AFRICA A Voyage of Discovery in HD: The Bible and The Gun - Episode 5/8 - Basil Davidson

(African music:
drums, marimba, vocals)

♪ Africa ♪

(drumbeats, male narrator)

Early in the 16th century,
Africa began to suffer

the greatest calamity in its history:

the steady and continuous arrival
of Europeans.

(drums)

This was one of 43 castles built by

seven European nations along the coast
of West Africa.

They stand today as monuments to
rivalry and greed,

for the Europeans had discovered
the wealth of the Americas,

mining wealth and plantation wealth,

and the way to get it:
by using slave labor.

Unwilling to take slaves from Europe,

and unable to find enough in the New World,

they turned to Africa.

Horrible in its brutality and violence,

the slave trade robbed Africa of millions

of men and women, and even children.

It spread cruelty and disaster.

And yet, it was not only the enormous
numbers that mattered.

Every year for centuries, the trade
removed from Africa

tens of thousands of productive workers,

of skilled workers, of men and women

trained in tropical farming,
in valuable crafts,

and in many forms of enterprise.

(waves breaking)

Today the great Atlantic rollers
have long lost their menace,

and the forebears of these boys were
among the lucky ones.

But for millions before them, perhaps as
many as 15 millions,

this was the last they would ever see

of their African homeland.

Among the ships' captains there were

tight packers and loose packers.

Their purpose was the same:

to enlarge their profits by landing

as many slaves as possible alive
in the New World.

(music)

Sometimes captured far inland, the victims

of black traders were driven to the dungeons

of their white partners on the coast.

There were protests, but they dwindled

as the profits of the trade became
ever more corrupting

to kings and merchants in Africa,

as well as in Europe.

It became normal, and even necessary,

for white people to think of
their black victims

as less than human.

Racism grew out of slavery.

At Cape Coast, a chapel was built for
the British garrison,

right on top of the dungeons where,

at any one time, up to 1500 black captives
awaited shipment.

Not even the clergy spoke out
against the trade,

and some were ready to share
in the pickings.

Early in the 19th century,

the Atlantic slave trade gradually began

to come to an end.

But even as the slavers withdrew,

Europeans of a new kind began to

penetrate deeply into the interior.

These were the explorers.

They had no warlike intentions,

and the guns they carried were for
hunting and self-defense.

It was seldom the fault of such men

that the routes they opened up would

all too soon be used by others
with very different aims.

Later generations of explorers would try

for the North Pole, or the South,

or in our own day, the moon.

But for Mungo Park, Livingstone,
Burton and many others,

Africa's legendary lakes and rivers

were the great challenge. Above all else,

they wanted to unlock the geographical
mysteries of the continent.

The strange thing
about those remarkable men

is that they really were only interested,

with a few exceptions, in finding things:

in gold, in ivory,
in geographical information,

in land to take.

Almost never were they really interested

in the humanity of Africa.

The great exception was David Livingstone,

for the inhabitants of Central Africa,

surely the best-loved European

ever to set foot in their country.

A missionary who became an explorer,

Livingstone traced the great Zambezi River

from its far inland source
to the Indian Ocean,

hoping that if he could only prove it to be

a navigable waterway, the whole of
Central Africa

could be opened up to the blessings
of the Gospel.

In 1855 he became the first white man
to see the Victoria Falls,

soon to be accepted as one of the
natural wonders of the world.

(music)

But less dramatic obstacles
further downstream

barred the way to navigation.

His specially constructed river steamer

had to turn back.

Today, Livingstone's statue stands

overlooking the falls to which
he gave a name.

The inscription says that
Dr. David Livingstone

discovered the falls. That was in 1855.

What happened, in fact, was that African

friends of his, with whom he was living,

some days upstream from here,

told him about this amazing sight
in their country,

and brought him to see it.

And Livingstone, whose generosity of heart

never allowed him to forget what he owed
to Africans,

was careful to record this in his memoirs.

