Speaker 1: M. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards legally the only podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: We've we've achieved our domination of global media, and it
Speaker 1: is now a felony to operate any other podcast on
Speaker 1: the Internet. So stuck on that, losers. Yeah, we imperialized podcasts.
Speaker 1: Hold on, let me just at the period catch. I'm
Speaker 1: about to throw you a diamond through the iPad M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a flesh. I also just date some potatoes. I apologize.
Speaker 1: He also just ate some potatoes. He apologizes properly. How
Speaker 1: are you still doing? How are you feeling after part one?
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I feel the way I think everyone
Speaker 1: every guest feels after slightly defeated, feeling like I knew
Speaker 1: this but I didn't know it. And my day is
Speaker 1: great because I enjoyed talking to y'all. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: also like the feeling between part one and part two
Speaker 1: of every episode of this podcast, you just know that
Speaker 1: it's going to get worse. It's all you get worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just like impending you guys got a two day break, Yes,
Speaker 1: impending doom. But also I'm still thinking about him flashing
Speaker 1: his diamonds at parties. Just the flex of that, Like
Speaker 1: I can't get that image out of my head and
Speaker 1: how I feel about it. It's so hard to process
Speaker 1: how I feel about that because it's he sucks, but
Speaker 1: it's so fucking cool. But like, yeah, got to respect
Speaker 1: the hustle sometimes rest like goddamn, okay, yeah so uh.
Speaker 1: In that last episode, I didn't go into overwhelming detail
Speaker 1: about all of the Cape Colony politicking, but Cecil engaged in.
Speaker 1: But he was not just building a business, going to
Speaker 1: you know, getting to know people within the sort of
Speaker 1: the Empire's political strata. A lot of his friends would
Speaker 1: be very influential. Um. The parties that they would go
Speaker 1: to when he was back, you know home in in
Speaker 1: in England were often held at like a Nancy Astor's house.
Speaker 1: Miss Astor, who was like this this fairy fancy. She
Speaker 1: was a very big figure and sort of like the
Speaker 1: Victorian era of British high society. Uh, and later became
Speaker 1: a backer of the Nazis. If you've ever heard that
Speaker 1: that story about like Winston Churchill, where like some lady
Speaker 1: walks up to him and says, um is that yeah
Speaker 1: you uh no, no, it's the um uh. If she
Speaker 1: was like if if you were my husband, I would
Speaker 1: do something or other and he says like, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: kill you. And if I were if you were my husband,
Speaker 1: if you were my wife, I'd let you. Is more
Speaker 1: or less how it goes. Yeah, So she's like one
Speaker 1: of his confidants when she's younger. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people who go on to run the empire, um are
Speaker 1: friends of Cecil's in in his younger life. So he's
Speaker 1: politicking with that set of people. And by the way,
Speaker 1: a decent chunk of them. Mind up backing the not season,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole World War two period, um and uh,
Speaker 1: but back in the Cape Colony, he's also he's getting
Speaker 1: very directly involved in politics. He's not just meeting people,
Speaker 1: he's he's getting he's into he gets he's getting elected
Speaker 1: to parliament. He's like he's he's doing politics in the
Speaker 1: Cape Colony and he becomes very very successful at it.
Speaker 1: He's very good at being a politician. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's happening during this whole period that we were
Speaker 1: talking about last episode. UM. One of his very first
Speaker 1: political forays happened in eighteen eighty three when he was
Speaker 1: a member of the Cape Parliament. Boers from the Transvaal
Speaker 1: had conquered some of the land of an African chief
Speaker 1: named men kurwani Uh, and they proclaimed their conquest to
Speaker 1: be a new republic Stella Land. Now they were not
Speaker 1: the only white guys out there who were like creating
Speaker 1: countries via machine gun. Another group of Boers conquered and
Speaker 1: declared a republic nearby a few months earlier. So like
Speaker 1: this was happening a number of times, and Cecil hated it,
Speaker 1: not because it was wrong for them to steal the
Speaker 1: land of African tribes, but because all these new republics
Speaker 1: disturbed his dream of a South Africa united under the
Speaker 1: English colors or under British colors, whatever um And the
Speaker 1: founder Rotberg writes, I saw that this is his speech
Speaker 1: to the Parliament. I solemnly wore in this house that
Speaker 1: if it departs from the control of the interior, we
Speaker 1: shall fall from the position of the paramount state in
Speaker 1: South Africa, which is our right in every scheme of
Speaker 1: federal union in the future, to that of a minor state.
Speaker 1: What we now want, Rhodes urged his colleagues in a
Speaker 1: memorable phrase, is to annex land, not natives. That's that's
Speaker 1: a key phrase interesting. Yeah. Roads made it clear that
Speaker 1: he was quote no negro phillist, like that is a word,
Speaker 1: because people accused him because he wasn't like overtly physically
Speaker 1: cruel to his workers. He was accused of being a
Speaker 1: negro file. That was a term they used. That was
Speaker 1: like a word that you like file. Yeah. And here
Speaker 1: he's defending himself by saying, I'm not a negro philist,
Speaker 1: and I hold the distinct view that we must extend
Speaker 1: our civilization beyond our present borders. We don't need any
Speaker 1: of them on the land that they currently own. We
Speaker 1: just need the land. Um. And I don't want your wallets.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't, I don't want your I just
Speaker 1: want to land bro dag. Now he urged the Parliament
Speaker 1: to basically carry out a military action against the whites
Speaker 1: of Stella Land, the bowers who would who would usurped
Speaker 1: Mankawan Land? But he didn't want to give the land back,
Speaker 1: and he wrote or he he said, the natives abound
Speaker 1: gradually to come under the control of the Europeans. I
Speaker 1: feel that it is the duty of this colony. Then,
Speaker 1: as it were, her younger and more fiery sons go
Speaker 1: out and take land to follow in their steps with
Speaker 1: civilized government. That's the purpose of fiery young men is
Speaker 1: to go out and take land. Yeah. I still you know,
Speaker 1: that's part of like my history that's unclear is like,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew those British colonies, that I knew
Speaker 1: those Dutch colonies, but it ended up the Dutch end
Speaker 1: up getting it. I just don't know how that happened.
Speaker 1: Is Yeah, So the first first Bowler war happens, I
Speaker 1: think not that long after he comes to Africa in
Speaker 1: the first place, and it's pretty small. I think like
Speaker 1: three people die. Um, but there is fighting and on
Speaker 1: kind of between the British and between the Boers, um,
Speaker 1: and they're both really shitty to the natives. I should like,
Speaker 1: this isn't a good guy, bad guy. You're fighting over
Speaker 1: a house that ain't yours. Yeah, I stole it fair
Speaker 1: and square. Yeah. In this instance, like he failed, like
Speaker 1: he urged the Cape Colony to basically like send out
Speaker 1: a military force to attack these new republics, and he
Speaker 1: did not succeed in that. Um. The government of the
Speaker 1: Empire from one thing was like we don't really want
Speaker 1: to get involved in this. We already have enough land.
Speaker 1: Down there, like, and that's one of the things you see.
Speaker 1: Cecil once more land than the people actually running the
Speaker 1: British Empire wanted to have, because he's getting it too fast.
Speaker 1: He's acquiring it too quickly, and they're like, we can't, like,
Speaker 1: we can't digest all of this. It's actually kind of
Speaker 1: a strain on our resources to try to govern it.
Speaker 1: His his attempt to take both these republics by force fails.
Speaker 1: But the treaty that comes as a result of this
Speaker 1: between the Empire and the Transvaal gives Britain responsibility for
Speaker 1: a vast chunk of land north of the Cape Colony uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of what would become Zimbabwe um. And this
Speaker 1: is obviously land that they get responsibility for in this
Speaker 1: treaty that other people live in and are governing themselves
Speaker 1: in at the time. So we're already a country, guys, don't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's happening. Yeah. In eighteen nineties, Cecil was elected Prime
Speaker 1: Minister of the Cape Colony. So at this point he's
Speaker 1: like he is he is the power in in Southern Africa.
Speaker 1: He controls the most powerful political entity in the region
Speaker 1: um and he also is again personal owner of most
Speaker 1: of the world's diamonds. So he's hit his zenith here.
Speaker 1: After almost twenty years of methodically building power, Rhodes is
Speaker 1: ready to launch his first major attempt to unine Southern Africa,
Speaker 1: which is of course a precursor to taking all of
Speaker 1: Africa for the British Empire. So in eighteen ninety he
Speaker 1: forms the British South Africa Company, which is an umbrella
Speaker 1: business that he uses to coordinate all of his enterprises.
Speaker 1: He's one of the first guys to start setting up
Speaker 1: shell companies. Um. Some of what he does is to
Speaker 1: like make fake false competition over diamonds, to like drive
Speaker 1: up the price of diamonds. It also is what he
Speaker 1: does if you think back to our Wonga coup episode
Speaker 1: or anything on on on Eric Prince. He uses this
Speaker 1: company to buy a mercenary army. Um. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: want to read a quote from a book called The
Speaker 1: Heartless Stone, which is about the diamond trade by Tom Sohlner.
Speaker 1: Quote by Rhodes's own admission, the company aimed to do
Speaker 1: more than mine diamonds. In fact, it aimed to annex
Speaker 1: other African nations, conduct diplomacy with local chiefs, build railroads,
Speaker 1: raise a standing army and even wage war. De Beers
Speaker 1: was a law to itself and accountable to no one.
