South African Granite and Cecil Rhodes

Written by Dr Rebekah Hodgkinson

We don’t know who donated sample 532 to the Watson Building Stones Collection, but the label on its base reveals that it was used to build the Rhodes Memorial near Groot Schuur, Cecil Rhodes’ former estate in Cape Town. The British South Africa Company, founded by Rhodes in 1889, provided several of the stone samples in this collection.

Close-up of a coarse-grained black, white and grey granite specimen with a museum label reading "532, SOUTH AFRICAN GRANITE, PORPHYRITIC-BIOTITE-GRANITE, HIGGO QUARRIES, CAPE TOWN, CAPE COLONY.

Building Stone 532, South African Granite

Infamous for his imperial expansionism, Cecil Rhodes was a mining magnate and politician who made his fortune through the diamond industry in South Africa. Rhodes became Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896 and founded Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia). The Rhodes Memorial sits on Devil’s Peak, close to Table Mountain. Granite mined from this site was also used for the pedestal underneath a statue of Rhodes at Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. 

Bronze statue of a horse and rider atop granite steps, flanked by bronze lion sculptures, with a columned stone monument and trees in the background

Cecil Rhodes Memorial at Devil’s Peak, South Africa

The durability of granite makes it a favourite choice for monuments, implying stability and continuity. Yet, Groot Schuur is now part of the University of Cape Town, where the Rhodes Must Fall campaign began in 2015. The movement protested the continued presence of the Rhodes statue as a symbol of colonialism and white supremacy, calling for the decolonisation of the university curriculum. The campaign successfully led to the removal of the statue of Rhodes at the entrance to the campus.

South Africa is marked more permanently by the scars left by the mining industry than by colonial memorials and monuments. The Big Hole at Kimberley was an active diamond mine from 1871 to 1914, administered by another of Rhodes’ companies, De Beers. “Black lung disease,” now known as silicosis, became a widespread illness among miners and quarry workers in the late nineteenth century, due to industrialised tools generating large amounts of harmful silica dust. Across southern Africa, black miners were often poorly documented migrant workers, meaning they were under-represented statistically in medical research into the disease. South Africa’s gold mines were the first in the world to treat silicosis and tuberculosis as occupational diseases and offer compensation to those affected. The region of southern Africa continues to play a prominent role in global mining industries, and granite remains a significant export. 

The stone samples in Watson's collection have historically played an illustrative role, being used to compare different building stones from around the world. This sample is just one example of how the collection connects to the histories of colonialism, design, infrastructure, labour and industry.