Cecil John Rhodes: The Uitlander and Makwerekwere with a Missionary Zeal

by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

(nyamnjoh@gmail.com; francis.nyamnjoh@uct.ac.za) University of Cape Town

In my book titled: #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa, I

argue that Cecil John Rhodes is more than the ‘stripling Uitlander’ the Boers

considered him to be during their scramble for the riches of southern Africa. The

Boers accused him and his fellow Britons of having ‘stolen their rich diamond fields’

from the newly established republic of the Transvaal. The term Uitlander was used

by the Boers ‘to denote any settler in the Transvaal not Dutch by birth and not

naturalised, and it was especially applied to British settlers’.

Paul Kruger, the President of the Transvaal, blamed Rhodes, ‘a bare-faced

financier and the Devil incarnate’, for using ‘his gold and diamonds’ to attract ‘so

many greedy foreigners to the country’ to the point of outnumbering the Boers in

‘their own’ land. By denying the foreigners or ‘Uitlanders’ ‘political rights, the right to

naturalisation as well as the right to vote’, Kruger hoped to contain them. Kruger

and Rhodes were singing from the same hymnal of narrow nationalism, a European

model of life as a zero sum game of ‘everyone for himself and God for us all’.

In addition to being an Uitlander, Rhodes should also be understood as a

makwerekwere, with much in common with the black African migrants of yesteryear

who joined him and his fellow Europeans to dig for diamonds in Kimberley. Rhodes

should equally be seen as having a lot in common with present-day amakwerekwere,

who are targeted by xenophobic violence caused by the narrow nationalism fostered

by Rhodes in the name of empire-building for Britain and the British as God’s

chosen country and race. We may not know what exactly southern Africans

experienced in their encounters with Rhodes and his fellow white treasure-hunting

adventurers, because the history of such encounters is preponderantly recounted by

whites and those they have schooled to reproduce their ways and art of storytelling.

But if the current scapegoating of Rhodes and his descendants by the post-apartheid

‘liberated’ sons and daughters of the native soil is anything to go by, it is very likely

that their forefathers and mothers cursed, lamented and scapegoated whites for all

the ills that befell them.

If we take the underlying idea of makwerekwere as a mechanism for detecting

strangers, outsiders or those who do not belong, then there is no reason why we

should confine the idea of an outsider or stranger to a particular skin colour. The

borders or intimacies we seek to protect can be violated by anyone with a capacity

to cross borders.

Seen more in terms of consciousness than container, makwerekwere is any outsider

or a perfect stranger who crosses borders nimble-footedly. A makwerekwere often

comes uninvited and without seeking consent from those who regard themselves as

bona fide sons and daughters of the native soil or homeland. He or she has little

mastery of local cultures, tends to stutter in local languages and speak in foreign

tongues few master locally, has an unmistakeable nose for a quick fortune at all costs,

and is usually perceived to be ruthless and greedy in his or her pursuit of self-interest.