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Rhodes was known as a ‘stripling Uitlander’ (Brown 2015: 39). The Boers used the term Uitlander to denote any non-Dutch settler in the Transvaal. The Boers accused Rhodes of stealing their rich diamond fields (Brown 2015: 72). Paul Kruger, the Boer President of the Transvaal, blamed Rhodes, ‘a bare-faced financier and the Devil incarnate’, for using ‘his gold and diamonds’ to attract ‘so many greedy foreigners to the country’ to the point of outnumbering the Boers in ‘their own’ land (Maurois 1953: 105). By denying the foreigners or ‘Uitlanders’ ‘political rights, the right to naturalization as well as the right to vote’ (Maurois 1953: 106), Kruger hoped to contain them. Kruger and Rhodes were singing from the same hymnal of narrow nationalism, a European model of life as a zero-sum game of ‘everyone for himself and God for us all’.

This term Uitlander was applied regardless of the fact that the ‘numerous and active’ Uitlanders ‘had turned a poverty-stricken backveld state into a country with an important income’ following the discovery of gold. ‘Instead of trying to turn them into contented citizens’, Paul Kruger, ‘denied them all political and municipal rights, and treated them not simply as outsiders but almost as enemies’. Kruger was said to be of the view that these Uitlanders ‘who had thrust themselves upon his country were mostly of the scum of the earth; that they had shown no signs of loyalty towards the Transvaal; and that, although they had enriched his treasury, they had enriched themselves much more’ (Plomer 1984 [1933]: 88–9).

The leaders of the Transvaal wanted the Uitlanders to recognize that ‘they owed allegiance to, and had a duty to respect the institutions and traditions of the foreign state in which they had chosen to come and live’. Meanwhile, the Uitlanders, ‘making more money than they had ever made elsewhere’, complained, among other things, ‘of the compulsory use of the Dutch language in government offices, in schools, and in the law courts’ (Marlowe 1972: 188).

We may not know what exactly southern Africans of the day experienced in their encounters with Rhodes and his fellow white treasure-hunting adventurers, because the history of such encounters is preponderantly recounted by whites and those they schooled and continue to school to reproduce their ways and art of storytelling. But if the current scapegoating of Rhodes and his descendants by the post-apartheid ‘liberated’ sons and daughters of the native soil is anything to go by, it is very likely that their forefathers and mothers cursed, lamented and scapegoated whites for all the ills that befell them.

Had the local African populations not been victims of unequal encounters with Rhodes, had they the opportunity of naming and labelling like the Boers, they would most likely have referred to Rhodes as a makwerekwere, especially in view of his penchant to exploit, dispossess, afflict and inflict them with callous indifference. I argue, thus, that in addition to being an Uitlander, Rhodes should also be understood as a makwerekwere. Indeed, he had much in common with the black African migrants of yesteryear who joined him and his fellow Europeans to dig for diamonds in Kimberley. As William Plomer puts it, Kimberley in those days was characterized by feverish activity:

Fortune-hunters of all kinds arrived in a steady stream, many from the slums of Europe. It was not unusual for as many as thirty wagon-loads of newcomers to arrive in one day, and at New Rush there was soon a collection of forty thousand people, all living under tents or corrugated iron, amid heaps of gravel, clouds of dust, and a variety of smells …. In Rhodes’s own words, the place looked ‘like an immense number of antheaps covered with black ants, as thick as can be, the latter represented by human beings’ (Plomer 1984 [1933]: 16–17).

How Rhodes lived in Kimberley reflects the often dire circumstances of many a lowly placed migrant/immigrant today seeking greener pastures in cities and countries where they are not welcome. As Brown puts it,

When one considers how Rhodes lived – in an unsanitary tin shack without running water – and with whom he lived – a mixture of ruffians, Jewish diamond buyers and money lenders, poets, sons of the world’s aristocracy, black peasants from remote tribes – in an environment of murder, mayhem and drunkenness, there is every possibility that there was a touch of madness in this nineteen-year-old son of the manse (Brown 2015: 28).

Rhodes should equally be seen as having a lot in common with present-day amakwerekwere, who are targeted by xenophobic violence and repressive policies caused by the narrow nationalism fostered by Rhodes in the name of empire-building for Britain and the British as God’s chosen country and race.

Makwerekwere is singular, amakwerekwere plural. As far as I can remember, these terms have been in circulation in southern Africa for a very long time. I first encountered them in Botswana in the 1990s. At a primary level, a makwerekwere is someone who has little mastery of local cultures, tends to stutter in local languages and speaks in foreign tongues (Nyamnjoh 2006, 2010). A good starting point to explore the contours and layers of being a makwerekwere in South Africa is the novel Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe (2001), the late black South African novelist. The construction of amakwerekwere and of boundaries between South Africans as ‘deserving citizens’ and amakwerekwere as ‘undeserving outsiders’ is skilfully recounted by Mpe. Just like the term Uitlander as employed by Kruger and the Boers of the Transvaal, makwerekwere is a mostly derogatory term for a perceived stranger who is most likely to be mistaken for ‘one of us’. But the stranger is betrayed by his or her inability to articulate local languages that epitomize the feeling of being at home, in intimate circles and in charge. Mpe’s novel focuses on migrants from Africa north of the Limpopo, which does not imply that only such people qualify to be termed amakwerekwere, as the reference to Rhodes and his band of fortune seekers in the Transvaal attests. Black South Africans sometimes mistake one another for makwerekwere, or use such terminology to refer to one another with an intention of difference and as an act of violence.

If we take the underlying idea of makwerekwere as a mechanism for detecting strangers, outsiders or those who do not belong, then there is no reason why we should confine the idea of an outsider or stranger to a particular skin colour. The borders or intimacies we seek to protect can be violated by anyone with a capacity to cross borders. Seen more in terms of consciousness than container, makwerekwere is any outsider or a perfect stranger who crosses borders nimble-footedly. A makwerekwere often comes uninvited and without seeking consent from those who regard themselves as bona fide sons and daughters of the native soil or homeland. He or she has little mastery of local cultures, tends to stutter in local languages and speak in foreign tongues few master locally, has an unmistakeable nose for a quick fortune at all costs, and is usually perceived to be ruthless and greedy in his or her pursuit of self-interest.