The establishment of the protectorate (part 13) - �The syndicate�

Jeff Ramsay | Monday August 24, 2015 14:57

From 1890 Sebele’s claim to be Kweneng’s “Sovereign of the Soil,” in direct contradiction to the sovereign authority asserted by the British Crown through the Orders-in Council of 1890-91, was reinforced by his partnership with the Anglo-German “Secheleland Syndicate.”

The history of the Sechele Syndicate is wrapped in layers of conspiracy. It began as four separate concessions, granted between August 1889 and June 1890, which were in each case registered by a certain Sidney Morris. In summary, they granted to Morris and his partners commercial rights in Kweneng including monopolies over mining and the potential construction of railways. In return, Sebele, initially on behalf of his ailing father Sechele, received an annual retention fee of 650 pounds as well as legal recognition of his own claim as sovereign of the soil.

Both the timing and scope of the Secheleland agreements underscore the fact that they were conceived as a legal counterclaim to the rights that had been unilaterally conferred by the British Government to Rhodes and his partners through the Royal Charter establishing BSACO.

Thus it was that in 1893 Sebele, refused to cooperate with Shippard’s Concessions Commission. Instead he and the Syndicate submitted a legal challenge to the right of “Her Majesty the Queen” to appoint the commission whose terms of reference interfered with his own sovereign rights, which further came to include the associated rights of Linchwe I over Kgatleng.

In the brief submitted on Sebele’s behalf, he further affirmed that he had neither been conquered nor had he ever ceded his sovereign rights to any government. He further maintained that he only recognised the responsibility of Her Majesty’s government as a “protecting power as against foreign powers or civilised nations.”

Sebele was clearly acting on the common knowledge that the Commission’s purpose was to clear the ground for Charter Company interests. But in his taking on the British lion the Kgosi had placed himself in the position of the proverbial rabbit who finds a hungry jackal for an ally.

When he obtained the Secheleland Concession, Morris was a clerk in the employ of the infamous “concessions King” Eduard Lippert. During the 1880s and 1890s Lippert amassed a fortune on the Rand, mostly through the acquisition of various South African (Transvaal) Republic (SAR) state concessions. One notorious example was his dynamite monopoly, which enabled him to import what were otherwise supposed to have been locally produced explosives for resale at a mark-up price in excess of 200 percent.

In his various moneymaking schemes Lippert was consistently able to convince the Boer President Paul Kruger and his Volksraad (Parliament) in Pretoria that by allocating such concessions to his “Hollander-German” cartel they were safeguarding themselves against the imperial entanglements of “English” capitalists such as his cousin, Rhodes principle business partner, Alfred Beit.

While inconvenient to his fellow members of the Chamber of Mines, Lippert’s pretensions of support for the Boer cause led to his appointment as the Republic’s special emissary on the Rand. That he was also on the payroll of the German government does not appear to have fundamentally compromised his overriding loyalty to his own pocket.

A prime example of Lippert’s flexible approach to profiteering was the methods he and his associates successfully used to blackmail BSACO by procuring concessions from the Amandebele as well as Bakwena monarchs. In his efforts to grab a share of Rhodes’ “Chartered millions” Lippert worked closely with two eminent Johannesburg attorneys, the brothers Charles and James Westin “J.W.” Leonard. The private partnership between Lippert and the Leonard brothers is a prime example of the power of money to make bedfellows out of seeming political strangers.

Charles Leonard, who served as Chairman as well as lead advocate for the Secheleland Syndicate, is better remembered in South African history as champion of supposed Uitlander grievances prior to the Jameson Raid.

Although in his many attacks against the anti-English business bias and supposed corruption of the Kruger Government, Charles did include an occasional critique of its “native” policy; it was his brother who came to enjoy a much greater reputation as a supposed champion of indigenous rights.

Settler press descriptions of J.W. Leonard as a leading “negrophilist” went back to his outspoken opposition to the 1882 Cape Diamond Trade Act. Cited by historians as a cornerstone in the creation of industrial apartheid, the Act had introduced an array of restrictions on African mine labourers, supposedly to combat the illicit diamond trade. It’s leading advocate had been Cecil Rhodes who launched his political career, while further enhancing his economic position, on the issue.

On the eve of the 1885 Warren Expedition J.W. had also been notably outspoken in his calls for Britain to “fulfil its obligations to the native tribes of the Protectorate of Bechuanaland.” It was thus to Lippert’s advantage to have J.W. in his corner to draw up the papers for what became know as a the “Humbug” concession between himself and the Amandebele King Lobengula in April 1891. (To Be Continued)