Speaker 1: So again, the South British South Africa Company and De
Speaker 1: Beers as essentially the same thing in this period because
Speaker 1: they're run by the same guy. It's just it's a
Speaker 1: shell company, you know, it's it's yeah, it's so crazy too,
Speaker 1: like to just like you know why we talked in
Speaker 1: the first episode about this, like like these people live
Speaker 1: on another planet and in that planet, it's like controlling
Speaker 1: all of the money and resources ain't enough. You still
Speaker 1: got to become prime minister, you know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: Like that, you like how you in college, then you
Speaker 1: ain't gotta be in college? You know with pocket diamonds,
Speaker 1: do you expect them from pocket diamonds? Guy? This is
Speaker 1: this seems on par It's very saying like that is
Speaker 1: the we know, like that is the on that is
Speaker 1: the next step is you want to get in political power.
Speaker 1: It's like why, like do you It's never enough. It's
Speaker 1: never ever enough, never enough. Um, now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: So he uh, this this period of time, like the
Speaker 1: it's not popular or appropriate anymore for a corporation to
Speaker 1: have an army in the traditional sense of the word,
Speaker 1: because the British East India Company has kind of run
Speaker 1: into some a lot of that ended very ugly in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and in chunks of India. Um So, but he
Speaker 1: buys an army. He just calls them police. Um So,
Speaker 1: he gets about a seven hundred man army with machine guns,
Speaker 1: field artillery. It is an army, but he calls them police.
Speaker 1: And he puts together a group of two hundred settlers
Speaker 1: and he sends them into a place called Mashona Land,
Speaker 1: which is roughly present day Zimbabwe, in order to search
Speaker 1: for gold. And he sends his army in not to
Speaker 1: invade Mashona Land, but to protect the settlers, because that's
Speaker 1: what police do is they protect man. There is nothing
Speaker 1: new man, nothing. I mean, it's kind of new then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was just gonna protect you. Yeah, We're
Speaker 1: just going to protect, to serve and protect you, not them.
Speaker 1: So they picked Mashona Land because it was much more
Speaker 1: weakly defended than its neighbor to the south, Mata Belly Land,
Speaker 1: which was governed by a king named Loban Goula, who
Speaker 1: they to whom the people in Mahona Land owed fealty.
Speaker 1: So they were part of Loban Goula's kind of empire.
Speaker 1: But this is not really a country in the traditional
Speaker 1: sense of the term. It's systems of influence between different
Speaker 1: groups of tribes that are mostly autonomous, but like the
Speaker 1: Mashona will pay tribute to Loban Goula and he's yeah,
Speaker 1: like anyway, it's it's it's yeah. Um. So Rhads in
Speaker 1: Great Britain successfully negotiate a treaty with Loban Goula which
Speaker 1: guaranteed them mineral rights to the territory. And this is
Speaker 1: going on for a couple of years before he becomes
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. Um. And the way that the treaty is
Speaker 1: negotiated becomes a problem for Rhodes because it's only mineral
Speaker 1: rights and his real ambition is to found a new country,
Speaker 1: which he doesn't have the right to do, but he
Speaker 1: plays along for the sake of legal nicety. And if
Speaker 1: you've paid attention to any thing written accurately about colonialism,
Speaker 1: you know what a treaty between white people and native Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: their placeholders for guns. Yeah, except for I guess recently,
Speaker 1: we did make good. The Supreme Court made us make
Speaker 1: good on exactly one of the treaties we made with
Speaker 1: the Native Americans here in the United States, which is
Speaker 1: why like half of Oklahoma is now not under federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement, juristiction or something. I don't fully understand the situation,
Speaker 1: but it's something like that. Like there was a treaty
Speaker 1: that they signed and they were like, look, we have
Speaker 1: this in the Supreme Court had to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to actually take this series, we have to
Speaker 1: do this. Yeah. So good Oklahoma, So yeah, half of
Speaker 1: it at least. So the colonists quickly established a capital
Speaker 1: h Salisbury Um and they found our Salisbury whatever, and
Speaker 1: they found the land to be fertile. But they gradually
Speaker 1: realized that there was no gold there, which was a
Speaker 1: problem again because they don't have rights to anything else,
Speaker 1: only the minerals um. And it meant that because there
Speaker 1: wasn't gold, his company is burning through Da Beer's capital
Speaker 1: without anything to make up for the losses, and by
Speaker 1: the first year they're out by seven hundred thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: So they start taking austerity measures. He has to cut
Speaker 1: most of the police force and shutters a lot of
Speaker 1: the administrative functions, which he shouldn't have been doing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: because this isn't allowed to be a country, but he's
Speaker 1: treating it as one. You're unnecessary in the first place,
Speaker 1: But everything that comes next is very complicated, which is
Speaker 1: often the case when the Britain acquired chunks of Africa.
Speaker 1: It's it's not often less often is it just naked
Speaker 1: force invading, than it is a series of much more
Speaker 1: limited military engagements and then extensive treaties, and then settlements
Speaker 1: come in and then there's a fight, and then there's
Speaker 1: a military engagement more and they just keep eating more
Speaker 1: and more. And that's kind of what happens here. Um.
Speaker 1: Naked force is always a part of it, but there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of political maneuvering and negotiation to make
Speaker 1: the rank theft of land seem legal because the British
Speaker 1: are like a law loving people. They want to believe
Speaker 1: that they're they're going about this properly. Um. The short
Speaker 1: of it all is that King Loban Goula basically sold
Speaker 1: all of the land, right. It's that he had to
Speaker 1: a Boer named Lippert as part of a complex ploy
Speaker 1: to try to play the Boers against the British, because
Speaker 1: you can't think of any other way to fight them,
Speaker 1: and this doesn't work out. It backfires because none of
Speaker 1: the white people that loban Goula was negotiating with gave
Speaker 1: a shit about abiding by their words. So Lipperts sold
Speaker 1: the claim to Rhodes, who starts selling land occupied by
Speaker 1: the Mashona to white settlers and then pocketing the profit
Speaker 1: for de beers. The Indigenous People's Act obviously got nothing um.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen ninety three, this leads to an invasion
Speaker 1: of Mashona land by King loban Goula, and his justification
Speaker 1: is that they'd stopped paying him tribute because the white
Speaker 1: guys had taken taken over. So Rhodes uses this invasion
Speaker 1: as a justification to just kind of take everything um.
Speaker 1: And the battles that followed were all absolute nightmares. So
Speaker 1: he sends an actual British regular Forces to help fight
Speaker 1: alongside his police forces. And there you know, these are
Speaker 1: armies of modern armies with machine guns and field artillery
Speaker 1: uh going up against African armies with the best kind
Speaker 1: of antique rifle um. And again it's just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: All of these battles at the Battle of they're not
Speaker 1: even really battles at the Battle of Ego Dodd, for example, UM,
Speaker 1: six thousand African soldiers attacked a column of several hundred whites.
Speaker 1: In ten minutes, eight hundred Africans were dead and three
Speaker 1: Englishmen were killed. UM and even these profoundly racist colonial
Speaker 1: soldiers were shocked by the bravery of African warriors charging
Speaker 1: these machine gun lines in the way the British soldiers
Speaker 1: would be doing a couple of decades later, during World
Speaker 1: War One. UM, one of these soldiers later wrote, it
Speaker 1: was a nasty ten minutes, especially as the Matta Bali
Speaker 1: shooting with the rifles was much better than it had been,
Speaker 1: and they came on with wonderful courage to within eight
Speaker 1: yards of the wagons. Because all the fighting they're building
Speaker 1: wagons circles and just shooting out. It made one realize
Speaker 1: what what those terrible machine guns mean. It must have
Speaker 1: required extraordinary courage to come up the hill against the fire.
Speaker 1: And again, one of the things that's interesting here is
Speaker 1: if you if you read about Western soldiers in this
Speaker 1: they there's always there's kind of in satements like this,
Speaker 1: you can read this dawning realization that like will be
Speaker 1: running into those machine guns. One of these kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. Yeah, you can't work in that field and
Speaker 1: not know someone's there's always a bigger gun. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure I know a lot of US soldiers who
Speaker 1: have been in Afghanistan and Iraq know about drones. Yes, yes, yes, so.
Speaker 1: The Times correspondent, who was embedded with the British forces,
Speaker 1: also hailed the gallantry of the men he had just
Speaker 1: seen die, quote as showing their tenacity. I may mention
Speaker 1: that many were found three thousand yards away from the
Speaker 1: spot where they had received their death wound. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know, toughness, courage, it doesn't really matter when the
Speaker 1: other side has yeah. Uh, you know they had the
Speaker 1: maximum gun. You know, that's what happened. Whatever happens, we
Speaker 1: have got the maxim gun and they have not. So
Speaker 1: after several bloody defeats, Loban Goula eventually fled north with
Speaker 1: most of his remaining soldiers. And I think he killed himself, um,
Speaker 1: you know, poisoned himself. There's some debate about that from
Speaker 1: what I can read. And of course, now that all
Speaker 1: of this land has been conquered, white settlers flood into
Speaker 1: the areas. Uh. They decide early that the original African
Speaker 1: names of these places. We're not going to do um.
Speaker 1: Starting in eighteen ninety one, the name Rhodesia grew increasingly popular,
Speaker 1: and Cecil encouraged this, as there's evidence that had been
Speaker 1: his plan for sometimes for years before the invasion, to
Speaker 1: name both of these new illegally conquered nations after himself.
Speaker 1: By eighteen nine five the term was in regular use,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen nineties seven it became official. So there's
Speaker 1: two rhodes Is. Actually there's Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia,
Speaker 1: and both become the personal property of Cecil rhodes Um.
Speaker 1: When asked about this, he told a friend, well, you know,
Speaker 1: to have a bit of country named after one is
Speaker 1: one of the things a man might be proud of. You.