But the people who put the statue up,

long after, evidently thought that nothing

really exists until a white man
has found it.

(roaring waterfall)

But news of such earthly wonders

failed to impress his missionary
paymasters in London.

To them, Livingstone's journeys

and geographical researches were a sign

that he was neglecting his work for God.

They wanted converts, not waterfalls.

He, for his part, found their attitude

to the splendors of Africa so narrow

that he was driven to resign his membership

of the London Missionary Society.

His duty, he believed, was to respond
to a wider vision.

There were plenty of others to do
ordinary work.

And so indeed there were.

(music)

A growing band of dedicated men and women

came forward from many nations

to carry the Gospel into these
heathen lands.

This is the Mangwe Pass, an historic place

in the story of the white man's
penetration of Southern Africa.

To the southwest lay the deserts
of the Kalahari,

and beyond, to the southeast,
white-ruled South Africa,

while back behind me, through the hills,

the old trail ran north to Bulawayo,

capital of the kingdom of the Matabele.

Here ran the southern frontier
of that kingdom,

and this pass was the only point of entry

allowed by the Matabele king to

European missionaries, traders or hunters.

In their attitude to the Africans
whom they'd come to convert,

most of the missionaries would have been

happy to echo the words
of Livingstone himself:

(male voice, Scottish accent)
We come among them as members

of a superior race, and servants

of a government that desires to elevate

more degraded portions of the human family.

We are adherents of a benign,
holy religion,

and may by consistent conduct and wise,
patient efforts,

become the harbingers of peace

to a hitherto distracted
and downtrodden race.

(narrator)
A few thought otherwise.

Here are the words of Bishop Tozer
of the Universities' Mission:

(male voice)
What do we mean when we say that

England or France are civilized countries,

and the greater part of Africa
is uncivilized?

Surely the mere enjoyment of such things

as railways and telegraphs do not

necessarily prove their possessors to be

in the first rank of civilized nations.

Nothing can be so false as to suppose

that the outward circumstance of a people

is the measure either of its barbarism,

or its civilization.

Nevertheless, most missionaries believed

that they alone could raise Africans

out of their spiritual degradation.

They faced many perils, not from being

boiled in an African pot,
which never happened,

but from mortal fevers they could not cure.

Six out of nine at Makalolo Mission,

which Livingstone had founded,

died in a single year.

Willing converts were few, so it had
to be asked:

is force justified to save a man's soul?

Flogging was used at some mission stations,

others disapproved.

(male voice)
If it is agreed that an expedition

cannot be carried out
unless the leader of it

commits day by day acts of brute violence,

the reply is that missionary expeditions

had better not be undertaken.

If missions can only be worked by methods

which no supporter of the mission would

dare to state in detail
on a mission platform,

then missions had better not be undertaken.

(music)

(African drumming and singing)

But another and unquestioned requirement

lay at the core of missionary labors:

if the Gospel message was to be accepted,

the spiritual beliefs which formed

the foundation of African community life,

had to be drained of their power,
and effectively destroyed.

What the missionaries had come to do

was to convince Africans that they must

renounce their beliefs,
forget their ancestors,

and discard the very fabric of their culture.

(drumming, singing)

This missionary film, made as recently
as the 1960s,

makes the point very clearly.

(male voiceover from film)
As these women, whose lives have been spent

in the dark shadow of fear, listen to the

radiant young girls, they wonder at their
joy and confidence.

They remember the offerings they had

so often made to the juju themselves.

The sacrifices which have been of no use.

(drumming, music)

I will tell you of a God who does not

require our sacrifice.
He made sacrifice for us.

She shows to these fear-ridden people

the symbol of God's love.

Sometimes the people seek out
the missionary later.

We have lost our faith in these jujus,
they say.

We want to destroy them
and begin a new life.

(drumming)

Some rejoice. Some wonder
what will become of them now.

Finally comes the great day when they

gather for the baptism service.

