Cecil Rhodes, Man and Empire-MakerRadziwill, Catherine, Princess
History
Cecil Rhodes, Man and Empire-Maker
Radziwill, Catherine, Princess
Rhodes, Cecil, 1853-1902; South Africa -- Politics and government
I heard one story in particular which, if true, throws a terrible light on
the state of affairs in the Diamond City. A young man of good connections,
who had arrived from England to seek his fortune in South Africa, was
engaged in Kimberley at a small salary by one of the big diamond mining
concerns. After about three or four months' sojourn he felt so disgusted
that he declared quite loudly that as soon as he could put by sufficient
money to pay his passage back to Europe he would do so, there to make it
the business of his life to enlighten his compatriots as to what was going
on in South Africa. He threatened, too, to warn his countrymen against
those who used to deluge England with prospectuses praising, in exalted
terms, the wonderful state of things existing in South Africa and dilating
upon the future prospects of Cape Colony. Old residents warned him he
would do better to restrain his wrath until he was out of reach of
interested parties; he did not listen to them, with the result that one
morning detectives appeared in the house where he lodged, searched his
room, and--found some diamonds hidden in a flower pot of geraniums which
was standing in his window and which the daughter of his landlady had
given him that very morning. No protestations of the unhappy young fellow
availed him. He was taken to Cape Town and condemned to seven years'
imprisonment, the end of which he did not live to see, as he died a few
months after he had been sentenced.
The story was freely current in South Africa; and, true or not, it is
unquestionable that a large number of persons suffered in consequence of
the I.D.B. Act, no more serious proofs being offered that they had taken
or concealed diamonds than the fact that the stones had been found in
unlikely places in their rooms. Books without number have been written
about the I.D.B. Act, a great number evidently evincing hatred or revenge
against Mr. Rhodes and his lieutenants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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