Rudd Concession Case Analysis

The Rudd Concession was a concern signed and granted by King Lobengula to Charles Rudd, Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson for exclusive mining rights in Matebeleland, Mashonaland and other adjoining territories on behalf Cecil John Rhodes, on October 30 1888. The Rudd Concession proved to be the foundation for the Royal Charter granted by Whitehall to Rhodes’ BSAC Company in 1889 in his quest to annex the territories into the British Empire as part of his personal ambition for a Cape to Cairo Railway which paved the way for the Pioneer Column’s occupation of Mashonaland in 1890 and marked the beginning of white settlement, administration and development in the country that became officially called Rhodesia. The two documents bore the same

To which a great deal of debate arose to whether king Lobengula agreed to the written terms as the king was illiterate and relied on translations from Francis Thompson to which the verbal agreements failed to make their way into the final agreement andsince it was all under the watch of Rochfort Maguire a lawyer all ends to the bogus concession were water tight hence the verbal connotations of the concession were not legit in relation to European

It is in relation to this that Cecil John Rhodes through the BSAC took advantage of the Lobengula`s superficial knowledge of the conniving world and the annexing quest of the Europeansand it is through the Royal Charter that Cecil John Rhodes made use of 196 pioneers who comprised of ex-military, ex-police and ex-navy from across Europe for him to execute an effective occupation that in turn would lead to the sphere of influence as per requirements of the Berlin Colonial Conference. Signing of the concession prior the charter also provided a clause that nothing contained within the charter shall prejudice or affect any other legal and existing concessions or agreements which may have been made by any of the chiefs or tribes aforesaid, and in particular nothing therein contained would prejudice or affect certain concessions granted in and subsequent to the year 1880 relating to the territory usually known as the district of the Tati, nor shall anything therein contained be construed as giving any jurisdiction, administrative or otherwise, within the said district of the Tati, this then would lead to an understanding as to why the Rudd