Speaker 1: You know what, Broke likes his pocket diamonds. Now he's
Speaker 1: got pocket rhodes Now he's got And I think he
Speaker 1: is the only person in history who has ever personally
Speaker 1: owned two countries named after him. And you look, not
Speaker 1: in his honor is not named after his in his
Speaker 1: honor is mad and is he is? And he and
Speaker 1: he named it. Lord, I can't oh m, that's just Lord,
Speaker 1: give me the confidence and just success of mediocre white guys. Yep,
Speaker 1: if I could just be as wow that man anyway,
Speaker 1: naked confidence, naked confidence and reckless ambition. Yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 1: Who says you can't? Yeah, you like, what do you
Speaker 1: tell that guy? What do you talk about me? You can't? Bro?
Speaker 1: Like what if? What if you were in seventh says
Speaker 1: you can't? Exactly where you can't? Yeah? What are you
Speaker 1: in seventh grade with him? And you're just like and
Speaker 1: he like beat you in like freaking kickball, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't. I just want this guy
Speaker 1: to lose. And then you run into him at like
Speaker 1: a pub in London. He's got two countries. Yeah, He's
Speaker 1: like yeah ah, and you're such a piece of ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, and he as racists like to point out,
Speaker 1: because again, this guy is beloved by racists. He did.
Speaker 1: Rhodes did a lot of lovely things to to connect
Speaker 1: and modernize Africa. He had telegraph cables laid from Cape
Speaker 1: Town to Cairo. He had train tracks laid across the continent.
Speaker 1: There's the most famous illustration of him is a political
Speaker 1: cartoon that you've almost certainly seen, where he's he's standing
Speaker 1: as like a giant caricature of him is standing in
Speaker 1: the center of the continent of Africa with like telegraph
Speaker 1: cables across him, and it's called the New Colossus of Rhodes.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, that's like that, that's his reputation in
Speaker 1: this period of time. Um. Yeah. And and he's doing this,
Speaker 1: he's putting all this together to connect to the continent
Speaker 1: because connecting it will prepare it for British control and
Speaker 1: prepare it to have a unified culture under the Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon race, which is what he wants for Africa and
Speaker 1: everywhere that's not Africa. Um. So he conquers other people,
Speaker 1: including them out of l a people. Um and he yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's it's horrible. He could. He's doing
Speaker 1: a lot of conquering and he's he's in the field
Speaker 1: for a significant amount of this. He's not like fighting,
Speaker 1: but he's following his armies along. He's in attent. He
Speaker 1: loves doing this. He loves being on the ground and
Speaker 1: being sort of feeling the dust and his lungs and
Speaker 1: being a part of it. Um. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the same as like those people who like sat
Speaker 1: up on a hill to watch the battles in the
Speaker 1: Civil War, you know, except for he wants to be
Speaker 1: directing that ship and he doesn't want there to be
Speaker 1: a chance that the people fighting back will win. It's
Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah. So while all this is going on,
Speaker 1: the Mighty de Beer's company was still chugging right along.
Speaker 1: Cecil had gained almost complete control over the Diamonds planets
Speaker 1: diamond supply so quickly and improved production so much that
Speaker 1: he ran into a problem. There were too many diamonds.
Speaker 1: It turned out that the little bastards are actually pretty common.
Speaker 1: In order to avoid a collapse in the value of
Speaker 1: the mineral that was funding his illegal wars of expansion,
Speaker 1: Cecil hatched a scheme. So he starts laying off thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of his workers, and he creates a bunch
Speaker 1: of policies that inflated the price of diamonds that restricted
Speaker 1: the supply artificially. He's one of the first guys. He
Speaker 1: creates artificial scarcity. I shouldn't say he's one of the
Speaker 1: first guys, because we talked about in our Birth of
Speaker 1: Capitalism episode, the first corporation that ever existed traveled to
Speaker 1: the Spice islands, committed genocide and then killed all of
Speaker 1: the nutmeg on every island but the one that they
Speaker 1: had their farms on in order to that's the scar
Speaker 1: This this is the Dutch the Dutch East Um India Company,
Speaker 1: I think it was. This is before even that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you listen to the episode, I get it right there. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So he creates artificial scarcity for the diamond
Speaker 1: for diamonds because he realizes that's the only way to
Speaker 1: make diamonds profitable. And this doubles the price of diamonds
Speaker 1: in a single year. Um. So he channels, he restricts
Speaker 1: the supply. He channels the diamonds into a bunch of
Speaker 1: different diamond dealers in London who are willing to make
Speaker 1: a cartel with him. He basically he creates a cartel
Speaker 1: with the people make digging the diamonds and like the
Speaker 1: people selling them and crafting them in order to keep
Speaker 1: prices high. Um. And the diamond industry continues to work
Speaker 1: this day into like the fucking like like honestly in
Speaker 1: some ways to the present day. But it doesn't really
Speaker 1: start to get broken up until the middle of last century. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in eighteen nine four Rhodes was elected Prime Minister
Speaker 1: a second time. He was forty one years old, the
Speaker 1: owner of two private nations, one of the wealthiest men
Speaker 1: in history, the sole proprietor of the diamond trade, and
Speaker 1: the elected leader of the most powerful colony in South Africa,
Speaker 1: almost as big as Europe. Yeah. So he's the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister of South Africa quote unquote or the the Cape Colony. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Cape call he's the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony,
Speaker 1: like duly elected according to whatever made up laws they have.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the owner of other countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of the companies of the countries. So you prime
Speaker 1: minister one and owned two other. God bastard he is.
Speaker 1: And I see how he's like the Ata Turk of Bastard, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's here, there's no there's I don't know. We've reached
Speaker 1: we've reached pinnacle Bastard. Yeah, peakee Bastard here. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't get it doesn't get much worse than this.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I gross under as underestimated this guy. He's
Speaker 1: fucking Hitler level, you know, if you're talking about like
Speaker 1: the most influential pieces of ship in history. He's there's
Speaker 1: not there's a number of folks at his level. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of people i'd put above him, clearly,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could put yeah not it's yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, a lot of time for the top of
Speaker 1: that list. Yeah yeah yeah. Anyway, you know what isn't
Speaker 1: the sole proprietor of two countries illegally conquered by a
Speaker 1: mercenary police force, the products of services, none of them,
Speaker 1: none of them until I conquer my own country in
Speaker 1: present day Idaho, Um and use it as a basis
Speaker 1: from which to declare war on the f d A. M.
Speaker 1: That's the plan. I wouldn't mind you redeeming Idaho. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty beautiful. Do it together. We can harness the power
Speaker 1: of Idaho to wipe out the fd I think actually
Speaker 1: I would have a lot of support in Idaho for
Speaker 1: taking on the f d A, mostly from people who
Speaker 1: want to sell brain pills. But anyway, um, we could
Speaker 1: probably ally with Utah. Anyway, here's the ads. We're back,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're talking about cecil. So he gets
Speaker 1: elected Prime Minister for the second time, and now that
Speaker 1: he's at the height of his power, he's really got
Speaker 1: everything under control. He's just gotten his second election. He
Speaker 1: turns to the thing the party episode where you're like,
Speaker 1: here it is, you're at the top of the roller coaster,
Speaker 1: and he's about to just like the part we're at,
Speaker 1: the part where he invinced apartheid. Um yea. So he
Speaker 1: decides that the focus of his second term as Prime
Speaker 1: Minister is going to be dealing with what he called
Speaker 1: the native question. Now, motherfucker. If you know fascists, you
Speaker 1: know that when people have a question about a race
Speaker 1: that they keep referring to as the blank question, it
Speaker 1: doesn't end well. Ever, the Trajet jury is predictable. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So from the founder quote that biography of Rhodes,
Speaker 1: Rhodes employed this skillfully obtained unprecedented and largely unquestioned matter
Speaker 1: of measure of decisive political power to continue rearranging relations
Speaker 1: between blacks and whites. He had introduced radical notions in
Speaker 1: this domain during the legislative years from eighteen ninety to
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety two, from eighteen ninety three, and dramatically after
Speaker 1: his electoral triumph in eighteen ninety four, must much of
Speaker 1: Rhodes's considerable political energy was directed at to rewriting the
Speaker 1: Cape Statute books in wage ways which might have appeared
Speaker 1: limited and parochial at the time, but which were profoundly
Speaker 1: to alter the contours and reach of discrimination throughout South
Speaker 1: and even Southern Africa. He viewed burgeoning African numbers as
Speaker 1: a clear danger to white superiority and to the emerging
Speaker 1: coalition of Dutch and English speaking colonialists. Together, Rhodes and
Speaker 1: his allies acted to undercut the established tradition of Cape
Speaker 1: liberal him That's what I was talking about earlier. The
Speaker 1: liberal is the idea that all men are equal, and
Speaker 1: we have to even if we all don't really believe it,
Speaker 1: we have to hold to that because it's important. Um,
Speaker 1: Even the most antagonistic of the Cape's legislators and the
Speaker 1: most die hard leaders of the Bond, which is one
Speaker 1: of the political sort of factions there, had hitherto been
Speaker 1: hesitant to erode the principle that all persons, irrespective of color,
Speaker 1: were equal before the law, one of Britain's priceless nineteenth
Speaker 1: century gifts to the Cape and thus to South Africa.
