Rhodes Memorial

About

The Rhodes Memorial is a large monument in the style of an ancient Greek temple on Devil's Peak in Cape Town, South Africa, situated close to Table Mountain. It is a memorial to the English-born South African politician Cecil John Rhodes (1853 – 1902). Designed by architect Herbert Baker, it was finished in 1912.

Rhodes was a mining magnate, founder of the monopolistic De Beers diamond company, influential politician and later prime minister (1890 to 1896) of the British Cape Colony, today a part of the state of South Africa. He had an important and undisputedly partly questionable role in the British imperial policies towards whole southern Africa at the end of the 19th century, a period of colonialism called the Scramble for Africa. Therefore, the existence of the extensive monument has been subject to controversy in present-day South Africa.