The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  He was also an ardent advocate of imperial expansion. In a will he drew up in Kimberley in 1877, he instructed the executors of his estate to use his fortune to help extend the realms of the British empire – ‘especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa’. In parliament, he was soon engaged in imperial issues, demanding British intervention to stop the newly independent Transvaal from extending its territory westwards into Tswana lands, thus blocking the Cape’s road to the north.

  Freed from British control, Transvaal settlers – ‘freebooters’ – flocked across the western border agreed with Britain in 1881, knowing that Britain had no appetite to intervene. Many enlisted as mercenaries – ‘volunteers’ – supporting rival Tswana factions in return for promises of land. In May 1882, Mankurwane of the Tlhaping, a pro-British chief, reported to a senior British official in Pretoria: ‘I have the honour to inform you that there is a Commando of Free State and Transvaal subjects besieging my town of Taungs. I am told that those who form this Commando wish to take my country to form an independent Republic.’ By the time his message reached Cape Town, the siege was over and the Boers had won. Mankurwane was obliged to watch as Boer freebooters divided up his land into farms of 6,000 acres each for themselves. He was also forced to sign a treaty agreeing to refer all future disputes to the Transvaal authorities and not to the British. No British assistance was forthcoming. Writing to the British high commissioner in Cape Town in August, Mankurwane complained: ‘Seeing therefore that I had been deserted by the British Government . . . I have done that which I ought to have done long ago, namely made my peace with the Boers . . . and have had to give up a considerable portion of my country.’

  With land taken from Mankurwane, running for more than a hundred miles westwards from the 1881 border, the freebooters – some 400 Boer families in all – proceeded to set up their own petty republic, calling it Stellaland, to mark the passing of a comet, and established a capital at Vryburg near Taungs. The capital was a modest affair, consisting of a score of brick houses, a few stores, a billiard room and a croquet ground.

  Having disposed of Mankurwane, the freebooters turned on Montshiwa, another pro-British chief. Montshiwa held out for three months, but was eventually forced to surrender two-thirds of his land, losing everything south of the Molopo River. He too was obliged to acknowledge allegiance to the Transvaal. On Montshiwa’s land, the freebooters established the republic of Goshen, a name taken from Genesis – ‘the best of the land of Egypt given to Joseph’. The capital of Goshen, Rooi Grond, was simply a fortified farm, near Mafikeng, one mile west of the Transvaal border, occupied by a few dozen adventurers.

  Both ‘republics’, however, lay across the road to the north, blocking access to the interior. One of the first actions taken in Vryburg was to impose a tax of £3 a fortnight on all traders passing through Stellaland. Stellaland and Goshen thus represented a significant threat to the Cape’s trade with the African interior, then worth a sizeable £250,000 a year. They were moreover an obstacle standing in the way of the only feasible rail route northwards to Zambesia, outside the Boer republics. It seemed inevitable that they would eventually merge into a greater Transvaal leaving the Cape out on a limb.

  Preoccupied with more pressing issues than an obscure conflict on the edge of the Kalahari desert, the British government responded to Boer raids into Bechuanaland with studied indifference. ‘A most miserable page in South African history,’ a Colonial Office official noted in December 1882, ‘but as we shall not attempt to coerce the Boers, Montsoia and Mankoroane must face starvation as best they can.’

  But Rhodes was galvanised into action. Despairing of British help and infuriated by what he saw as the ‘constant vacillation’ of British policy, he campaigned relentlessly for the Cape to take control of the area, stressing the advantages of ‘Cape colonialism’. In May 1883, he persuaded the Cape’s prime minister, Thomas Scanlen, to send him north to investigate the state of affairs in Bechuanaland and, on his return to Barkly West, bombarded Scanlen with telegrams, demanding intervention. But Scanlen was not persuaded.

  In a speech to parliament in Cape Town in August 1883, Rhodes went further, claiming that ‘the whole future of this Colony’ was at stake. ‘I look upon this Bechuanaland territory as the Suez Canal of the trade of this country, the key of its road to the interior.’ If the Cape failed to secure control of the interior, then ‘we shall fall from our position of the paramount State’.