Speaker 1: During rhodes premiership, however, other more expedient objectives of achieved precedence,
Speaker 1: Yeah Man when I think about like this, it's like
Speaker 1: it's hard to not picture Jim Crow and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is if you carry Jim Crow out to its
Speaker 1: logical conclusions and then leave it until the nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. Yeah, gosh yeah dude. Yeah, and and that
Speaker 1: and and it's like you go when yeah, the question,
Speaker 1: the native question, it's like, uh, of course this is
Speaker 1: what you're gonna come up with. Of course it is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: keep reading Roberts so um yeah he his main objective
Speaker 1: here is white supremacy. Um and and again, white supremacy
Speaker 1: in a very modern way. And the best thing that
Speaker 1: illustrates his drive to white supremacy and everything that, like
Speaker 1: how his thought process worked and the way in which
Speaker 1: he took action to to further that goal. The best
Speaker 1: thing that illustrates that is Rhodes's plan to push through
Speaker 1: the passage of what was called the Glenn Gray Act. Now,
Speaker 1: Glenn Gray was a district in the Cape Colony that
Speaker 1: had essentially been a reservation for for one group of
Speaker 1: of African natives. Quote. Like most reservations, Glenn Gray was
Speaker 1: overcrowded and overgrazed. Many of its male inhabitants had already
Speaker 1: begun to seek work from whites in the colony. Others, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: had crowded into Glenn Gray from more distant or less
Speaker 1: settled frontier areas. Whites, especially Dutch seeking farmers, coveted its
Speaker 1: fertile valleys. In a microcosm, Glen Gray presented most of
Speaker 1: the problems found in the recently if only partially assimilated
Speaker 1: frontier districts. There was a clear need to remove sources
Speaker 1: of friction among Africans and between Africans and whites. Land
Speaker 1: was at the root of most disputes, but to grant
Speaker 1: individual tenure meant at least the possibility of a flood
Speaker 1: of newly entitled black voters, conceivably less pressure on Africans
Speaker 1: to seek work, and a host of ancillary questions with
Speaker 1: local and cape wide budgetary limitations. There also was the
Speaker 1: danger that whites would purchase the newly salable black owned
Speaker 1: farms and thus thrust vast numbers of landless black families
Speaker 1: onto the colony. So Rhodes was really worried that white
Speaker 1: families also would buy up land owned by Africans and
Speaker 1: moved there in the middle of land dominated by Africans,
Speaker 1: and then you would have communities of white and black
Speaker 1: people cohabitating. Rhads also thought was unacceptable because if people
Speaker 1: are living in the same communities, they're going to funk eventually.
Speaker 1: That's just the ways are like, that's just what's gonna happen, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just is the thing that happens with people. Um.
Speaker 1: So he had to find a solution to this problem
Speaker 1: that achieved a few goals. Number one, it had to
Speaker 1: steal back most of the land that African tribes held
Speaker 1: in common because at this point before the Glenn Gray Act,
Speaker 1: that we're talking about communally owned land that's like this,
Speaker 1: this tribe owns this parcel of land. Um. So you
Speaker 1: have to stop that because communally owned land is not
Speaker 1: good for the kind of world that Cecil Roads wants
Speaker 1: to build. Um. So you have to get most of
Speaker 1: that land back on the market somehow. You also can't
Speaker 1: make it look like naked theft. And so that means
Speaker 1: you're going to be parceling at least a lot of
Speaker 1: this land up and giving it to individual Black Africans.
Speaker 1: But that's a problem because the way the laws and
Speaker 1: the Caper crafted, if you own property, you get to vote.
Speaker 1: So communally owned property doesn't haunt for that. But if
Speaker 1: you're going to be giving a bunch of Africans property,
Speaker 1: suddenly that's a bunch of new voters. And Cecil Rhodes
Speaker 1: does not want that ship happening. Okay, y'all voting now
Speaker 1: because yea, yeah, yeah, So dude, parallel in even in
Speaker 1: that that like pickle of like yeah, after reconstruction and
Speaker 1: like you know, uh and all of a sudden America
Speaker 1: started electing a ton of black people, it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we can't well, yeah to today. A
Speaker 1: story just dropped today from the Cambridge Analytical Leaks that
Speaker 1: one of the things they were used for by the
Speaker 1: Trump administration was to put together a list of between
Speaker 1: three and five million black Americans that they wanted to
Speaker 1: and considered it critical to discourage from voting. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: because again every couple of generations, you're able to be
Speaker 1: less naked about the racism. But the goal was the same,
Speaker 1: stop them from having a say in their own interests.
Speaker 1: Nailed it, yep. So uh yeah. Since Glenn Gray was
Speaker 1: representative of so many frontier parts of the colony, it
Speaker 1: was evident to Cecil that this new law would lay
Speaker 1: the basis for native and white relations across Africa for
Speaker 1: the future. This meant, obviously that the new law would
Speaker 1: have to be constructed in a way that reinforced white
Speaker 1: supremacy and enshrined it into South African law forever, no
Speaker 1: matter what Great Britain's enlightened liberal values said. Cecil told
Speaker 1: Parliament the legislature must adopt a system of despotism and
Speaker 1: its relations with the barbarians of South Africa. The legislature
Speaker 1: has got to treat the natives where they are in
Speaker 1: a state of barbarism in a different way to ourselves.
Speaker 1: We ought to be the lord's over them today desperately.
Speaker 1: If you're saying we have to be despots, you are
Speaker 1: the bad guys. Yes, yes, like like like just have
Speaker 1: just just the just the smidge of self awareness and
Speaker 1: like just yeah, that's all I'm asking, Just just just
Speaker 1: have a little, just a little self awareness. It's not good,
Speaker 1: by and large to be a despot. That's why we
Speaker 1: came up with a nasty name for it, like a despot.
Speaker 1: I wish that I wish the listeners could hear me,
Speaker 1: see me flail in my arms in agreement. Doc the
Speaker 1: pretzel Pepe we bend ourselves in to protect power. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of head head nodding, head shaking, arms
Speaker 1: flat and yeah, it shall continue. Yes, speaking of things
Speaker 1: that shall continue this episode, So uh Rhodes told Parliament
Speaker 1: that because of the debate over the Glenn Gray Act,
Speaker 1: the colony was in a state of racial emergency with
Speaker 1: ballooning numbers. Yeah. Well, because increasing numbers of Black Africans
Speaker 1: were either filling land white people wanted even worse, moving
Speaker 1: to cities that white people lived in. And if you
Speaker 1: have this population of people, this big underclass, you don't
Speaker 1: have enough money, I'll live in cities. Some of them
Speaker 1: might agitate for better living conditions and that could lead
Speaker 1: to a revolution. He was also terrified that if you
Speaker 1: gave Africans enough land, you know, enough of the land
Speaker 1: that they already owned, Um, they might not get jobs
Speaker 1: because they'd be able to take care of themselves. And again,
Speaker 1: they are trying to induct Africa into the global capitalist
Speaker 1: system at this point. So he's terrified that if they're
Speaker 1: able to to see to their own needs in their
Speaker 1: own land, what need do they have to get involved
Speaker 1: in this system in which they will fundamentally have to
Speaker 1: be under us, dude, when like just it's it's not
Speaker 1: such a mind bender because I'm like, Okay, we was
Speaker 1: taking care of ourselves before you got here. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did it for a long time. We did it for
Speaker 1: a long time, a matter of fact, longer than any
Speaker 1: other humans because this is Africa, so we was here
Speaker 1: the whole time, and now you're worried about us being
Speaker 1: able to take care of ours. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: again I did read some defenses, modern defenses by modern
Speaker 1: conservatives of Cecil Roads, and one thing I pointed as
Speaker 1: that like he talked about, you know, he didn't he
Speaker 1: wasn't racist. He just believed that, you know, British civilization
Speaker 1: was superior, and it was. And it'll list you know
Speaker 1: all in all of these tribes that he's conquering and
Speaker 1: finding a lot of them do do the things like
Speaker 1: female genital mutilation, things that are very horrible. Um, because
Speaker 1: all groups of organized human beings do bad things. It's
Speaker 1: just the thing that people do, period. And it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's true, all of those tribes had problems and things
Speaker 1: that like we're we're bad that they did. And the
Speaker 1: British Empire starved thirty million people to death in order
Speaker 1: to make a profit. So let's not fucking get up
Speaker 1: on our high horses about the superiority of Anglo brit
Speaker 1: like civili fucking exation, like come on yourself. Yeah, basically
Speaker 1: you're right, Just you can't say it, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: When did they start? And when did they start? Important
Speaker 1: the Indians to like work? Because I know that that.
Speaker 1: I think that's a later period. It does not come
Speaker 1: up in my research, and this maybe that's happening in
Speaker 1: this period. I'm sorry if I'm I don't want to
Speaker 1: make a statement on that one way or the other
Speaker 1: because it's not my area of expertise. Um, none of
Speaker 1: this really is. But I at least read up on
Speaker 1: this ship. Um. So Cecil claims to Parliament that without quote,
Speaker 1: without the dignity of labor, Africans would live in sloth
Speaker 1: and laziness. It was thus the government's job to give
Speaker 1: them some gentle stimulants to go forth and find out
Speaker 1: something of the dignity of labors. And he's saying this
Speaker 1: about the people that have built his entire fortune with
Speaker 1: their blood, sweat and teeth. Yes, that's like the men
Speaker 1: who dug my diamonds. Need to understand the dignity of labor. Yes,
Speaker 1: piece you piece of shit, like just the largest hole
Speaker 1: in the world that we dug for. You tell me
Speaker 1: I need to note a dignity of hard labor. Well.
Speaker 1: And also it's really interesting to me he doesn't consider
Speaker 1: farming to be labor because it doesn't necessarily feed into capitalism,
Speaker 1: because you can farm and just live comfortably and share
Speaker 1: contint with your neighbors and not need to be a
Speaker 1: part of this this global system of money. Uh, because
Speaker 1: you have food and shelter, and that's really all you need.
Speaker 1: As long as you are able to make a musical
Speaker 1: instrument and you've got gourds of ship you can make drums.
