Cecil Rhodes’ Grave in Zimbabwe Has Become an Awkward Tourist Attraction

The remains of British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes lie under a slab of stone atop a granite hill in Zimbabwe, largely unscathed by political ferment over a man whose colonial legacy rankles many in Africa nearly a century after his death.

Lizards scamper around a grave that, while occasionally vandalized, attracts tourists and has been tolerated by longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe, who turned 93 last month. In this picturesque place, the burial site of a historical figure who is increasingly vilified seems secure, for now, in a country that has long accused Western powers of clinging to a colonial mindset.

Monuments to colonial rule have been removed in many countries across Africa, though some remain. There is debate over whether to erase symbols of an era of white domination on the continent or preserve them as cautionary reminders of the past.

“There are certain things in history which you must leave for posterity’s sake,” Dumiso Dabengwa, a former home affairs minister in Zimbabwe who is now an opposition politician. “People must get to know — when they hear about Cecil John Rhodes and they want to see the place where he would want to rest — and be able to make up their minds about the type of man that he was.”

Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony at the southern tip of Africa in the late 19th century, made a fortune in gold and diamond mining and grabbed land from the local population. He was the namesake of territories that eventually became the nations of Zimbabwe — formerly Rhodesia — and Zambia. Accusations that he was a racist have tainted his association with education and philanthropy.

Statues of Rhodes, who died in 1902, were uprooted in Zimbabwean cities after independence from white minority rule in 1980. He became a polarizing figure again in 2015 when students defaced a statue of him at South Africa’s University of Cape Town, which removed the monument. Last year, the University of Oxford in Britain, which allocates scholarships named after Rhodes, said it would not take down a statue of its benefactor despite protests by some students.

The Rhodes grave lies in Matobo National Park, a United Nations heritage site where granite spires and other unusual rock formations captivate visitors, and where indigenous spirits are said to dwell. About 15,000 people visit the grave annually, some ascending to watch the sunset or sunrise, said Moira FitzPatrick, a regional director for a state agency that oversees Zimbabwe’s museums and monuments.

The grave generates badly needed cash in a country beset by economic turmoil. A foreign adult pays $15 to get into the park, and then another $10 to see the burial site. A Zimbabwean adult pays a total of $8.

Mugabe came to this area near Bulawayo in western Zimbabwe for his birthday celebrations last month, addressing thousands of supporters near a school named after Rhodes. While officials announced that the school would be renamed after Matobo — also called Matopo or Matopos by visitors — the president joked about the British empire builder.

“Where is the ghost or spirit of Rhodes coming from?” Mugabe said in the Shona language. “If he is to rise from the dead, I am not going to order the boys to fire one bullet or use an AK-47. I will order them to use a machine gun to crush that head like that of a cobra.”

Source: Cecil Rhodes’ Grave in Zimbabwe Has Become an Awkward Tourist Attraction (12/03/17)

Cecil Rhodes statue pulled down in Cape Town

A statue of  Cecil Rhodes, the British mining magnate and African coloniser, has been pulled down from its plinth at the University of Cape Town after a prolonged protest by students.

The statue, which has occupied a prominent position on the South Africa university’s rugby fields since 1934, had been previously pelted with excrement and paint and wrapped in plastic bags by those who argued that it was offensive to black students and that memories of the brutal heritage Rhodes represented should not be preserved.

The debate sparked similar protests across the country which saw a statue of a bronze British soldier who fought in the Boer War removed from his horse in Port Elizabeth, and the spray-painting of a statue of King George VI at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters political party, led by former ANC rabble rouser Julius Malema, have enthusiastically joined in with the protests, its followers daubing with paint statues of former South African leaders Paul Kruger and Louis Botha, in Pretoria and Cape Town respectively.

The vandalism prompted protests from white minority parties including Freedom Front Plus, and Afrikaans singers Steve Hofmeyr and Sunette Bridges, who sang the former apartheid anthem Die Stem in front of Kruger’s statue in Pretoria, watched by an audience of white people, some dressed in quasi-military uniforms.

AfriForum, a white civil rights group, warned that strong emotions around the debate meant that communities were becoming “dangerously polarised”.

