Rhodes Trust reparations attempt to mend, not undo history

“Don’t take that money. There’s blood on it.”

Mr. Ismail, my high school English teacher,… “Don’t take that money. There’s blood on it.”

Mr. Ismail, my high school English teacher, hated Cecil Rhodes. It was obviously not personal vendetta. Rhodes – a British colonialist and imperialist – died in 1902, well before Mr. Ismail (pronounced Ishmael, as in, “call me Ishmael”) was born.

Rhodes’s exploits in southern Africa have been well documented. He amassed a fortune from the diamond trade – a business that used the natives as either slave or highly underpaid labor.

Mining killed them by the score, from accident, starvation or disease. In his endeavor to build an empire from the Cape (of Good Hope, at the tip of what is now South Africa) to Cairo, Rhodes was responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not more.

Being from Tanzania, and keenly interested in African politics, Mr. Ismail loathed Rhodes. Consequently, he instructed his students never to accept Rhodes scholarships, saying that the money was tainted by history and blood.

That said, the new Mandela Rhodes Foundation, formed to help educate South Africa’s impoverished, might change his opinion. The Rhodes trust would give the foundation $1.6 million per year, for the next 10 years, according to a July 4 article in the New York Times.

Obviously, this foundation cannot undo what Rhodes did. It aims to repair what Rhodes broke and, through these reparations, close the circle of history.

Historians contest the degree to which colonialists affected the current state of Africa. Some argue that a direct line can be drawn from Rhodes to the persistent racial, ethnic and socioeconomic conflicts in southern Africa.

Others might see what Rhodes did as part of a series of events that plagued that region of Africa. These began with the Arabic slave trade – which persisted for centuries and resulted in the abduction of more Africans than its European counterpart – and persist with the frequent civil conflicts and unrest seen in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia.

Either perspective shows that what Rhodes did requires some sort of reparations, because he was the partial – if not direct – cause of the current situation.

The word “reparations” – compensation for past wrongs – has become controversial, especially when associated with paying black Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. Even reparations from the German government to Holocaust survivors drew fire because some saw it as a means of buying forgiveness.These reparations on the part of the Rhodes Trust, which, in The Times, the foundation director calls “closing a circle” since “payback is too harsh a word,” are an attempt to acknowledge and mend Rhodes’ atrocities.

Though most people directly affected by Rhodes are dead, the diamond trade that he controlled, with his shares in the de Beers and Kimberley mines, is still fraught with the same human rights disasters that it was a century ago.

Rather than opening wounds already half-healed, as many accuse reparations for American slavery of doing, this foundation is solving current problems by funding education.

Moreover, this officially ends the quiet acceptance of Rhodes as a benefactor and brings his inhumane means of empire building to the forefront.

Can Rhodes’ reputation as a profiteer and racist be exonerated through this foundation? Probably not. No matter how many people benefit from it, $16 million cannot change history. Bandaging a century-old injury cannot erase it.

Would this change Mr. Ismail’s advice to his students? Again, probably not. He held fast in his revulsion of Rhodes, no matter how many were educated by Rhodes scholarships. He believed that we must be taught history as it truly occurred, rather than some whitewashed version about grand, if delusional, empires.

Is Rhodes’ money still tainted? Are these $1.6 million installments merely returning what is owed to southern Africa? I cannot answer these questions, and I am loath to believe anyone can completely.

But the foundation is a start, an acknowledgement that history still begs for resolution and, at times, receives it.

Sydney Bergman thought of Mr. Ismail when she rescued an Ngugi book from under a stereo. She can be reached at sbergman@pittnews.com.