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Rhodes Collection, told me that Rhodes refused to have it kept anywhere else and it is rumoured that he preferred to be in its presence when making major decisions, of which the most major was, without question, the decision to acquire the country where the stone birds ruled and have its name changed to his own. This bird indubitably changed the course of African history and half a century later, my own.
    Rhodes had two stone copies made for the gateposts of his house in England. The Norfolk pine staircase at Groote Schuur was refitted with newel-posts mounting carvings of the bird and ground-floor doors were fitted with protectors in the shape of the Zimbabwe birds. One cannot avoid the presence of the birds in that house even to this day. I worked in Rhodes’ library on this book and there is no doubt that they have a strange, brooding presence. Rhodes took the real bird on fund-raising trips to Europe when he was seeking backers for an organisation called the British South Africa Company, in reality the cover name for his private army of occupation.
    The British government was still refusing to have anything to do with an official colonisation of Ophir even though it appeared to be a genuine eldorado. But if Rhodes, who was now Prime Minister of South Africa, wanted to undertake this dubious work for them at his own expense that was a different matter.
    Posselt records that Rhodes later told him: ‘I take that stone bird you found in the Zimbabwe ruins; I place it on the table, and tell that where this bird came from there must be something else.’ Within a year Rhodes and the bird had attracted sufficient funds and Queen Victoria signed a Royal Charter legitimising the British South Africa Company’s invasion of Matabeleland and the occupation of Mashonaland.
    Before he left England, Rhodes also took the Zimbabwe bird to the Royal Geographical Society and suggested that they support a ‘proper scientific expedition’ to explore the lost city led by an eminent Fellow of the Society, Mr J. Theodore Bent. Rhodes offered to contribute generously to this expedition; indeed, he provided most of the funding.

TWO
The Conquest of Ophir
    Q ueen Victoria refused to grant a charter to Rhodes’ British South Africa Company until he had obtained a signed ‘concession’ from Lobengula. She had no intention of being held responsible for licensing an invasion, especially one which could easily go disastrously wrong, even if it did add a golden prize to her empire. The Queen and her ministers must, of course, have realised that the Charter would allow Rhodes to invade and occupy Mashonaland. Perhaps she thought the condition of a concession would put a stop to the whole dubious business: Lobengula was no fool and would surely recognise the risks of letting Rhodes loose in his domains?
    If that was the case then they both sorely underestimated Rhodes, who sat down to work on this problem with two of his closest friends, Leander Starr Jameson and Rutherfoord Harris. Both had practised as doctors in Kimberley which was now Rhodes’ town. Jameson would become Rhodes’ right-hand man (many have suggested that the relationship was more intimate than that) and Harris a specialist in Rhodes’ dirty work. Jameson had a mercurial temperament and he enjoyed taking huge risks for Rhodes. Many paid off but when he tried to take over the Transvaal from the Boers, only Rhodes’ intervention saved him from execution. Harris quite simply did whatever Rhodes told him. Jameson once described Rutherfoord Harris as ‘as thick as they’re made’. A more stable business associate of Rhodes from the Kimberley days, C.J. Rudd, was also involved in the plan.
    Essentially they had to work out an offer that Lobengula could not refuse. Rudd had already been dispatched to Lobengula’s court to see if he could buy a gold-prospecting concession from the Matabele king. He joined at least three other