The Rhodes Estate is part of a very large estate straddling interests and property in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Britain.
The estate is significant to the legal legacy of the country’s real estate, so much that it required an Act of Parliament to administer it.
The list of land and assets in the Nyanga and Matopos estates puts even the most seasoned monopoly player to shame.
The Act provides for the development, administration and maintenance of the Rhodes Estates.
Rhodes owned vast tracts land in Nyanga and Matobo in his personal capacity.
This country truly was his oyster that even in his death he continued to own his own large pieces of Zimbabwean soil.
Part of the lands were bequeathed to the State and now comprise National Parks, while some are still private property administered by the Rhodes Trust.
The extent of the lands in the Estate is stipulated in the Act and any changes to the area size have to be stipulated in a Statutory Instrument by the Lands minister.
Needless to say, his influence continues to dominate the country’s present and future legal discourse.
The Rhodes Trust
The local Rhodes Estate is a part of the wider Estate in the Rhodes Trust, which is an educational charity.
The trust provides scholarships to study at the world’s most prestigious universities to candidates from selected countries of which were British colonies.
Rhodes’ estate not only affects laws in Zimbabwe, but also the laws of the United Kingdom and South Africa.
He left an even bigger estate in South Africa, the foot of his expansive business and political empire.
Locally and most interestingly, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe is the appointed trustee of the Rhodes Estates.
In that capacity the President holds the estate lands for the benefit of the people of Zimbabwe.
The estate is run professionally through the committees of the Rhodes Nyanga Park and the Rhodes Matopos National Park.
The Nyanga and Matopos Funds
The professionally-managed funds are designed to generate money for the estate using the assets.
The Rhodes Nyanga and Matopos Committees administer the lands and property in the estate for the commercial benefit of the estate and, hence, nourish the trust.
Commercial activities include rentals from lease of properties and income from agricultural, mining and other activities.
Burial at world’s view
Cecil John Rhodes died in 1902 at only 48 years of age. He was buried at Matobo Hills, a relatively short distance from where King Mzilikazi was buried.
Rhodes loved the Matobo Hills so much from his expeditions and had acquired vast tracts of land in the environs.
Section 16 of the Rhodes Estates Act expressly prohibits the burial of any other person on the hill or at least within a two kilometre radius of his grave.
However, Leander Starr Jameson and 34 British soldiers killed in the Shangani Patrol are buried alongside him.
It is not clear why this is so, as it is in contravention of his will and the Act.
In spite of his chequered history, with the Matabele people, Ndebele chiefs attended his funeral and reportedly honoured him with the Matabele royal salute.
The funeral drew tens of thousands of people from within and out of the country. He stipulated in his will “I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matopos and, therefore, I desire to be buried in the Matopos on the hill I used to visit in a square to be cut in the rock on top of the hill”. And so, he is buried exactly as he directed overlooking the breath taking rocky surroundings.
Visitors to the Matobo National Park will still see his grave exactly as it was set more than a century ago.
Since independence, there have been calls from various quarters and interest groups to exhume his grave and remove his remains from the site.
They argue that his burial at the site is in poor taste and an affront to black people.
The site was and is still considered a sacred shrine by locals.
Despite the calls for exhumation, it is not likely to ever be done because, as irony would have it, the trustee is the President of Zimbabwe and his obligation is to take care of the estate and property of Rhodes and safeguard his will.
The grave is protected in terms of both the Rhodes Estates Act and the National Museums and Monuments Act (Chapter 25:11).
Tampering with it is a criminal offence and, hence, Cecil John Rhodes is guaranteed to rest in eternal and prosperous peace by the Zimbabwe government.