Speaker 1: Like you've got music. You're fine. Food, shelter, fucket, Like
Speaker 1: what else do you need? Nothing? It turns out apparently
Speaker 1: apparently his greatest gift was stress, because that's where we needed, apparently,
Speaker 1: just to worry about collecting more things we don't need.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. So, after months of politicking and debate,
Speaker 1: Rhodes finally had a plan for this, the Glen Gray
Speaker 1: Act that he presents to Parliament. The basics of it
Speaker 1: were this communal lands these reservations would be broken up
Speaker 1: in pieces of them given to black families as individual lots. Now,
Speaker 1: this had been proposed before by people other than Cecil,
Speaker 1: and the legislators who had proposed it before wanted to
Speaker 1: give out one the individual plots to be about a
Speaker 1: hundred and ten acres, which they thought would be fair,
Speaker 1: which is not a tiny chunk of lands. Big Rhodes
Speaker 1: cut the allotments down to eight acres because he wanted
Speaker 1: it to be impossible for these tiny farms to actually
Speaker 1: make a profit. He didn't want them to be able
Speaker 1: to compete with white people's farms, which were much larger
Speaker 1: and industrial. He also banned partable inheritance, forcing the whole
Speaker 1: parcel to be passed on intact. This ensured that only
Speaker 1: the firstborn son of any family would get any land,
Speaker 1: and other children in the family would have to leave
Speaker 1: the family land to go get jobs. When it was
Speaker 1: pointed out to him that white people were able to
Speaker 1: pass down their property however the funk they wanted, he
Speaker 1: replied that giving Africans equal rights quote, was not a
Speaker 1: tenable position, which is not if you want the things
Speaker 1: he wants, you can't be giving black people equal rights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not wrong. You know, he's so good at this.
Speaker 1: He's very good at this, maybe the best anyone's ever been.
Speaker 1: He's exceptional at this. He's exceptional at this thing. It
Speaker 1: is one of those things we do talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of mediocre white men who failed upwards. He's not media,
Speaker 1: he's he's not he's very intell. He is actually he
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing and he's good at it. And
Speaker 1: that is of heartbreaking consequence to the entire history of
Speaker 1: the human race from this point on. Um So, in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that absolutely every single black person in
Speaker 1: the colony had to get a job, Rhodes instituted a
Speaker 1: labor tax of ten shillings per head for every African,
Speaker 1: which means you have to We've conquered your country and
Speaker 1: now you have to pay every year to like checks
Speaker 1: every bastardly box. It's amazing. I'm no longer I think
Speaker 1: he sucks. One of the laws he passes, maybe the
Speaker 1: most influential, but one of them he does a bunch
Speaker 1: of this ship. So the tax meant that no longer
Speaker 1: could Africans just stay unemployed and lived through hunting and farming,
Speaker 1: like the way that people had survived for forever. They
Speaker 1: couldn't do that anymore. They had to get hard currency somehow. Um,
Speaker 1: and the landowners that were created by this were included
Speaker 1: in this, so they couldn't just grow their own food
Speaker 1: because he didn't think that it was really labor. He
Speaker 1: wanted everyone do have to engage with capitalism in some
Speaker 1: way and work. And it's so frustrating, so frustrating because
Speaker 1: he's so remarkably in charge that like, yeah, there's you
Speaker 1: have no recourse because he's like he's freakishly in charge.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think Rotberg's a very good biographer.
Speaker 1: One of my issues with him as he will repeatedly
Speaker 1: talk about sort of cessil's ability to convince people of things,
Speaker 1: as he had this kind of remarkable ability to to
Speaker 1: convince other men of his vision. And he he talks
Speaker 1: about all of the racist things Cecil does, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't lay out in a way that I find as
Speaker 1: direct as maybe at Auto be and again he wrote
Speaker 1: it in Night, but um, he doesn't lay out very
Speaker 1: directly the vision was white supremacy. That's why they all
Speaker 1: got on board. Yes, I am speaking to the lowest
Speaker 1: part of you that wants to believe you're better than
Speaker 1: everybody else. Yeah, it's gonna work. So yeah, again and again,
Speaker 1: back to sort of his this tax that he institutes
Speaker 1: to even force the landowners to work, because he doesn't
Speaker 1: consider growing food to be labor. I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: Rothberg here. Rhodes thought that he he being these small farmers,
Speaker 1: would spend only three or four weeks sewing maize and
Speaker 1: would truly not be working hard enough. It would be
Speaker 1: wise if such a man also went out and worked
Speaker 1: for a certain period. Now, one of his political opponents
Speaker 1: at the time, another guy in parliament, commented to this sarcastically.
Speaker 1: No toil, however, strenuous upon a native's own land was
Speaker 1: dignified enough to satisfy the tax collector. So again, there
Speaker 1: are white guys in politics who recognize how messed up
Speaker 1: this is and do speak out. You know, he's he's
Speaker 1: acknowledging that, like, it doesn't matter how hard they work
Speaker 1: if it's for themselves. Cecil wants them working for white people.
Speaker 1: It's not that they're not working, it's that they're not
Speaker 1: working for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna continue
Speaker 1: to quote. Stimulated by the labor tax rhads. The social
Speaker 1: Darwinis suggested Africans would change for the better. Every black
Speaker 1: man could not have three acres and a cow in
Speaker 1: the future, he said, Africans would have to change as
Speaker 1: a black man could not have three Africans would have
Speaker 1: to change as the English had changed. It must be
Speaker 1: brought home to them that in the future nine tenths
Speaker 1: of them must would have to spend their lives in
Speaker 1: manual labor. And the sooner that was brought home to them,
Speaker 1: the better spend their lives. Yes, so now see some
Speaker 1: of the supremacy stuff is like you you you start
Speaker 1: being able to follow their train of logic. He is
Speaker 1: well aware that Britannica was at one point a bunch
Speaker 1: of feuding tribes that were just hunter gatherers with serfdom
Speaker 1: and feudalism, and we have become this. So then when
Speaker 1: you look at Africa, you go, oh, yeah, we used
Speaker 1: to be like that in the tenth century. We're better
Speaker 1: than you, you know, and just so like at least
Speaker 1: it's like you following his logic at least, and I
Speaker 1: mean that's the same, that's the proud boy logic of like, no,
Speaker 1: we used to be like this we're better. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're not. No, And a lot of you were miserable
Speaker 1: because like the early industrial Age Victorian England, the cities
Speaker 1: are fucking nightmares with factories where children's hands get mangled
Speaker 1: and cool mines that killed people by the thousands. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: The fucking the air was unbreathable. It would they had
Speaker 1: poisoned their own country and had left because they wanted
Speaker 1: to poison other people's cousin. Yes, like what was what
Speaker 1: was the thing? The great London stink? Was that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the stinch blossom or whatever that like made the city
Speaker 1: almost unlivable and killed huge numbers of people because it
Speaker 1: was a nightmare. There m The fact that they were
Speaker 1: able to push their surplus population out to the colonies
Speaker 1: and also move a lot of their manufacturing in resource
Speaker 1: attraction out to the colonies is why England's pretty nice nowadays.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So Additionally, Africans would find that they were
Speaker 1: better off when they went to work. Rhoads promised to
Speaker 1: spend the funds from the labor tax on industrial schools.
Speaker 1: Think back to the residential school episodes that we did
Speaker 1: on Canada, because it's the same thing and that the
Speaker 1: US had where they put indigenous people, and that Australia
Speaker 1: had where they put indigenous people. It is the same
Speaker 1: thing where Africans could be caught taught trades and vocations,
Speaker 1: not taught history, not taught you know, to, not taught
Speaker 1: to seek their dreams out, taught how to be functional
Speaker 1: cogs and capitalism. Rhodes thought, quote, South Africa had too
Speaker 1: many schools which specialized in turning out a peculiar class
Speaker 1: of human beings. The and he uses the K word again, person.
Speaker 1: Now the K word person was a most excellent type
Speaker 1: of individual, said Rhods. But he belonged to a class
Speaker 1: that was overdone. They became agitators and accused the government
Speaker 1: of oppressing the common people. They constituted a dangerous class.
Speaker 1: Remember that from the police episodes when we were talking
Speaker 1: about over here. It's the same mother fucking thing everywhere
Speaker 1: it happens thing. Yeah, yo, I as I said, I know,
Speaker 1: I know people who went to the American Native schools
Speaker 1: and we're yeah, and told horror stories that and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just samey kill the Indian to save the man
Speaker 1: was the term they used. Totally. Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: Rhodes would say, and he's not racist, because he's no.
Speaker 1: I have nothing against black people. I just want to
Speaker 1: kill everything about them culturally that is different from the
Speaker 1: way I want them to live. Yeah. So, rhodes Is
Speaker 1: new law also banned the sale of Indigenous land to
Speaker 1: white people. And this was not for any high minded reason.
Speaker 1: It was because the Natives should be in Native reservations
Speaker 1: and not mixed up with whites. Yeah, keep them away.
Speaker 1: This is the start of apartheid. This is the birth
Speaker 1: of sere segregation, legal segregation. Yeah. You have a place
Speaker 1: to be and it's not near us. Yeah. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: cool as long as they over there. Yeah. So again.
Speaker 1: So the and finally, after all that, the Glen Gray
Speaker 1: Act in in sured that all of these new landowning
Speaker 1: black people would not get the right to vote, as
Speaker 1: enshrined by the law. As he told Parliament, it was
Speaker 1: really ridiculous to suppose that these poor children could be
Speaker 1: taken out of this absolute barbarism and come to a
Speaker 1: practical conclusion on politics. So the Act very simply banned
Speaker 1: any Native enfranchised by the Glen Gray Bill from voting
Speaker 1: in Cape elections. Roads justified this again by saying that
Speaker 1: because the government protected their land, they had no real
Speaker 1: light right to vote on it. Black people could not
Speaker 1: be citizens as they were children. Several roads. Again the
Speaker 1: the he wove a store. This is yeah, this is
Speaker 1: why I'm saying. He took when a place that had
Speaker 1: been caught like that was African land, conquered and dominated
Speaker 1: by white people, and he made it worse and more racist.
