Rhodes' Ghost

Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia, was the most-written about figure of the Victorian late 19th century. He funded Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University in his Last Will, from which over 8,000 scholars worldwide have been beneficiaries and many rose to prominence in world affairs.Rhodes has been vilified by the #RhodesMustFall Movement, certain academics and in protests at Oxford and many other universities. Memorials and statues of Rhodes were removed from Harare and Bulawayo by Robert Mugabe in July 1980, following Independence, and 35 years later atthe University of Cape Town in 2015. There the famous Rhodes Memorial has been defaced seven times in the last few years and Rhodes' head on the statue was decapitated in 2020.In literature, arts, satire, poetry, film and documentaries, Rhodes has been often castigated by prominent biographers, writers, historians, politicians and the media commentariat. Many 'post-modernists' and writers have asserted a litany of claims about Rhodes' alleged sins of omission and commission. Rhodes' life, acts and thoughts, as well as achievements, have been questioned and often condemned. These claims and theses are answered in Rhodes' Ghost.Rhodes thwarted the designs of Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic and Afrikaners to take control of what was then Zambesia, and so equally halted Portuguese intrusions from Lisbon's empire, onto the plateau, including from prazeros and slavers, and then-threatening and acquisitive German imperial interests. His initiatives ended feudalism and 'iron age subsistence' in Zambesia, to bring modernity and secular economic progress to Rhodesia, a state that lasted 90 years - the longest recorded in Africa - depicted as the 'jewel of Africa' then inherited by Zimbabwe.Little appreciated is that several Rhodes' initiatives halted slaving and rampant predation on Zambesia's Great Plateau, which had been conducted for well over fifty years, as practiced by the predatory, ambulatory slaving Ndebele dynasties of Mzilikazi and Lobengula. Raids by Ndebele warriors enslaved many Shona clansmen, had slaughtered tens of thousands, stole their cattle and abducted multitudes of women, while impoverishing the weaker, fragmented patriarchal Shona societies.When Rhodes funded the Pioneer Column to Fort Salisbury in Mashonaland in 1890, he followed on with seven epic journeys into Rhodesia, from 1891 to 1901 and he deemed in his 'Last Will' to be buried there as 'Rhodesian'.Rhodes was the only man - apart from the Ndebele king, Mzilikazi - to be given the 'royal salute', Bayete, at burial in the Matopos Hills in April 1902. Over three thousand Ndebele warriors with their indunas or chiefs called him Nkosi or chief in 1896, after he had negotiated lasting peace, following war and rebellion.Rhodes' Ghost draws on detailed research, voluminous bibliography and over a century of historiography, about Zambesia and on Rhodes' thoughts, ideas and acts. Rhodes' life and primary legacy are laid bare in the most comprehensive record ever penned, with a nuanced 'self-defence' of Cecil Rhodes, with needed correction to narratives and revisionist critiques that have pervaded history and biography. This 'historical autobiography' is the most up-to-date interpretation of the vast literature that relates to one of the most prominent late 19th Victorian and early 20th century figures of significance in Africa and the world.In 2003, Nelson Mandela remarked: " it is reassuring ... to know that after all these centuries there are moments and occasions when men like ... Rhodes are remembered for posterity".