Students from the training college,
girls from the primary school,

men and women, one by one

they go down into the waters of baptism

so that they might be renewed in Christ.

(music)

(narrator)
A skeptic might find it hard to see why

one form of spiritual renewal should be

so superior to another.

But to these missionaries, this was the

indispensable climax to their endeavors.

(music)

This is a Methodist school called

Waddilove, in modern Zimbabwe.

It's an important day, because the

Minister of Information,
Mr. Nathan Shamuyarira,

himself an old boy of the school,
is making a visit.

The event brings into focus some of the

underlying currents and contradictions
of recent history.

Mr. Shamuyarira speaks for a government

with radical ideas, which may well

find itself at odds
with religious conservatism.

Yet he was educated here, and brought up

in the religion of white Colonial settlers,

whose contempt for African humanity

generally outweighed
their Christian commitment

to the brotherhood of man.

(singing)

It's one of the ironies of Christianity
in Africa that,

although it may have preceded

Colonial occupation, it can't now escape

from the fact that it became
deeply involved with the system.

The foreign rulers may have departed,

yet the tunes live on.

(singing)

♪ Oh Lord I thank you ♪

♪ Oh Lord I thank you ♪

♪ Oh Lord I thank you,
for the rest of my life ♪

(preaching in native language)

(narrator)
Nowadays, the sermon is no longer In English.

This clergyman is speaking Shona,

the language of most of the children
at Waddilove,

and he clearly feels no need to put
so much emphasis on sin and guilt.

(congregation laughs)

How far is the accusation true

that missionary teaching was really

part of Colonial teaching?

Well, the whole missionary enterprise here

was an integral part of colonization.

The missionaries came to this country

with the colonizers from South Africa,

and one particular missionary,
Reverend Jackson,

assisted in interpreting the deceptive

Rudd Concession to King Lobengula

at the time of colonization, and this

relationship between the administrators,

the soldiers and the miners

-- the gun and the Bible, so to speak --

continued throughout the Colonial period.

But however, Colonial ... the missionary

enterprise did also assist

in the sharpening of contradictions within
Colonial society.

On the one hand, missionaries were
preaching the equality of Man,

and yet they themselves were practising

discrimination in a deeply
racially divided Colonial society.

So they were part of the racist setup?

They were part of the racist setup.

On the other hand, they were providing

education in order to get literate workers

to work in the factories, and in the mines,

and farms of the colonizer.

(singing)

In honor of the Minister's visit,

the school has laid on a display
of gymnastics.

Most early missionaries tried to destroy

the dancing arts and rhythms of Africa,

saying that these were lascivious and evil.

Yet African Christianity has managed to

survive that effort at repression,

and children at mission schools like this

can have the fun of combining the new
with the old.

(music and singing)

In another part of the school grounds,

quite suddenly, old Africa was being revived.

Here was a schoolgirl in the midst of
a Christian mission,

re-enacting the role of a spirit medium

as she goes into her trance.

(Ow! Oow! Ooooww!)

(clapping, chanting)

Helped by friends, she portrays

an ancient ritual of Shona belief.

This, many people still believe,
is the method used by their ancestors

to pass messages to the living.

(a-ooo!)

These girls were playing out a drama of

their own history, one that many of them

will have witnessed
in their family backgrounds.

Across the years of the Colonial intrusion,

it's a kind of psychological reconciliation

between the present and the past.

How does one summarize the effect of the

missionary effort in terms of Africans

coming to terms, coming to grips with

the realities of the world.

Well on the one hand they were anxious,

and did, you know, take very drastic steps

to destroy the culture of the African people.

This was implicit in the teaching
of Christianity itself.

In the same context, it produced

the contradictions which led to its ...

to the downfall of Colonialism,

by educating people, bringing them to an

institution like this where we were able

to meet students from different parts

of the country, and one was given a

national perspective at an institution
like this.

And it was, eh, then possible,
when one left here,

to go and organize at a national level.

So many of the national leaders
of this country today

were educated at mission schools.