  Despite such rhetoric, Rhodes failed to win parliament’s support for colonial expansion. But he found Britain’s high commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson, more favourably disposed to the idea. Robinson was an outspoken advocate of colonial ‘home rule’ rather than imperial rule and considered that colonists rather than metropolitan officials were better suited as agents of African administration. He was amenable to using his influence with London. The missionary lobby too was effective in prodding the British government into taking a more active interest in the fate of Bechuanaland. In negotiations with Kruger concluded in 1884, Britain agreed a new border for Bechuanaland, which allowed the Transvaal a slice of Tswana territory, but left the bulk of Tswana territory intact. The deal gave Britain overall responsibility for administering the troubled southern half of Bechuanaland, including the two republics of Stellaland and Goshen, thus securing the road to the north.

  But Rhodes was adamant that what was needed for Bechuanaland was Cape control not imperial trusteeship and he continued to campaign for the extension of the Cape’s boundaries northwards. ‘Bechuanaland is the neck of the bottle and commands the route to the Zambesi. We must secure it, unless we are prepared to see the whole of the North pass out of our hands . . . I do not want to part with the key to the interior, leaving us settled just on this small peninsula. I want the Cape Colony to be able to deal with the question of confederation as the dominant state of South Africa.’

  In 1884, he persuaded Robinson to appoint him as the British commissioner with responsibility for southern Bechuanaland. On learning of the appointment, an official in the Colonial Office in London asked: ‘What information have we respecting Mr Rhodes?’ A colleague replied that Rhodes was ‘a sensible man’ although inexperienced and untrained in administrative work. The general view in London was that he would ‘do very well as a stop gap’.

  Rhodes set out for Bechuanaland in August 1884. His plan was to offer the Boer freebooters title for land they still occupied on condition they dispensed with their republics and accepted Cape rule. Stellaland’s Boers seemed ready to agree, but the Boers of Goshen, aided and abetted by Kruger, were far more hostile. In September, Kruger made his intentions clear by proclaiming the Transvaal’s annexation of Goshen and of Montshiwa’s remaining territory, in defiance of his agreements with the British.

  Kruger’s arbitrary action finally prompted the British government to intervene. It sent an armed force of 4,000 men to clear out the freebooters and settled the future of Bechuanaland by establishing British control there in 1885. The southern half, up to the Molopo River, was declared a Crown colony called British Bechuanaland, with the expectation that it would eventually be transferred to the Cape. The northern half, including Kgama’s Ngwato chiefdom, became a British ‘protectorate’.

  In Kimberley, Rhodes and Beit forged an increasingly effective alliance. Rhodes came to depend on Beit’s financial advice. Any problems concerning diamonds would invariably be solved by Beit. ‘Ask little Alfred’ became a catchphrase among Rhodes’s circle of friends. They were often seen together at the Kimberley Club, sharing a customary drink to start the day; their favourite tipple was a mixture of champagne and stout. They played poker there, albeit badly. Occasionally, they attended a Bachelors’ Ball, Rhodes vigorously twirling the plainest girl in the room, Beit indulging his penchant for tall girls.

  In the final race to gain control of the diamond industry, their alliance was to prove decisive. Beit’s connections with foreign banks provided the finance for the
ir takeovers. Their main rival was Barney Barnato. After months of frantic bidding and speculation, they all reached agreement in March 1888 to consolidate their assets in a single company: De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited. The company’s assets were considerable. It owned the whole of the De Beers mine, three-fifths of the shares in the Kimberley mine and a controlling interest in both Bultfontein and Dutoitspan. Barnato was the largest shareholder in the new company, with 7,000 shares; Rhodes had 4,000. Rhodes called on the remaining shareholders to surrender and triumphantly proclaimed his determination to make De Beers ‘the richest, the greatest, and the most powerful Company the world has ever seen’.

  In the following months, Rhodes proceeded to buy out the remaining independent mine operators. By September 1889, he had achieved a complete monopoly of all Kimberley’s mines – accounting for 90 per cent of the world’s production. In alliance with the world’s principal diamond merchants, he then set out to achieve a marketing monopoly of the diamond trade, to ensure that the market could be manipulated to the best advantage, keeping supply in line with the highest price available. By 1891, virtually all Kimberley’s output was channelled to members of a syndicate based in London controlling the system.