“The Afrikaner is – from a historical perspective – increasingly being portrayed as criminals and land thieves,” the group said in a statement.

“But apartheid freedom fighters are certainly not the untainted heroes government is making them out to be.

This week, the UCT’s governing body, staff and students voted virtually unanimously for the statue to be removed temporarily, pending an application to the government body, Heritage Western Cape, for its permanent removal.

A deadline was set for the statue to be taken down by 5pm on Thursday and by late afternoon a large crowd had gathered to cheer the former coloniser’s dethroning by a hydraulic crane.

As the brooding bronze figure was lifted gently from his plinth, the crowds below erupted in cheers as several students climbed up to dance in the space the statue had cleared.

Nathi Mthethwa, South Africa’s arts and culture minister, said UCT’s students had raised a valid concern.

“For far too long our heritage landscape has been viewed through the prism of our colonisers and we have got to challenge that,” he said.

“But to come up with a blanket ban is not helpful – each statue has to be examined on its own merits because each history is not the same.” He condemned other protests where statues had been vandalised.

“We want to keep them in a museum, not destroy them, because our policy of reconciliation is that we should forgive each other but never forget,” he said.

Mmusi Maimane, the parliamentary leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s official opposition, said the statue debate was a “distraction” from the ANC’s failure to improve the lives of the majority of South Africans.

“That is the real scandal in our country,” he said. “We cannot erase history, and we cannot escape the fact that our heritage is intertwined as South Africans.”

Dali Tambo, son of the ANC’s liberation leader Oliver Tambo who oversaw the erection of a new statue of Nelson Mandela outside Pretoria’s Union Buildings, said he was dismayed by the protests.

“I would like to live in a country with a varied heritage landscape, but it must be dominated by the heritage of the majority; which requires us to create new heritage of scale that tells the story of our journey to democracy,” he said.

Frans Cronje, the head of South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations, said that while he held no strong views about whether the statue should remain or not, he was concerned by the “intolerable hooliganism” that had characterised the campaign to remove it.

“A university ceases to exist when an open culture of argument and counter argument is replaced by fear, intimidation, and racial nationalism,” he said, citing an attack on a member of staff who questioned the campaign and the singing of the struggle song “One Settler One Bullet” after the student council voted in favour.

He also questioned the vote by the university’s staff “senate” of 189-1 in favour of removing the statue, something he noted brought to mind “North Korea’s election result”.

Source: Cecil Rhodes statue pulled down in Cape Town (09/04/15)

Zimbabwe, Zambia struggle to reclaim assets in SA

 ZIMBABWE and Zambia are struggling to reclaim legacy indivisible assets including vast mineral rights covering close to two million hectares of land in South Africa left to them by the former coloniser, Cecil John Rhodes.

Rhodes, using the British South Africa Company, (BSAC) colonised Zambia and Zimbabwe in 1888 and 1890 respectively before the two neighbours became known as Northern and Southern Rhodesia as they formed a Federation.

The Cape government awarded Rhodes’ company Bechuanaland Railway Company Limited, vast stretches of land to facilitate the construction of the railwayline in present day South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

On June 1, 1899 Bechuanaland Railway Company changed name to Rhodesia Railways Limited which managed to retain ownership of mineral rights in South Africa excluding land rights.

The mineral rights covered an area in excess of 1,7 million hectares over 523 farms and in the 1930s Rhodes sold some of his land and retained mineral rights in South Africa.

Rhodesia Railways became Zimbabwe-Zambia Pvt Ltd (Ziza) in 1990.

The Rhodes Trust left the mineral rights in equal shares to modern Zimbabwe and Zambia but the process of transferring mineral rights is not yet complete.

There are 1 660 000ha of mineral rights in North West and Northern Cape provinces in South Africa following the recent loss of 40 000ha to Aquila through a Constitutional Court judgment (CCT08/18) in South Africa.

The other indivisible assets left by the Trust include the Victoria Falls Hotel and the Victoria Falls Bridge.

There are also funds locked in the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) while Bon Accord Hotel was sold to Zambia Government and Wankie Hotel to a private investor.

