Qualla: Rhodes Memorial

Rhodes Memorial: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit {{own}}, CC BY-SA 4.0. Forty-nine granite steps lead up the hillside, one for each year of Cecil Rhodes's life. At the bottom, a bronze horseman charges forward. Eight bronze lions flank the ascent. At the top, a colonnade styled after a Greek temple opens onto a view facing northeast -- toward Cairo, toward the British imperial corridor Rhodes spent his life trying to build. The monument is grand in the way only supreme self-confidence can produce, and it sits on the lower slopes of Devil's Peak because this was Rhodes's favorite spot on his own estate. That a colonial mining magnate owned a significant portion of one of the world's most iconic mountains tells you much of what you need to know about the man and his era.

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Image: {{own}} | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rhodes Memorial: The Man on the Mountain

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ECSequeira, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cecil John Rhodes was born in England in 1853 and died in South Africa in 1902. In between, he founded the De Beers diamond monopoly, served as prime minister of the British Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896, and pursued imperial expansion across southern Africa during the period kno...

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Image: ECSequeira | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rhodes Memorial: Stone and Bronze

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Glassbottle assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5. Baker reportedly modeled the memorial on the Greek temple at Segesta, though scholars note it more closely resembles the temple of Pergamon. The structure is built of Cape granite quarried on Table Mountain, arranged as a massive staircase rising from a semicircular terrace to a ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Glassbottle assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 2.5

Rhodes Memorial: A Monument in Dispute

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zaian, CC BY-SA 4.0. In post-apartheid South Africa, the Rhodes Memorial has become a lightning rod for debates about colonial memory. In September 2015, the bronze bust was vandalized -- its nose cut off, the memorial daubed with graffiti calling Rhodes a "racist, thief, and murderer." In July 2020,...

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Image: Zaian | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rhodes Memorial: The Landscape Beyond the Monument

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain. Today the memorial is part of Table Mountain National Park. The tea room that once served visitors behind the colonnade burned down in the 2021 Table Mountain fire, which also scorched the surrounding vegetation. Below the memorial, a game enclosure holds eland, zebra, and wildeb...

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Image: AnonymousUnknown author | Public domain