Nine out of every ten educated blacks

were educated at mission schools.

Comrade Robert Mugabe, the first

prime minister of an independent Zimbabwe,

was brought up, trained and educated

at Kutama, a Roman Catholic mission school.

And many of the leaders in the present

Zimbabwean government were educated

at various mission schools throughout
the country.

So it did produce its own contradictions

and it, you know, sharpened

the contradictions in Colonial society.

Like a lot of other things in history,

it had an unforeseen outcome.

Yes, yes it had.

When you get an old boy coming
to your school,

suddenly some of you should feel inspired

by the amount of contribution
that he has made,

and what Waddilove has produced in him.

So sir we are greatly honored
that you have come.

I know the visit has been a very brief one,

but it is historical, and we do hope

that when you have time, you'll be able
to come back

and see more of Waddilove than you have
seen today.

(choir singing)

The Minister receives a hero's sendoff,

partly for his role as one of the leaders

who fought for Zimbabwe's independence,

and partly, no doubt, for being

the occasion of an extra day's holiday.

Watching scenes like this, it would be

hard to deny that the coming of Christianity

to Central Africa has, in the end,
brought many blessings.

These children of Zimbabwe look forward

to opportunities and freedoms unknown
to their parents.

Yet, the cost has been a large one.

Much of value in African culture

was distorted or buried beneath the

intolerant certainties of a foreign culture.

And who can say whether, in the end,

it won't be the practical benefits
provided by the missions

that outlast the spiritual ones.

♪ Africa ♪

♪ Africa ♪

(voices murmuring, church bell)

(singing)

(narrator)
The little town of Bagamoyo

had been the African starting point

for missionaries as well as explorers.

For David Livingstone, it was journey's end.

This the place, ironically a Catholic mission,

the first Catholic mission
on the East African mainland,

where Susi and Chuma finally laid the body

of their friend, David Livingstone,

in its last resting place on the
African continent.

Throughout the final months of his life,

Livingstone had always been accompanied

by his two devoted companions,
Susi and Chuma.

(music)

They it was who nursed him through
his last illness,

and undertook that great African journey

of 1500 miles, to bring his body
down to the coast

after he died in 1873.

For that most Christian act, they were

frowned out of notice and curtly dismissed.

Later, happily, those faithful companions

received less churlish treatment,

yet it has to be said
that Livingstone himself

was not quite free of that same attitude.

Remember his words: "We come among them

as members of a superior race, to elevate

the more degraded portions
of the human family."

Of course he was a man of his time,

and such attitudes were common,

but he also affirmed --and this was
most uncommon --

that black people could be made to be equal

with white people by two gifts

that Europe could offer:
Christianity and commerce.

That's what he believed, and he died
believing it.

But I have wondered, in my own years
of wandering these trails,

what Livingstone would have said if he

could have seen the outcome
of those two gifts.

(silent movie-style piano music)

In the 1870s, the land around
the little town of Kimberley,

in what is now South Africa, was found

to contain the richest deposits
of diamonds in the world.

Europeans in search of
quick and easy profits

rushed into the area.

Among them was a young Englishman who'd

come to South Africa at the age of 17.

His name was Cecil Rhodes.

In spite of his youth, Rhodes
quickly learned

that the path to great personal wealth

led through great personal power.

He set out to win that power by getting

control of the diamond industry.

He succeeded by clever maneuvering,

the steady purchase of other men's claims

when their funds were low, and the
necessary ruthlessness.

Rhodes saw to it that he was going to be

the one to emerge as the king of diamonds,

and his kingdom was going to be in Africa,

where the English reigned supreme.

This is what he wrote:

(male voice)
Just fancy those parts of the world

that are at present inhabited by the most

despicable specimens of human beings.

What an alteration there would be if they

were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence.

(narrator)
This early film, taken in Kimberley, shows

that attitude and arrogance at work.

Yet mineral wealth was not the only prize.

There was territory to be won.