Speaker 1: This is where apartheid comes from. This is the legal
Speaker 1: underpinning that all apartheid descends from. Is the ships Cecil
Speaker 1: Rhodes was making. Happened in this period and it lasts
Speaker 1: up until what like the late eighties, the early nine Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still like the impacts are still. It's still if
Speaker 1: you yeah, every year, like I said, like I performed
Speaker 1: there at least once a year. I got a homeboy
Speaker 1: on the radio and Cape down my homeboy DJ Easy
Speaker 1: and he's he's what they called colored under the system. Right.
Speaker 1: So we're driving through Cape Town one of the like
Speaker 1: this is the most beautiful like overlooking cliffs beach, like
Speaker 1: it's a paradise, and he goes, Yo, my dad used
Speaker 1: to work at this beach, but at sundown he had
Speaker 1: to leave because colors weren't allowed on this beach, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, you still, I'm like, that's your father, bro,
Speaker 1: Like that's this this, that's now. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: He talked about like people, you know, the police will
Speaker 1: come in and stick a pencil in his hair to
Speaker 1: make sure because if the pencil falls, then that means
Speaker 1: he's black and not color and just all kinds of
Speaker 1: just like this is he's on he's a DJ, he's
Speaker 1: on the radio. Now, this is now. Yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: Trevor no Is biography is title like born a crime,
Speaker 1: right because he was he was his his one of
Speaker 1: his parents was white and one was black, and yeah
Speaker 1: that was colored and that's yeah, that's illegal and it's illegal.
Speaker 1: Like Cecil Rhodes is the guy who it's not quite
Speaker 1: banned in this period, but he's the guy who starts
Speaker 1: that process starts. Why he part of his goal in
Speaker 1: this act was to make sure these people can't breed,
Speaker 1: because if they breed, then they stop hating each other. Right,
Speaker 1: people are falling in love, they don't want lesser rights
Speaker 1: for the people they're in loved with. And that's going
Speaker 1: to be a fucking problem for me. Cecil, Rhodes, So
Speaker 1: you have to stop them from knowing each other. Speaking
Speaker 1: of knowing each other, get to know the fine products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. All right, uh we're back,
Speaker 1: Oh my back, so good product. So the this the
Speaker 1: one of the this is the greatest, like white supremacist Vanesse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, incredible. The Glen Gray Act did create something
Speaker 1: broadly analogous to local councils for these native reservations, so
Speaker 1: that they could have an element of self government, but
Speaker 1: even letting black people vote for their own local leaders
Speaker 1: was too much for cecil. Instead, white people appointed all
Speaker 1: of the council members, and the reservations were governed by
Speaker 1: a white magistrate. He was supposed to teach them how
Speaker 1: to take care of themselves. Yeah, yo, yeah, that's that,
Speaker 1: that's the answer their children, you see. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: so such a god damn it and it's unique version
Speaker 1: of white supremacy exactly. And Rhodes is, again, other people
Speaker 1: are having this idea. You can even probably find some
Speaker 1: people earlier who were talking about it. Rhodes is kind
Speaker 1: of the first who explains it to other white people
Speaker 1: in a way that gets them on board. And then
Speaker 1: follows through in a really comprehensive fashion. And again, aspects
Speaker 1: of this are are happening in the United States at
Speaker 1: the time, aspects of this are happening in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world. So he's not alone, but he's part
Speaker 1: of the first wave of modern white supremacists, and in
Speaker 1: some ways is probably the one who did the best
Speaker 1: job of defining and explaining it. So uh Rothberg writes,
Speaker 1: quote the Glenn Gray Bill was a forerunner of the
Speaker 1: segregationist legislation of the twentieth century and of the combination
Speaker 1: of laws which together constitute apartheid. But it was not
Speaker 1: so much the content of the bill as it was
Speaker 1: rhodes rhetoric and rationalizations which which prefigured the future what
Speaker 1: modern readers appreciate as fatuous and solipsistic arguments mere fig
Speaker 1: leaves for white supremacy and denials of African rights, where
Speaker 1: those that Rhodes and all subsequent rulers in South Africa
Speaker 1: have used to justify their departures from the natural law
Speaker 1: and political culture of the Western world. It is a
Speaker 1: testimony to Rhodes's force of character and quality of persuasion
Speaker 1: that he, alone of likely Cape leaders, was able to
Speaker 1: Arrange shut such shifts away from previous norms with ease.
Speaker 1: It delineates his character too, that he did so with equanimity,
Speaker 1: without shame, and with self righteous termination. Got dog when
Speaker 1: you when you swear you're right? M m yeah, And
Speaker 1: I can't I can't believe how long it lasts? Yeah,
Speaker 1: damn ye yeah. And I'm like whatever, like did you
Speaker 1: own two other countries? Man? Like, why you gotta do
Speaker 1: you own? Man? Like, why you gotta do this way out? They? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's because it's not enough. It's because the
Speaker 1: world is what he wants. Oh, I forgot because the
Speaker 1: because this is like manifest destiny only the glow. M
Speaker 1: And again, he's the kind of white person who like
Speaker 1: is angry because Americans are independent and they filled. But
Speaker 1: like he talks a lot about the how the inferior
Speaker 1: Italian and Irish races and stuff are dominating in Germans
Speaker 1: are dominating in America and that's why it should have
Speaker 1: stayed under Anglo control. So he's like he's the kind
Speaker 1: of racist who is sees shades of other white people
Speaker 1: and like his judgmental it's like, oh, Italians, it's like
Speaker 1: if you if you look at if you look at
Speaker 1: Nazi propaganda, the degree in which I do. One of
Speaker 1: the joking things that they will do is talk about
Speaker 1: how the Axis was less racist than the Allies because
Speaker 1: Hitler had a black friend. And when they refer to that, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're talking about Ussolini because Italians aren't white to them. Yes,
Speaker 1: I felt so like like knowing that, like once, I yeah,
Speaker 1: once I learned that, Like I had to take back
Speaker 1: some of my own jokes that I used to feel, like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Italians were the black white people do y? I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're like they're they're definitely like close. I mean
Speaker 1: it's basically they're almost in the Middle East, right, Like
Speaker 1: it's right across that fucking sea. Yes, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: racists are seeing. But that's what roast. So I'm like, dang,
Speaker 1: I can't agree with racist, no, no, no, no, because
Speaker 1: I'm saying it endearing, like oh man, I like you
Speaker 1: got big families, you're a loud ye gangsters. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. Yeah. The things we should we should lovingly
Speaker 1: make fun of Italians for is all of the hand
Speaker 1: and gestures that we do and and and pizza pies. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Don't, don't, don't do the race pizza pies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the pizza pies. No, I will though, but not here.
Speaker 1: I think it's funny. Yeah, that's fine. So Cecil Rhods
Speaker 1: invented apartheid and the only good news is that he
Speaker 1: didn't get a lot more time in the sun after this.
Speaker 1: After a very long streaming of successes, Roads got cocky
Speaker 1: and he decided to deal with a problem that had
Speaker 1: vexed him for years. The existence of the trans Vault,
Speaker 1: which is this Boer state, becomes like, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a big chunk of like what becomes the culture of
Speaker 1: South Africa. These are like the African ors African and
Speaker 1: yeah and and and the Transvaal is an independent white
Speaker 1: nation in South Africa. And this, the fact that it existed,
Speaker 1: fucked up his dream of unifying the whole region under
Speaker 1: British control. So, true Cecil Roads fashion, he hatched a
Speaker 1: plan to steal the transvall. The basic idea was to
Speaker 1: disguise it as an insurrection. Joe Hennisberg had a sizeable
Speaker 1: population of British laborers and they were not content with
Speaker 1: the Boer government. Through his agent Leander Jamieson, Rhodes convinced
Speaker 1: these folks that if they recruited an army, he would
Speaker 1: send in his own army and together they could crush
Speaker 1: the Boars. And armies the wrong word for Rhodes force here.
Speaker 1: He had six hundred policemen armed with field artillery and
Speaker 1: machine guns and stuff. Yeah, all paid for by de beers.
Speaker 1: So yeah. The invasion, the Jamison Raid, as it's called,
Speaker 1: was a ship show from the jump. The British Excats
Speaker 1: couldn't agree on what they wanted politically after the insurrection,
Speaker 1: and because they had such a disagreement about this, they
Speaker 1: asked Jamison to pause the raid because they weren't ready,
Speaker 1: and he said, fuck you, I'm going to invade anyway.
Speaker 1: And his hope was that this would spur them to act,
Speaker 1: but instead it just meant that nobody, none of his
Speaker 1: allies were ready when he invaded a sovereign nation um
Speaker 1: and then his troops were trying to cut the telegraph
Speaker 1: wires to the capitals that no one would know they
Speaker 1: were coming, but they cut a fence instead of the
Speaker 1: telegraph wires, which let the Boers organize a defense. Jamison's
Speaker 1: police were ambushed and a lot of them were shot
Speaker 1: to death until they surrendered. Now the whole Jamison Reid
Speaker 1: was an unaccountable political disaster. It blackened Cecil's name for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. It forced him out as
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. It sparked the end of his political career.
Speaker 1: He did try to come back a few times. He
Speaker 1: had friends right defenses of him and stuff a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, but it didn't work. Old time he canceled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did get canceled for invading a white nation. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like for doing what he'd been doing. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: teach you a little thing about white people. White people
Speaker 1: don't stand for being challenged, even by other white people.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something, brother, you should have slowed
Speaker 1: down Icarus. I'm saying it is one of those things.
