ABSTRACT
The feasibility of Cecil John Rhodes’s Cape sub-imperialist strategy wholly depended on his ability to induce the dominant political force in this self-governing colony, namely the Afrikaner Bond, to collaborate. There is firm evidence that the strategy of harnessing the Cape Afrikaners to his imperial wagon originated in 1881, soon after he had taken his seat in the Cape parliament. Preparing for himself a congenial political space, Rhodes acquired influence in the Cape Argus by assisting the editor, Francis Dormer, to become the proprietor of the newspaper. On 18 July 1883, in a debate in Parliament on Basutoland, Rhodes pressed Hofmeyr on this point. Referring to the Bond’s Richmond congress earlier that year, Rhodes noted with satisfaction D.P. van den Heever’s positive reference to the British flag in South Africa. Rhodes was accepted as prime minister unanimously and unreservedly because the conditions for an alliance between Rhodes and the Bond were at their best at the beginning of the 1890s.