All through the 19th century, British forces

pushed out of Cape Colony, overcoming

one African people after another, until,

in 1879, they came up against the most

formidable of all, the Zulu.

(music and singing)

So far, this mission of the gun had gone
well for the British,

but the Zulu had 25,000 warriors ready
to take up arms.

Their king, Cetshwayo, wanted peace.

After all, he'd been crowned with
British approval.

But the British wanted war.

(delicate piano music)

(sound of slide advancing in machine)

This genteel set of lecture slides,

the Victorian equivalent of news film

from the battle front, reported the war

as the public at home wished to imagine it.

This was the heyday of empire, and here
were British redcoats,

subduing one more mob of heathen savages

before bestowing on them the blessings
of Anglo-Saxon civilization.

The reality was very different.

(singing)

At Isandlwana, Britain suffered one of

the worst defeats in her Imperial history,

and the Zulus had a victory to celebrate.

As the troops strove vainly to get
the lids off their ammunition boxes,

the Zulu impis overwhelmed them.

At the end of the day, 800 British
soldiers lay dead.

Not a single wounded man was spared.

But at Rorke's Drift a few miles away,

a tiny British garrison,
with great bravery,

withstood three Zulu regiments,
numbering nearly 5000 men.

Modern firepower took its devastating toll.

(drumbeat)

(music, shouting)

Determined to break Zulu power
once and for all,

another British invasion force,

equipped with field artillery and the new

rapid-firing Gatling guns,

advanced on the king's capital at Ulundi.

Here they found the Zulu army,

but what followed was a massacre,
rather than a battle.

Some 1500 Zulu warriors died in fruitless
charges on the guns.

British casualties were put at 12.

It was the end of the independent Zulu nation.

(music, drumbeat)

A billionaire by this time, Rhodes now

unfolded his plan for British rule

from Cairo to Capetown.

His immediate ambition was fixed on the

upland country to the north
of the Limpopo River.

Here in this broad plateau with its
pleasant climate,

there was abundant land for cattle,

and beneath it the promise of still more

mineral wealth, especially gold.

He faced one great obstacle:

60 years earlier, a branch of the Zulu

known as the Matabele, had broken away,

trekked north, and built
a strong military kingdom

in the lands that Rhodes now meant to seize

for white settlement.

The African bush has long since moved in
and taken over,

but this deserted spot,
a hundred years ago,

was the living heart of Matabele power

and the seat of government of its king.

King Lobengula was only the second ruler
of the Matabele.

He was destined to be the last.

True to their Zulu tradition, his men
lived by the spear,

raiding their neighbours, the Shona people,

for cattle and women.

This, they believed, was their land
by right and title,

but now, in a series of deceptions,

Rhodes and his cronies proceeded to

dispossess the Matabele of their land,

their cattle and their independence.

One day, King Lobengula told a story

to a white visitor to his court.

He said to him, "Have you ever watched
a chameleon and a fly?

The chameleon gets behind the fly and gently

puts one foot forward, then another,

and when he's close enough he darts
his tongue,

and the fly disappears.

I am that fly," said Lobengula, "and you
are the chameleon."

On the outskirts of his royal kraal,

Lobengula had allowed a few white

missionaries to establish themselves.

This is all that remains of a settlement

run by Jesuits, whose celibate way of life

had no appeal to the Matabele.

But other missionaries, Protestants
of various denominations

(because, of course, the many schisms of
the Christian faith

were also imported with the missionaries)

did begin to acquire some influence.

But not without misunderstandings,

as this old man, now well over 100,
remembers.

(narrator)
Not far from the capital, across a small river,

was the Anglican mission of Hope Fountain.

The early missionaries were caught,

almost at once, in an unavoidable dilemma:

to whom was their first loyalty:

to the Africans, who trusted them
and whose guests they were,

or to their own kith and kin?

The Reverend Charles Helm, who lived
in this place,

made in the end a crucial choice:

he was Lobengula's trusted white friend,

but secretly at the same time, he began
to work for Rhodes.