Speaker 1: You can see. It's just covering the Portland's kind of uprising,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it, as I have and watching
Speaker 1: my friends cover it. You do tend to see a
Speaker 1: big difference when like a black activists gets knocked down
Speaker 1: as opposed to win a white person who's not an
Speaker 1: activist gets knocked down. You see a different You see
Speaker 1: just a clear difference in like the number of views
Speaker 1: that that video gets um, and yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: nobody's it's not even a conscious thing. It's just a thing.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to me too, Like it just this when
Speaker 1: you like, I the one thing I tell any artists
Speaker 1: or anybody like trying to start a business or anything,
Speaker 1: like the value of taking an l like the value
Speaker 1: of a loss. Like if you never lose, if everything
Speaker 1: you step into you just all you do is win,
Speaker 1: then you it will end. Ever that l is coming.
Speaker 1: It's coming, boy. And if you keep stacking and and
Speaker 1: and just and just and just doubling down, because you'll
Speaker 1: never lose, you don't never lose, You'll never When that
Speaker 1: l comes, it is going to be gi enormous. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, look, man, just be be be aware,
Speaker 1: be aware, be always causes is somebody that don't ever
Speaker 1: lose because it's coming. Yeah, yeah, stay away from those people.
Speaker 1: So the whole Jamison right again, just a horrible political
Speaker 1: disaster black and Cecil's name and his political career. It
Speaker 1: also played a key role in sparking the Second Boer War,
Speaker 1: which is the Boer War that everybody hears about. This
Speaker 1: led to the first modern use of concentration camps by
Speaker 1: the British Empire against the Boer people and against Black
Speaker 1: Africans who lived in Bower Territory. Uh thirty thousand soldiers died,
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand Bower civilians were starved to death, and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand African natives were starved to death in British
Speaker 1: concentration camps, thanks in part to Cecil. So that war
Speaker 1: ended in nineteen o two, and so did Cecil Roads.
Speaker 1: He was only forty nine years old, but he packed
Speaker 1: centuries of being a piece of ship into his life,
Speaker 1: and he was ready to go fiship faster. He was
Speaker 1: forty nine, forty nine, and he always knew he was
Speaker 1: going to die young. He has his first time attack
Speaker 1: in like eighteen seventy two. Like yeah, so he's throwing
Speaker 1: everything he can into being garbage. Um now. At the
Speaker 1: time he died, he was a rather marginalized figure within
Speaker 1: the British Empire. The Times wrote in his obituary, he
Speaker 1: has done more than any single contemporary to place before
Speaker 1: our imagination, before the imagination of his countrymen, a clear
Speaker 1: conception of the imperial destinies of our race. But we
Speaker 1: wish we could forget the other matters associated with that
Speaker 1: is the British answer. I know, he did a lot
Speaker 1: of wax stuff. I mean, but he was really good,
Speaker 1: but let's not talk about all the bad stuff. Kind
Speaker 1: of weird, it kind of kind of weird for a
Speaker 1: little bit, but he was great and he died, thank god,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't get to funk up anymore. Yeah, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the good news for Rhodes is that a number
Speaker 1: of people have forgotten all the other matters associated with
Speaker 1: his name today, and he's increasingly being praised as a
Speaker 1: hero on the right wing. Uh. He was the absolute
Speaker 1: archetype of a white supremacist imperialist. He stated at one
Speaker 1: point late in his life that I would annex the
Speaker 1: planets if I could, And if you read all like
Speaker 1: the full quote, he seems really sad that he can't
Speaker 1: annex the planets, like space imperialism. Yeah, we're almost there now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're working on it. We're working on annex and Mars
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah. Yeah, and we'll find a way there.
Speaker 1: There's not native people on Mars, but we'll find a
Speaker 1: way to fun to funk them up. We'll make will
Speaker 1: make an indigenous Martian population and then screw them over.
Speaker 1: We will we will fight wars over some net come
Speaker 1: out the ground in Mars, and we will. Yes, We're
Speaker 1: totally going to do it. We're going to draw an
Speaker 1: imaginary line on a planet and be like, this side's ours.
Speaker 1: Let's be angry about it forever. Let's be angry forever.
Speaker 1: God is so freaking species man. I had to read.
Speaker 1: I couldn't end this without talking about some defenses of
Speaker 1: Cecil Roads. So I found one published back in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, not coincidentally by Standpoint magazine. Now, a sizeable
Speaker 1: chunk of their defense is related to probably the most
Speaker 1: prominently uh the quote most regularly attributed to Cecil Rhodes,
Speaker 1: I prefer land to inwards. Now, Cecil did not say
Speaker 1: this exact quote. It's actually kind of people merging two
Speaker 1: things he said, including like you remember that quote I
Speaker 1: said earlier that he wants to annex land, not natives.
Speaker 1: He said this, He just didn't say it exactly that way,
Speaker 1: and he said the in word a lot constantly. He
Speaker 1: just didn't say it exactly that way. So it's not
Speaker 1: much of a defense that he said something slightly different
Speaker 1: but meant the same thing in my fucking book. Now, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: in the right book Yeah, the defenses get funnier and
Speaker 1: funnier from there on that and I'm gonna read one
Speaker 1: besides Rhads, besides Rhodes is early arguably racist reference, yes,
Speaker 1: arguably racist, That the Anglo Saxon race is superior to
Speaker 1: all other races and should rule them arguably racist. You
Speaker 1: could argue that, maybe you might debate that, but but
Speaker 1: they say this has to be weighed against all the
Speaker 1: other things he said and did. From first to last.
Speaker 1: He had a record of good relations with individual Africans.
Speaker 1: His primary biographer, Robert Rothberg, who was generally critical of
Speaker 1: the subject, writes that as a young man, he had
Speaker 1: related directly and well to unlettered Zulu. Throughout his life
Speaker 1: he remained sympathetic and responsive to the needs of individual
Speaker 1: persons of color. Not your stereotypical racist then, to which
Speaker 1: I say, yes, your stereotypical motherfucking racist. And this is
Speaker 1: gonna bring me. Yeah, you have black friends. I can't
Speaker 1: be racist. Yeah, my son has a black friend. This
Speaker 1: is gonna bring me to Do you know who Louis
Speaker 1: throw is. No, he's He's a British documentarian, very very
Speaker 1: popular one, and I quite like a lot of his work.
Speaker 1: In the nineties the late nineties, he did a series
Speaker 1: called Weird Weekends. We would go spend time and mostly
Speaker 1: I think American subculture, so we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with Nazis, and one of the Nazis he hung
Speaker 1: out with this guy named Tom Metzker. Now Tom Metzker
Speaker 1: was the head of a group called White Arian Resistance
Speaker 1: or WAR. He was the guy if you're at Oregonian
Speaker 1: who's whose members were responsible for the murder of Mulu
Speaker 1: Gettis Raw in Portland, which is like one of the
Speaker 1: kind of big, yeah, very important thing to understand. He
Speaker 1: is one of the most famous racists there's ever been.
Speaker 1: Tom Metzer. In the documentary where Louise spends several days
Speaker 1: just kind of living with him to get an understanding
Speaker 1: for the guy's personality, he notices that Tom has a
Speaker 1: Mexican American neighbor and is friendly with him and they'll
Speaker 1: like help each other out and stuff. And Tom differentiates
Speaker 1: between this individual person who he knows and thinks it's
Speaker 1: okay and Mexicans in journal with whom he had nothing
Speaker 1: but like racist bio and Mexican. The same thing for
Speaker 1: the Nazis. If you read Internal Nazi discussions as they
Speaker 1: were planning the Holocaust. One of the problems for them
Speaker 1: was that in kind of the terms they would use
Speaker 1: as everyone has their own their own like favored Jew
Speaker 1: that they think is different from the other Jews. And
Speaker 1: that's why we have to develop a legal code to
Speaker 1: oppress these people, because otherwise individuals will be slipping through
Speaker 1: the cracks. Even Hitler, even Adolf Hitler, rescued one Jew
Speaker 1: from the Holocaust that he orchestrated, the doctor who had
Speaker 1: tried to save his mother when he was a child.
Speaker 1: He got that guy out of the country because he
Speaker 1: knew what he was about to do. So, yes, it
Speaker 1: is stereotypically racist to be nice to individual people who
Speaker 1: are of the races you ate. Ah Ah, it makes racism,
Speaker 1: It makes it. It makes it more exhausting and that
Speaker 1: much more stupid because it's like, oh, you hate a concept. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly you hate a concept. And the proof that
Speaker 1: your concept is wrong is that there are individual people
Speaker 1: who are part of this concept of yours that you
Speaker 1: are able to liken get along with because they're people,
Speaker 1: and so are you like it? Just yeah, at what
Speaker 1: point do you get tired of being on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of history. Yeah, the point at which I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I can't get it emotionally. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: So to continue this conservative writer of this very bad article, um,
Speaker 1: I I think it's funny that he uses this argument
Speaker 1: that he argues that, like, well, he was nice to
Speaker 1: individual Africans. Because this argument that he made to defend
Speaker 1: this guy in two thousands sixteen is the same that
Speaker 1: Leander Jamison used to defend Rhodes from charges of cruelty
Speaker 1: to natives in seven So, after Rhodes has his disastrous raid,
Speaker 1: he's trying to do a comeback tour, his friends defend him.
