Burdensome White Dude

“Whitey On The Moon”

[Cecil] Rhodes schemed and behaved like a politician, not a merchant. He acted with the ruthlessness and calculated brutality of a mediaeval warlord. He was a brilliant manipulator and, some would argue, swindler, his actions made noteworthy by his audacity. The legends and myths surrounding him are legion. He bought newspaper companies, both secretly and openly, because of his conviction that “the press rules the minds of men.” He has been accused of pressuring doctors to suppress information concerning a smallpox epidemic among the African labour force of his diamond mines, believing that this information would disrupt production because labourers would steer clear of the region; and it would, of course, cost money to pay for inoculations—money he did not want to spend. As a result, 751 people died before the disease was finally brought under control. Rhodes used his power and authority in government to support legislation that strengthened mine-owners’ rights and weakened native Africans’ voting and land rights. In the House of Assembly in Cape Town, he made a speech claiming that “the native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa?”
pp. 277-278

Stephen R. Bown, Merchant Kings - 2009