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Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret with Queen Elizabeth (George VI out of shot somewhere), visiting the grave of Cecil John Rhodes. 1947.
Although those wishing to pay homage to him probably number very few these days, it still gets plenty of visitors. It turns out that in the grave stakes, CJR landed pretty well.
The Matopos Hills, near Bulawayo. A national park and World Heritage Site. The area was a bequest in his will with specific instructions regarding the burial and plaque.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Last_Will_and_Testament_of_Cecil_Rhodes/Part_1
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Last_Will_and_Testament_of_Cecil_Rhodes/Part_1
It’s before all the stuff about making Oriel College great and Oxford having a medical school as good as Edinburgh and people forevermore getting funded to go to Oxford etc.
The area is beautiful. Lots of weathered balancing stones of postcard fame. There are innumerable cave paintings. Archaeologists found a skeleton from 42,000BC.
Anyway, there’s a particular hill called Malindidzimu. It’s especially sparse, of fairly smooth rock, and at the top nature somehow weathered a circle of boulders. CJR called this ‘the view of the world’.
He’s entombed smack in the middle of it. Apart from the view, a visitor notices the sound. Which is just wind off the stones. It’s incredibly peaceful. Closest one gets to imagining another planet.
Slightly further down and to CJR’s right is the tomb of his right-hand man, the wonderfully named Sir Leander Starr Jameson, of a certain raid fame. Always struck me as somewhat toadyish of him tbqh.
A short walk away is the monument to the Shangani Patrol. The sort of event you learn about growing up in my house. It’s handsome enough, and built according to his will. But incongruent as hell. A marble bit of Victorian England just poking up.
The grave is at least as controversial as the Oxford statue. But efforts to remove it have been resisted, including by Mugabe. So it remains. A recent governor of Bulawayo blamed the bad weather on its presence. Perhaps Rhodes Must Fall could give that a try.
I think about that spot a fair bit. When my cousin, who worked as a guide in the area, was dying he asked for his ashes to be scattered there. So we did. It was his favourite place in the world too.
PS. It should be called Matobo Park and Matobo Hills these days. And was when I was last there. I wasn’t being obtuse. Or at least, not deliberately.
