Dr. Leander Starr Jameson was one of the great characters of British Africa, and a close confederate, some would say the alter ego, of arch imperialist Cecil John Rhodes. A medical doctor, Jameson began his career as a general practitioner in the diamond-mining town of Kimberly, which was where he first made the acquaintance of Cecil Rhodes. The two were of similar age, and both had sought the healing atmospheres of colonies, although initially that was where the similarities ended. Rhodes was by the late 1880s deeply involved in his efforts to annex Matabeleland, and Jameson was content to play the part of country doctor, and to engage himself from time to time in a rubber of bridge, and gambling occasionally as was in his nature.

Rhodes had decided by then that he would approach the matter of the annexation of Matabeleland by means of a Chartered Company, which by the end of the 19th century had become a well established method of imperial acquisition, but tended to be dependent on treaties of protection requested by, and offered to local chiefs and potentates. These were often weak and unstable leaders for whom imperial protection was attractive. In the case of Matabeleland, however, the nation was ruled by a strong leader in the form of Lobengula, son and heir of the Matabele founder Mzilikazi, who governed a powerful state north of the Limpopo River in a manner that neither invited interference nor implied any weakness.

By then the Zulu War had been fought, and the Zulu people, the parent language group of the Matabele, had been crushed and subjugated. Even though Lobengula could claim no direct experience of the power of the British Empire, news of this defeat would have confirmed to him that imperial pressure from that quarter could not in the long term be resisted.

Rhodes, however, was not the only petitioner at the court of the Matabele pleading for concessions from the King. Imperial expansion since the Berlin Conference of 1885 was well underway, and Portuguese, Boer, German and many private interests all jostled for permission from the King to settle or mine the lands under his dominion.

It was Jameson that Rhodes chose to despatch to Bulawayo, the Matabele capital, a name pleasantly translated as the Place of Slaughter, to persuade Lobengula to ratify a nefarious concession earlier exacted through blatant duplicity and maneuver. Jameson’s charm, humor and cunning all conspired to undermine the resistance of the Matabele King, who easily succumbed to both this and regular applications of morphine to ease his gout, and eventually he gave Jameson permission to lead a small party of ‘miners’ in search of gold in the hinterland.

The result of this was the wholesale occupation of Mashonaland by a pioneer column that entered the country upon this slim invitation, founding the colony of Rhodesia, and through both wars and rebellion, eventually defeating the Matabele and imposing British South Africa Company rule over the entire territory. This was a lesson never to be forgotten by the natives of Rhodesia, and underpinned the bitter guerrilla war of the 1970s that eventually toppled white rule.

Jameson, meanwhile, became embroiled in political affairs in South Africa in an attempt to pre-empt a war between Britain and the independent Boer Republics. He embarked on the infamous Jameson Raid to aid a proposed settler revolt in the Transvaal that failed to transpire, and succeeded only in precipitating his own arrest and trial, and the virtual downfall of Cecil John Rhodes as the great power broker of South and Central Africa.

Jameson went on to enjoyed great fame, notoriety and wealth as a consequence of his African career, which was crowned by his being elected Prime Minister of the Cape Colony form 1904 to 1908, despite the mixed nature of his reputation. He represents the epitome of the swashbuckling colonial, and the man of grit and guile for whom the vast frontiers of an expanding empire offered opportunity for wealth, fame and adventure.

Jameson died in 1917 a Baronet, and a Knight of the order of St. Michael and St. George and a Companion of the Order of The Bath, significant honors for a man who lived on the very edge of acceptable behavior, and quite often crossed over.