Zimbabwe and Zambia jointly incorporated the Emerged Railways Properties (ERP) (PVT) LTD in 1997 to manage the indivisible assets through the Zambia Railways Limited (ZRL) and National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ). Ziza is a subsidiary of ERP, whose investment and property manager’s main offices are in Victoria Falls and another in Livingstone, Zambia.

The South African Government in 2005 enacted the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act which sought to recognise that mineral resources are common heritage of all South Africans and collectively belong to all the people of South Africa under the framework of the use-it-or-lose-it/use-it-and-keep-it principle hence the ERP became incapacitated to exploit its mineral interests in the neighbouring country.

Through a Memorandum of Understanding based on this background, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa formed a company called Pan African Minerals Development Company (PMDC) to hold and exploit the mineral rights.

Each government signed a shareholder’s agreement with each holding 33,3 percent and the Zimbabwe and Zambia shares are held through ERP while those for South Africa are held by Africa Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation (AEMFC).

South Africa was mandated to provide PAMDC board chair while Zimbabwe and Zambia rotate the chief executive position.

There have been numerous problems in the operations of PAMDC which last held a Council of Ministers meeting in 2014 while South Africa resigned as board chair in 2017 creating governance challenges as no decisions can be validated without a board chair.

PAMDC faces dire financial constraints due to non-contributions by shareholders and governments while there is risk of losing more land due to legal suits, illegal exploration and mining that could lead to further losses.

The Council of Ministers held a meeting in Livingstone, Zambia on Saturday chaired by Zimbabwe’s Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister Felix Mhona and his counterpart Mutotwe Kafwaya who is Zambia’s Transport and Communication Minister and are both co-chairs.

The meeting was also attended by National Railways of Zimbabwe Board chair Advocate Martin Dinha and his ZRL counterpart Dr Wala Chabula and NRZ acting general manager Mrs Restina Zinyanduko, who together with ZRL managing director Mr Christopher Musonda are ERP co-board chairpersons.

It was meant to discuss operations of ERP and status of Pan African Minerals Development Company (PMDC) so that the Ministers receive and consider reports, with a communique to be submitted to both countries’ principals.

Speaking at the meeting, Minister Mhona who is a co-chair said there is a need to find a lasting solution to governance, cooperation and viability challenges which have confronted PMDC.

He pledged Government’s commitment to operations of ERP, adding that he had already engaged President Mnangagwa on the issue.

“This convocation is an eloquent testament that our two sister countries are totally dedicated to the cause of infrastructure development. We have moved together on a number of projects anchored on our shared vision of transforming our economies to upper middle-income status by 2030 and the opportunity offered by the ERP creates room for scaling up our further cooperation in areas of infrastructure.

“Through this participation let us scale up our government-to-government cooperation in infrastructure development and deepen people to people relations as these are catalysts for stronger relations between the two countries,” he said.

While the PAMDC challenges are historic, Minister Mhona said the current governments could be the generation to unlock business opportunities that lie hidden in the mineral claims

“While the complexities of unlocking value from the vast mineral resources and interest in PAMDC are apparent, we should not lose sight of the cardinal work ethic which should be invested towards finding a lasting solution to the challenges.

“The four-tier approach which is leveraged on engagement of our South African counterparts and the need to curve out a brilliant investment plan for the PAMDC should be supported by a time bound implementation matrix. Now that we have engaged as Zambia and Zimbabwe, we will use that as a springboard of our immediate future actions to unlock the value that resides in PAMDC,” added Minister Mhona.

His Zambian counterpart said there was need to move with speed.

The success of PAMDC is based on mutual and beneficial cooperation of the three countries.

The meeting resolved that a viable investment framework should immediately be adopted and implemented as a strategic turnaround strategy of PAMDC and that financial constraints emanating from non-contributions by shareholders and governments should be addressed.

It was also resolved that South Africa should appoint a chair to the PAMDC board and director to fill positions which have been vacant for a long time making it difficult to hold meetings and the board should meet quarterly while the Council of Ministers should immediately resume on an annual basis.

The two co-chair ministers should engage their South African counterparts through diplomatic protocol before June 15 and if the engagement does not yield desired results by the given timelines, the two ministers shall then seek the intervention of the two respective Presidents to engage their South African counterpart on the matter.

Source: Zimbabwe, Zambia struggle to reclaim assets in SA (10/05/2011)