  At Rhodes’s behest, the new De Beers company was set up with ambitions that far outstripped the original purposes of the old De Beers company. Instead of being limited to diamond mining, Rhodes insisted that the new company be able to engage in any business enterprise, annex land in any part of Africa, govern foreign territories and maintain standing armies. He intended to use his fortune in furtherance of ‘big schemes’ he had long nurtured. ‘Money is power,’ explained Rhodes, ‘and what can one accomplish without power? That is why I must have money. Ideas are no good without money . . . For its own sake I do not care for money. I never tried it for its own sake but it is a power and I like power.’

  From their base in Kimberley, the mining magnates next set their sights on the goldfields of Kruger’s Transvaal.

  PART X

  Africa on the Eve of the Scramble

  39

  THIS MAGNIFICENT CAKE

  When Henry Stanley arrived back in London in January 1878 after his epic journey down the Congo River, he was greeted with much admiration but found little interest in his plans to use the river as a ‘great highway of commerce’ into the interior. Neither ministers nor missionaries nor business houses took up his suggestions. In Brussels, however, Stanley’s exploits had been watched closely by King Leopold II of Belgium.

  An ambitious, greedy and devious monarch, Leopold had long dreamed of establishing colonies abroad and enriching himself on the proceeds. His attention to central Africa had first been drawn by remarks made by a British naval officer, Lieutenant Verney Cameron, after completing a three-year journey across the belly of Africa from the east coast to the west coast in 1875. As reported in The Times, a newspaper that Leopold read avidly, Cameron’s view was that central Africa was a ‘country of unspeakable riches’ with an abundance of gold, copper, silver and coal, just waiting for an ‘enterprising capitalist’ to ‘take the matter in hand’.

  Leopold began his quest for an African empire by inviting a collection of European explorers and geographers, including Cameron, to a conference at his palace in Brussels in September 1876. In welcoming his guests, he spoke of the need for an international crusade to open up central Africa ‘to civilisation’ and extinguish the slave trade. He stressed he was ‘in no way motivated by selfish designs’, but merely wanted to advance the cause of science and philanthropy by establishing bases there. With the approval of delegates, he set up a new international body, the Association Internationale Africaine (AIA), with himself as president, to lead the crusade. But his real purpose, as he made clear in a letter written a few months later to Baron Solvyns, the Belgian ambassador in London, was to gain personal control of African territory and to use it for commercial gain: ‘I do not want to miss the opportunity of obtaining a share of this magnificent African cake.’

  Stanley figured prominently in Leopold’s grand scheme, but the king was wary of disclosing his true purpose. He confided to Solvyns in November 1877:

  I believe that if I commission Stanley to take possession in my name of any given place in Africa, the English would stop me . . . I am therefore thinking in terms of entrusting Stanley with a purely exploratory mission which will offend no one and will provide us with some posts down in that region, staffed and equipped, and with a high command for them which we can develop when Europe and Africa have got used to our ‘pretensions’ on the Congo.

  Failing to find any British interest in the Congo region, Stanley accepted an invitation to meet Leopold in Brussels in June 1878. Leopold, it seemed, was the only person willing to sponsor his return there. In November, Stanley signed a five-year contract with the king. His remit was to set up posts along the Congo River, build roads and pave the way for commercial development.

  In August 1879, Stanley’s flotilla of boats reached the mouth of the Congo and sailed upriver towards the Yellala Falls, the first of the chain of cataracts, 110 miles inland. He purchased from local chiefs a lease on land on a rocky plateau at Vivi and began building a station there. Stanley himself joined in the work of road-building, breaking up rocks with a sledge-hammer. Watching Stanley toil away, a local Bakongo chief called him Bula Matari, a breaker of rocks, a name that spread far and wide through the Congo Basin and would eventually acquire sinister connotations.

  From Vivi, Stanley intended to build a wagon-road bypassing the cataracts and crossing over the Crystal Mountains, giving him a route to Malebo Pool, a name that Stanley changed to Stanley Pool, 230 miles away. Malebo Pool was key to the whole enterprise: it was the gateway to the Congo Basin, giving access to a web of interconnecting rivers navigable for 4,000 miles of the interior. Stanley estimated that it would take two years of hard labour and heavy hauling before the road reached Malebo Pool.

