How Cecil Rhodes Killed Million Of Southern Africans For Diamonds And Lands
October 04, 2020 725
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During the
brutal scramble for Africa's human and natural resources, at least two million
Africans were killed in the scramble for ivory tusks for piano keys and billiard
balls. At the time, the center of the ivory trade was Connecticut.
80% of the Nama
and Herero peoples of Namibia were murdered in cold blood by the Germans. They
were killed and forced to the desert where they were left to die in the desert
without food, water, or shelter. Germany to date has never recognized this
genocide or paid reparations even as they have paid billions in reparations to
Israel for the holocaust.
But Germany’s
crime in Africa is not what we want to talk about here.
During this same
time as Germany’s massacre in Namibia, the British colonizer Cecil Rhodes came
to southern Africa. He believed so much in British imperialism and promoted it.
He is credited for saying “to prevent
civil war you must become an imperialist.”
Cecil Rhodes was
a British man responsible for untold, unending devastation and violence in the
region of South Africa.
His goal was to
install British imperialism from Cape Town to Cairo and built the Cape-Cairo
railway.
Cecil Rhodes was
a perpetrator of genocide, who was responsible for the displacement of millions
of African people for the benefit of white settlers. He was instrumental in the
enslavement of millions of African people on their own land. He is part of the
legacy of white people who came from Europe and became wealthy from the theft
of the gold and diamonds in Southern Africa.
Rhodes founded the
popular DeBeers diamond cartel. He left Britain for South Africa when he was
only but 18 years old. He took over the diamond mines at Kimberley South Africa
and others in the area. By his early 20s, he was already a millionaire but he did
not retire. He made fortunes off the sweat of the indigenous nations and tribes
of Southern Africa. At that young age, he believed in subjugating Africa for
the benefit of England.
Maybe he was
born with this kind of hate, or just like other Europeans, he had the hunger to
see Africa'ss blood flow.
He was the
architect of apartheid in South Africa. Rhodes explicitly believed that the
Anglo-Saxon race was a master race. This ideology drove him to not only steal
approximately one million miles of South African land but also to facilitate
the murder of hundreds of thousands of black South Africans. Many accounts
actually number his victims in their millions.
He established
the paramilitary private army, the British South-Africa Company’s Police
(BSACP). That army was responsible for the systematic murder of tens to hundreds
of thousands of the native people of present-day South Africa.
His hateful
amendment of the Masters and Servants Act
(1890) reintroduced conditions of torture for native and indigenous
laborers. His monstrous racist “land
grabs” set up a system in which the unlawful and illegitimate acquisition
of land through armed force was routine for white people.
Cecil Rhodes
despised democracy. In 1887 he told the House of Assembly in Cape Town: “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.”
Now what kind of
sadism and self-deceit could that be? You murder a people, take their lands,
and then refer to them as barbarians. The conscience of the European colonizer
will surprise you, when you view their atrocities throughout history, and how
they kept reminding themselves that they were doing right.
His Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892
effectively eliminated the voting rights of African. On many occasions, he
reminded his colleagues of the “extreme
caution” they must use when it comes to “granting
the franchise to colored people.”
Rhodes also went
to Zimbabwe. He attacked and killed the Matabele and Shona, although they
launched a fierce resistance which was led by their leader Lobengula.
Cecil Rhodes
paid a mercenary army from England and supplied them with Maxim machine guns.
With just 5 of these machine guns the English slaughtered more than 5,000
African people in one afternoon alone. After that, they celebrated with dinner
and champagne.
Cecil Rhode's gay lover said he, “thoroughly enjoyed
the outing.” He saw the slaughter of over 5,000 Africans as sport and
adventure.
How noble!!!
These were the same people who brought the gospel of peace and love to Africa,
through missionaries.
The Chokwe,
Shona and Zulu people were among the indigenous ethnic nationalities who led powerful struggles
against the European invasions.
Cecil Rhodes was
known to help set up the apartheid system in South Africa and the pass laws which were based on the Jim Crow laws of the United States. The pass laws, were mainly colonial taxation
of African people to force them to work to be used as near slave labor in the
diamond mines.
The Africans who worked in his diamond mines were forced to stay away from family and wife, in compounds with only cold tea and bread. These are much the same conditions you find today in the various mines in Africa.
When Cecil Rhodes died the DeBeers
diamond cartel was taken over by the Oppenheimer family.
The atrocities
that took place in Sierra Leone and other West African nations were what
DeBeers itself has done to African people for a hundred years. The greed and
gluttony of European governments and corporations for Africa’s resources have lasted
from the days before colonization, till today.
His vision was part of the British empire’s vision, on which they boasted that “the sun never set” because their empire went around the world. The then British empire included 77 countries including India and 15 nations in Africa. 458 million people were oppressed under this empire.
It is accounted that one-quarter of the world’s population at that time
was under British colonialism. At that time England had one of the highest
standards of living, which they achieved through the near-starvation of the people
in Africa, India, and the other colonies.
People like Cecil Rhodes should not be celebrated by the Europeans the way he is celebrated today, except the present generation are directly endorsing his atrocities in Africa.