Speaker 1: They use the same defense, which is that he's nice
Speaker 1: to individual Africans. Uh. Leander Jamison noted quote his favorite
Speaker 1: Sunday pastime was to go to the de Beers native
Speaker 1: compound where he segregated them away from the white workers,
Speaker 1: where he had built them a fine swimming pool and
Speaker 1: throw in shillings for the natives to dive for. Oh man,
Speaker 1: just the white nonsense boy. Yeah he was. He loved them,
Speaker 1: he threw money at them. This is nonsense. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how you say this? What a straight faced Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: the article is very long, and a lot of it's funny.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read one more quote trying to justify
Speaker 1: Cecil's bigotry, and again this is from that article. Yes,
Speaker 1: Rhodes thought that Black Africans were generally inferior, but in
Speaker 1: terms of cultural development, not biology. He believed they could
Speaker 1: become civilized. This is important because important regards that people
Speaker 1: is biologically inferior and incapable of development, then that's a
Speaker 1: reason to exclude them permanently from participation in their own government.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't how Roads saw things. In a speech
Speaker 1: of eighteen ninety four, he made this quite clear when
Speaker 1: he said, now I say the Natives are children. They
Speaker 1: are just emerging from barbarism. They have human minds. We
Speaker 1: ought to do something for the minds and the brains
Speaker 1: that the Almighty has given them. I do not believe
Speaker 1: that they are different from ourselves. But you acted that
Speaker 1: way and enshrining a set of laws that lasted a
Speaker 1: century after your death, enshrining those differences. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: believe there are any different than us, except you absolutely
Speaker 1: believe they're different than you. Yeah. There when you're as
Speaker 1: a white person, when you're when you're trying to justify
Speaker 1: when you're trying to talk about and like equivocate on racism,
Speaker 1: you should think about whether or not you would be
Speaker 1: comfortable saying that to the face of a person of
Speaker 1: that race. So would you what would what do you?
Speaker 1: How would you feel walking up to a black person
Speaker 1: and saying I'm not racist or this guy wasn't racist,
Speaker 1: he just thought that your entire race was children, Like,
Speaker 1: how do you would you? Would you feel fundamentally guilty
Speaker 1: saying that? Would you feel too ashamed to say that?
Speaker 1: Then perhaps it's racist as fuck coming out of your mouth.
Speaker 1: That didn't sound like you didn't hear yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah. So at the end of this
Speaker 1: I wanted a little bit of time, not quite yet,
Speaker 1: because we need to grapple with the last part of
Speaker 1: Cecil's legatory, the thing that he left us that continues
Speaker 1: to kill people every year, the blood diamond trade. Now again,
Speaker 1: by eighteen eighty eight, he had basically complete monopolistic troll
Speaker 1: control over the diamond market. He made a monopoly. He
Speaker 1: formed a cartel called the London Diamonds Syndicate, which were
Speaker 1: all of the biggest people actually selling diamonds to consumers,
Speaker 1: and this allowed him to match supply with demand artificially
Speaker 1: and keep and keep value high even though they were
Speaker 1: actually shipload of extra diamonds. Yeah, they're fucking everywhere, They're
Speaker 1: not precious. Um so this provided like yeah, so he
Speaker 1: builds this thing and it becomes the model of the
Speaker 1: diamond industry for forever. Um his descendants, the people who
Speaker 1: take over to Beers after him, um, following his footsteps
Speaker 1: and continue to maintain the monopoly using these same tactics,
Speaker 1: controlling nine plus percent of the global diamond market in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. The people who follow after cecil Roads
Speaker 1: into Beers start the mining campaign. Diamonds are forever in
Speaker 1: the United States. Um. Sorry, Nine is when that starts.
Speaker 1: Nine is when they start marketing diamonds to the middle
Speaker 1: class because they had been like a rich person thing.
Speaker 1: They start trying to get across everyone needs a diamond
Speaker 1: to show that you love your spouse. Forever starts in
Speaker 1: ninety seven and de Beers becomes an even bigger marketing
Speaker 1: em party than it had already been. Um so they
Speaker 1: but will bath them drugs. That's a reference, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's yeah. So they just they expand demand
Speaker 1: and they also create a permanent They create a permanent
Speaker 1: market for diamonds in Africa, and it's not a good market. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen five, de Beers takes complete control of mining
Speaker 1: prospects in Sierra Leone and their contract gives them control
Speaker 1: for ninety nine years. Now, this opens up a black
Speaker 1: market and Lebanese traders in Sierra Leone discovered that you
Speaker 1: can make a lot of money by smuggling diamonds out
Speaker 1: of the country ilicit mining and training. It increased throughout
Speaker 1: Sierra Leone. By the nineteen fifties, the government had given
Speaker 1: up any chance of policing the diamond industry. Foreign investors
Speaker 1: had to supply their own security, which was done generally
Speaker 1: by mercenary forces. Uh and yeah, So these by creating
Speaker 1: this very very valuable legitimate diamond trade that the government
Speaker 1: doesn't control, you also create an illegitimate diamond trade that
Speaker 1: the government doesn't control, and that provides a way for
Speaker 1: insurgent militaries to fund themselves. And this is what starts
Speaker 1: happening all over Africa. In this period of time, you
Speaker 1: have these massive wars over over minerals, wars funded by minerals.
Speaker 1: It with diamond's chief among them. And it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a nightmare every single place that it happens. In Sierra Leone,
Speaker 1: they're fucking cutting off hands, armless kids. Yeah, they kill
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand people. Half a million people become refugees.
Speaker 1: And that's not the worst that it gets. Um. Have
Speaker 1: you you've heard about the Great African War? I think
Speaker 1: it starts in some people like and and it's the
Speaker 1: biggest war after World War Three. It's the biggest war
Speaker 1: we've had since Almost no one in in in the
Speaker 1: Western world has has ever heard about it. It's also
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Congo War. UM. It happens in the
Speaker 1: late nineties. It kills five million people, and it is
Speaker 1: a war over minerals over gold, diamonds, tin, ivory, and
Speaker 1: coal tan, which I think is used to help make computers. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's one of those wars where there's like
Speaker 1: millions of people who are raped systematically in like an
Speaker 1: industrial fashion. You have millions more who die from lack
Speaker 1: of medical care. Um. And again, the war is able
Speaker 1: to continue on because rebels are because these different sides
Speaker 1: are able to take control of diamonds and mind diamonds
Speaker 1: and sell them for guns to commit these massacres and
Speaker 1: a lot of other Part of the reason why I'm
Speaker 1: not going into much to tail about this here is
Speaker 1: that a lot of other people, of course, are have
Speaker 1: involved in this, like Cecil Rhodes has Medetta Wild. He
Speaker 1: starts the chain of events that makes the Great African
Speaker 1: War and the Sierra Leon and everything that's happening in
Speaker 1: all of these countries over diamonds, over over conflict minerals.
Speaker 1: He's the origin point. Uh. I know, if you're in
Speaker 1: the hip hop, you've heard the phrase conflict diamonds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about. If you don't know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's the among the at least at
Speaker 1: least in my opinion, among the African American community. This
Speaker 1: is the the cognitive dissonance that we have to deal
Speaker 1: with of like our hand in upholding this like diamond trade.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Like what if we as
Speaker 1: a culture, as American culture, who we love to shine,
Speaker 1: I get it, But if we decided, like yo, we're
Speaker 1: not touching diamonds anymore. You know what I'm saying In
Speaker 1: solidarity to our African brothers and sisters. It's something I
Speaker 1: feel like we need to at some point reckon with,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: hard topic man. And that then, and I've made a
Speaker 1: reference to a Kanye song from the College Dropout album,
Speaker 1: which or not from the Late Registration album called Diamonds
Speaker 1: Are Forever Conflict Diamonds. Yeah, and it's it's um. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things I guess I can say to
Speaker 1: that is Cecil's goal was to kill the culture the
Speaker 1: Africans live under and make them all live under the
Speaker 1: rules and culture that that Anglo Americans and the Great
Speaker 1: African War is some evidence that he succeeded to an
Speaker 1: extent because what he did, leading in mercenary armies to
Speaker 1: take over mining areas in order to extract minerals and
Speaker 1: using that to fund the conquests of more of these
Speaker 1: mercenaries is exactly what all these wars what happened. It's
Speaker 1: what happened. He succeeded. They adopted that part of British culture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well great, thank you for thanks for that, buddy X.
Speaker 1: You know, exporting Western culture. We're now mutilating each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For more information on the topic, see the war and
Speaker 1: Zevon song Rolling the Headless Thompson Gunner. Um, so prop,
Speaker 1: you you got some plugs to plug in? Now my plugs,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Great capitalism. Um, Well, I'm selling music
Speaker 1: and coffee. Uh, but it's just prop hip hop dot
Speaker 1: com and that's all my app mentions to and it
Speaker 1: just all feels so trivial. Um. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: my children like to eat, so yeah, check out the music,
Speaker 1: check out the poetry. I got a coffee collab coming up. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's up now? Um? Where this is ethically sourced? I
Speaker 1: feel like it's important to say it now. Uh, company
Speaker 1: called Onyx who pays higher than market price because we
Speaker 1: believe in farmers and supporting and yeah, and it's a
Speaker 1: good drink. And I'm finishing an album and at some
Speaker 1: point I'll give that links to that. Hell yes, hell, yes,
Speaker 1: well check all that out. Check me out somewhere on
Speaker 1: the internet. No one's quite sure where. Um, and that's
Speaker 1: all that's everything. Well, a lot of people do. Because
Speaker 1: I've seen your followers grow. Okay, well, I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna plug your buggables for you. Robert thank you, Sophie,
Speaker 1: I'll plug it for you. You could find him at
Speaker 1: I write okay. I think allegedly allegedly cannot you cannot
Speaker 1: confirm or deny that I write okayness. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: write better than okay. Man, you're a great writer. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you. It was actually, like I think it was.
Speaker 1: It's very unclear because I'm uh wasn't always as good
Speaker 1: at writing as I am. Now. My meaning was that
Speaker 1: was not that I write okay. It was like it
Speaker 1: came from uh like years of frustration of explaining what
Speaker 1: I did for a living because I had a bunch
Speaker 1: of different weird freelance jobs online. Yeah, like I write okay. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that problems that. That was why pun punctuation matters. M alrighty, alright,
Speaker 1: it's products late ship probably that's that's capital is I'm
Speaker 1: for it could be all right mm hmm