The fact was, that these missionaries
soon became convinced,

and no doubt rightly,
and as their records show,

that if they were going to convert

a sizable number of Matabele,

the king's power must be destroyed,

and Matabele culture
and independence undermined.

And Rhodes, they saw, was the man
to do both.

Step by step, Lobengula's power was eroded.

He appealed to Queen Victoria.

He was advised to sign treaties.

Some of those who advised him to
sign the treaties

had come in peace and trust,

but they still deceived him.

The Reverend Helm lies buried here.

On his tomb, his fellow missionaries

felt able to inscribe the words,
"Friend of the Matabele."

Was he their friend, or from within
the certainties of his own belief,

did he connive in their betrayal?

By 1890, Rhodes and his men
were ready to move.

These are scenes from the feature film

"Rhodes of Africa," about the famous
Pioneer Column.

They show it in terms of the glorious legend

it was to become for the white settlers
who followed,

almost a justification in itself for their

right to the land they were about to seize.

(music)

Lobengula had 16,000 warriors
eager to attack,

but fearing defeat, he held them back.

The column headed north, avoiding direct
contact with the Matabele,

and passing unopposed through the country

of the less warlike Shona.

Each man had been promised 15
gold prospecting claims,

and a 3000-acre farm.

A contemporary described them like this:

(male voice)
"Such a mixed lot I never saw in my life,

all sorts and conditions from the aristocrat
down to the street Arab,

peers and waifs of humanity mingling
together like a hotchpotch."

(narrator)
Some of the pioneers came, in fact,

from the leading families of Cape Colony.

If the expedition met with defeat,

Rhodes knew that their influential fathers

would press the British government
for military assistance.

(splashing, creaking wood)

(dramatic music)

An unknown photographer captured the moment

when the Union Jack was raised over
Fort Salisbury,

fulfilling Rhodes's dream
"that this earth shall be English."

The moment became part of the myth.

Established here, for no particular reason
of geography,

Fort Salisbury duly became the modern

city of Salisbury, now renamed Harare.

Elsewhere on the continent, towns can be

unmistakably African in their flavor

and their style of life,
but not this one.

In just on 60 years, they turned it into

the very model of a white man's city.

And just over there is the flagstaff

that commemorates the place where
all that began.

Amazingly enough, it's still here,

for this is what it says:

To the Pioneer Corps specially recruited

to become the first civil population
of Mashonaland.

But who were more civil? The black people,

who had long dwelt in Mashonaland,

and made it fruitful, or the white people

who came here and took it from them
by deceit and violence?

Maybe that sounds a harsh question now,

and yet the dispossession of the Shona
was also harsh.

They had settled the land,
centuries earlier,

mastered and tamed it, and now with this,

they had altogether lost their birthright.

Among those who had traveled up
with the pioneers

was Rhodes's close friend and instrument,
Dr. Starr Jameson.

Rhodes now chose him to administer this
newly won territory.

(singing)

To the southwest, there still remained
the undefeated Matabele.

In 1892, Jameson decided that
the time had come to finish with them.

A pretext was easily found:

although the Shona people were now

supposed to be under white protection,

they were still the target of sporadic
Matabele raids.

A dispute over cattle quickly produced

the war that Jameson needed.

In traditional style, the Matabele

regiments prepared to fight for
their capital, Bulawayo,

against Jameson's advancing troops.

(singing)

No amount of Matabele courage
could matter now.

As an English poet wrote in bitter satire,

"Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim gun, and they have not."

(shouting)

(heavy gunfire)

After defeat came dispossession.

Nearly all of Matabele farming land

and most of the 250,000 Matabele cattle

were confiscated by Rhodes's
British South Africa Company,

or by individual settlers.

The structure of Matabele life was shattered.

London Missionary Society wrote,

"Congratulate Rhodes. As missionaries,

we have little to bind our sympathies

to the Matabele, neither can we pity

the downfall of their power."

