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The 'Rudd Concession' was a written mining concession or agreement that Charles Rudd secured from Lobengula, King of Matabeleland on 13th October 1888. Rudd was a business associate of Cecil John Rhodes and he obtained the concession as his agent.
Rhodes had already tried and failed to get a concession from Lobengula. In 1888 he used the 'imperial factor' to lay the groundwork: a friendship treaty with the British Government, which Rhodes instigated by using John Moffat, son of the missionary Robert Moffat who was trusted by Lobengula, to persuade the latter to sign the treaty and to look favourably on Rhodes' subsequent mining concession proposals.
Rhodes and Rudd also used deceit, assuring Lobengula that no more than ten white men would mine in Matabeleland, but this was left out of the actual document Lobengula signed. Furthermore it stated that the mining companies could do anything necessary to their operations. In the months of negotiations, Rhodes also used Dr Leander Starr Jameson, who Lobengula regarded as his friend having previously treated him for gout, to help sway him.
When Lobengula discovered later what the 'Rudd Concession' really meant, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government ignored him. The concession effectively gave Rhodes and his partners in the subsequently-formed British South Africa Company (BSAC) free reign over the minerals of Matabeleland and its subject territory, Mashonaland. These territories formed the bulk of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
But that was still in the future. Meanwhile, armed with the Concession, in 1889 Rhodes obtained a charter from the British Government in London for the BSAC to rule, police and make new treaties and concessions from the Limpopo River to the great lakes of Central Africa. He convinced London that Lobengula's tributary state of Mashonaland, which had a few ancient gold mines, would be a new Rand gold mining area, and would pay for the administration as well as bringing trade benefits to Britain.
In 1890 Rhodes therefore sent the Pioneer Column of white settlers protected by well-armed British South Africa Police (BSAP), the BSAC's own paramilitary force, to Mashonaland, using the 'Rudd Concession' as the justification. Rhodes then cynically declared that Lobengula had never really conquered the Mashona and it was independent of Matabeleland, thus exploiting tribal rivalries to cement the settlers' occupation of the land. Once the BSAC had consolidated their base in Mashonaland, they provoked Lobengula into a war in which he would be defeated by superior arms. He remarked that 'England' was like a chameleon that stalks a fly; and he was the fly.
It turned out that the 'Rudd Concession' was not so valuable in mining terms, as the gold had mostly gone and the mineral resources of the country were scattered in smaller deposits. The farmland taken by settlers was valuable, and after putting down two more uprisings, the mines in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa had a ready supply of cheap labour from people displaced from their land. Not surprisingly some in London thought that this may have been Rhodes' plan all along.

Contents

See Also

References

See Also

★ Cecil Rhodes

★ Lobengula

★ Southern Rhodesia

★ Zimbabwe

★ British South Africa Company

References

★ Neil Parsons: "A New History of Southern Africa, Second Edition." Macmillan, London (1993), pp 179-181.