Sir Cecil John Rhodes – One of the foremost personalities in South African history – was a statesman and empire builder. Rhodes was born in England on July 5th 1853 in the town of Bishop’s Stortford.
At the age of 17 he was sent to Natal, after he had been ill with a weakness of the lungs, where his brother Herbert Rhodes was farming in the Umkomaas valley. However, not long after his arrival in Natal, the Northern Cape Diamond Rush began and resulted in his move to the hub of that area where he bought some claims and accumulated a sizeable fortune in a very short time.
In 1873 he returned to England to study at Oxford University but within a short time his tubercular trouble returned and he was forced to return to Kimberley. In 1880 he founded the De Beers Diamond Mining Company and at that time he was also elected to the Cape Parliament for Barkly West. He secured a degree from Oxford University in 1881 after alternating his work and his studies.
Cecil John Rhodes had always had thoughts about the expansion of British authority over the whole of South Africa and beyond the Limpopo River in the North. He had a major success when the British proclaimed authority over Bechuanaland. After the discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand (Gauteng) and Barberton in the Eastern Transvaal (Mpumalanga) he invested heavily and in 1887 established the Goldfields of South Africa which later became Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa.
In 1888 he sent his Kimberly partner, Charles Rudd to Bulawayo to secure a concession from the Matabele King Lobengula for the mineral rights in Matabeleland which became part of the British controlled Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and then extended the control to Northern Rhodesia ( now Zambia). Both named in Rhode’s honor.
Sir Cecil John Rhodes died in 1902 in Muizenberg near Cape Town and his body was taken by train from the Cape to Rhodesia, stopping at all the stations along the way so that mourners could pay their respects. He was buried in the Matopos Hills in Rhodesia. A memorial to him was built at the base of Devils Peak on the northern slope of Table Mountain. Rhodes University in Grahamstown is named after him.
Under the terms and conditions of Sir Cecil Rhodes last Will, a Scholarship Trust was set up and funded by his estate. These scholarships have been awarded to applicants on the basis of strength of character and academic achievement annually ever since. Since the Trust began in 1902 more than 7000 international graduate scholars have benefited from this legacy which is highly esteemed throughout the world.