of his life to “his Rhodesia «. He died at the age of 48 and his grave is there, in what is now Zimbabwe, in the Matopos Hills, a sacred place for the Matabele very close to the grave of Leander Starr Jameson.
Collaboration of Pablo Petrides
I recommend Beautiful Rhodesia by Carlos Erice .