Lobengula is said to have told
his followers

that rather than have a single
bone of his body

touched by a white man, he would disappear,

like a needle in the grass.

And disappear he did,
while some of his warriors

tried vainly to find a new homeland

northward across the Zambezi.

(female voice over loudspeaker)
Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome on board our cruise,

[name unclear]

... word meaning The Water That Rises.

My name is Phoebe, and [name unclear]
is in command this evening.

All drinks served on board are included
in the tour price.

(narrator)
Before long, white settlers too began to

push northward over this great waterway,

where a generation earlier,

David Livingstone had wandered alone.

To Rhodes would fall the unique distinction

of having not one, but two
African colonies bearing his name.

(loudspeaker)
The [unclear] that we are now on

is the deepest and the narrowest part
of the Zambezi,

and it was here where the pioneers

chose to cross it in 1889.

They floated their wagons using balsa wood

and [unclear].
Being so close to the river,

they [unclear]

became ill and often died from malaria

and blackwater fever.

(narrator)
Livingstone had died exactly 20 years earlier

and now the way was open for Christianity
and commerce,

here in these lands where Livingstone
had found, as he said,

perfect security for life and property,

but where, for Africans,
there was no longer any such thing.

But African resistance was not yet over.

In 1896, just three years later, surviving

Matabele regiments of about 14,000 men,

some now armed with rifles,

rose in furious revolt.

They swept down on isolated
white settlements

and slaughtered more than 100 farmers.

Caught unprepared, the bulk of the settlers

made a defensive laager at their
new capital of Bulawayo.

(sounds of battle)

Then the Shona people, infuriated
by taxation

and forced labor on white farms,
rose in their turn.

Led by the priests of their religion,

the spirit mediums Nehanda and Kaguvi,

they fought a stubborn guerrilla war
for many months.

It was not until 1897 that both risings
were finally overcome.

(gunfire, shouting)

(narrator)
The settler forces had suffered

considerable losses in the fighting.

Their mood was not merciful.

So-called rebels were hunted down,

and when taken prisoner, treated
as dangerous criminals.

Chained together, they were brought
before summary courts,

and not infrequently hanged
from the nearest tree.

(drum)

Captured at last, Nehanda and Kaguvi
were also hanged.

Such were the foundations on which
Cecil Rhodes built his empire.

Having thrust aside anyone who
stood in his way,

Rhodes spent little time in the country
he had formed.

This was the hut he used as an office.

Close by, the colonial government's
state house

was built directly on the site of

King Lobengula's old headquarters.

At his death in Capetown in 1902,

Rhodes's body lay in state,

and was then taken to Bulawayo,

where it was carried in procession
through the streets.

In the Matobo Hills, south of the city,

Rhodes had a summerhouse built,

where he liked to sit in the evening

and watch the sun go down over
that old Africa

into whose history he had broken
with such explosive force.

Here the coffin was placed overnight,

before being carried up into the hills
for burial.

(music)

Thousands of Europeans had gathered

at the spot called World's View.

Rhodes had come here in the past,

and had chosen it
as his final resting place.

(African choir singing)

So here he lies, in the heart of the
country that he conquered,

but are we to see this grave

as the final act of taking possession,

or the ultimate insult to the people
he dispossessed?

Rhodes has evoked conflicting judgements.

For the world of wealth, he was and is

the mighty empire builder,

the benevolent millionaire,

the hero of money.

For the world of poverty,

he remains a plunderer and a pirate,

the robber baron who took with both hands

what did not belong to him.

Rhodes and his men brought material progress

and 19th-century Africa certainly
needed progress,

but they brought it in such a way

that Africans could not share in it.

They deprived Africans
of that very condition,

freedom, that enables mankind to move
forward and develop.

So the great mission of the Bible
and the gun

ended by completely contradicting itself,

by producing an African servitude,

in which the visions and the dreams

of men such as Livingstone

were bound to be denied and set at naught.

(music)

♪ Africa ♪