  On 7 November 1880, with about fifty miles of the road complete. Stanley was resting in his tent near Isangila Falls, reading a book, when a white stranger in a tattered naval uniform arrived at his camp. It was one of the early encounters in what became known as the Scramble for Africa.

  Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was an Italian-born French ensign carrying out a mission to explore the upper reaches of the Congo River on behalf of the Société Géographique de Paris. The son of an Italian aristocrat, born in 1852, he had enlisted as a cadet at the French naval school at Brest, hoping for an adventurous career. He had caught his first sight of central Africa in 1872 while serving on an anti-slavery patrol on the coast of present-day Gabon, where the French had established several trading posts. Keen to explore inland, he made two trips at his own expense up the Gabon and Ogowé rivers and then persuaded the French government in 1875 to provide funds for an expedition to discover the source of the Ogowé. During three years of exploration, Brazza traced the Ogowé to a watershed within 150 miles of Malebo Pool. Returning to Paris in December 1878, he learned that Leopold had commissioned Stanley’s venture to the Congo and urged French officials to authorise another expedition to ‘plant the French flag’ at Malebo Pool before the Belgians claimed it. Brazza was given funds but no official mandate.

  Accompanied by an armed escort of twenty-four Senegalese and Gabonese sailors, Brazza made his way up the Ogowé once more, crossed overland to the Lefini River, and reached the Congo, opposite the mouth of the Kwa Kasai, upriver from Malebo Pool, in August 1880. He was accorded a warm welcome from the Bateke king, Makoko, who hoped to profit from trade links to the coast. On 10 September, Makoko put his mark to a treaty placing his kingdom under French ‘protection’. He also arranged for Brazza to be given the site for a station at Mfwa, on the northern shore of Malebo Pool. On 3 October, Brazza raised the French flag at Mfwa, a place that later became known as Brazzaville. And on 18 October, instead of returning via the Ogowé, he headed down the Congo, leaving behind a Senegalese sergeant, Malamine, in charge of the Mfwa stati
on.

  On meeting Stanley three weeks later, Brazza made no mention of the Makoko treaty, only that he had set up a small guard post at Malebo Pool. Two days later, he was on his way to the coast with the treaty in his pocket. But to his dismay, he found French officials in Paris reluctant to engage in empire-building in central Africa at that time; they had priorities elsewhere in Africa, in north Africa and on the west coast. Sergeant Malamine was recalled to the Gabon coast. It was only after a lengthy campaign fought by Brazza in Paris that in November 1882 the French parliament agreed to ratify the Makoko treaty.

  Stanley, meanwhile, persevered with his own bit of empire-building. By December 1881, he had completed the construction of 200 miles of roadway from Vivi to Malebo Pool, signed treaties with local chiefs along the way and secured a site on the southern shore of Malebo Pool, near a village called Kinshasa, for a trading station named Leopoldville. From Leopoldville, Stanley launched a fleet of steamboats which ventured further upriver, establishing new stations ever deeper into the interior. The furthest outpost was at Wagenia Falls, 1,000 miles upriver from Malebo Pool, which marked the upper limit of navigation on the main stretch of the Congo River and which became known as Stanley Falls. By 1882, Stanley’s staff included forty-three Europeans – clerks, agents, storekeepers and engineers. To help finance the whole enterprise, Leopold instructed Stanley to collect ‘all the ivory which is to be found in the Congo’.

  The treaties that Stanley obtained on behalf of Leopold’s AIA were initially focused on gaining trade monopolies. But the possibility of French intervention in the Congo region prompted Leopold to press for treaties that conceded wider powers. As a result of Brazza’s endeavours, the public mood in France had swung decisively in favour of colonial expansion in central Africa, leading the French parliament to vote for funds for a major expedition there. In April 1883, Brazza returned to the coast of Gabon with the remit to extend French sovereignty far and wide across the Congo Basin. His priority was to establish French authority on the coast of Luango, an area north of the Congo estuary ruled by descendants of the Bakongo kings that would give the French direct access and a short route from the sea to Malebo Pool.