In 1881 Mr. Rhodes entered the Cape assembly as one of the two members for Barkly West and kept the seat for life. It was the year of the Majuba settlement. South Africa was convulsed with questions between the British and the Dutch, and leaders of Dutch opinion at the Cape spoke openly of the formation of a United States of South Africa under its own flag. The British party needed a rallying-ground, when Cecil Rhodes offered to Dutch and British alike the ideal of a South African Federation governing itself within the empire, and extending, by its gradual absorption of native territories, the range of Imperial administra tion. Local self-government was, in his opinion, the only enduring basis on which the unity of the empire could be built, and through out his life he was as keen a defender of local rights as he was of Imperial unity. There was a time when his advocacy of the elimi nation of direct Imperial interference in local affairs caused him to be viewed in certain quarters as a Separatist. Such suspicions were strengthened at a critical moment in the struggle for Home Rule in Ireland by his contributing L 10,000 to the funds of the Nationalist party. The subsequent publication of his correspond ence on the subject with Mr. Parnell demonstrated, however, that Rhodes's contribution was made strictly subject to the reten tion of the Irish members at Westminster. He remained of the opinion that the Home Rule movement, wisely treated, would have had a consolidating effect upon the empire.
In South Africa the influence which he acquired over the local independents and over the Dutch vote was subsequently an im portant factor in enabling him to carry out the scheme of north ern expansion which he had fully developed in his own mind at Oxford in 1878. In 1881 the Bechuana territory was a sort of no man's land through which ran the trade routes to the north. It was evident that any power which commanded the trade routes would command the unknown northern territory beyond. The Pretoria Convention of 1881 limited the westward expansion of the Transvaal to a line east of the trade routes ; but the irregular overflow into native territories made Rhodes fear that British expansion would be permanently blocked by Dutch occupation. One of his first acts as a member of the Cape assembly was to urge the appointment of a delimitation commission. He served on it in person, and obtained from Mankodoane, who claimed about half of Bechuanaland, a formal cession of his territories to the British government of the Cape. The Cape government refused to accept the offer. In February 1884 a second convention signed in London again defined the western frontier of the Transvaal, Bechuanaland being left outside the republic. With the consent of Great Britain, Germany had occupied, almost at the same time, the territory on the Atlantic coast later known as German South West Africa. In August 1884 Rhodes was appointed resident deputy commissioner in Bechuanaland, where Boers had ousted the natives from considerable areas and set up the so-called repub lics of Goshen and Stellaland. An old Dutchman said privately to Rhodes, "This is the key of South Africa." The question at issue was whether Great Britain or the Transvaal was to hold the key.
It was a question about which the British public knew and cared nothing. Rhodes made it his business to enlighten them. President Kruger, speaking for the government of the Transvaal, professed to regard the Dutch commandoes as freebooters, whom he was unable to control. Largely as the result of Rhodes's exertions the Warren expedition of 1884-85 was sent out. In the presence of British troops and Rhodes upon the frontier President Kruger withdrew the commandoes without any fighting, and south Bechuanaland became British territory, while a British protec torate was declared over the northern regions up to the 22nd parallel (September 1885).
It was the first round in the long duel between Cecil Rhodes, representative of British interests, and President Kruger, head of the militant Dutch. The score was to Rhodes. The entrance to the interior was secured, but the 22nd parallel was far short of the limits to which Rhodes hoped to see British influence extend, and he feared lest Germany and the Transvaal might together bar his progress. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, by adding to the wealth and importance of the Transvaal, gave substance to this fear.
The territory north of the 22nd parallel was under Lobengula, chief of the Matabele, a native potentate celebrated alike for his ability and for his despotic character. There were rumours of Dutch and German emissaries at his kraal engaged in persuading him to cede portions of his territory. Portugal also was putting forward shadowy claims to the country. Rhodes conceived the idea of forming a British Chartered Company, which should occupy the territory for trading and mining purposes as far as the Zambezi, and bring the whole under the protection of Great Britain. Rhodes's first emissaries were sent to Lobengula in 1887 and the charter of the British South Africa Company was granted in October 1889. Crossing the Zambezi at the back of the Portu guese settlements, Rhodes obtained permission to extend the terri tories of the Chartered Company to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika and the British settlements already made in Nyasa land. He hoped to create a connected chain of British possessions which might justify the words, "Africa British from the Cape to Cairo," but the treaty between Great Britain and Germany in 189o, by extending the German sphere of influence to the frontier of the Congo Free State, defeated this hope. But Rhodes did not even then wholly renounce the idea. In 1892 when the question of the retention or abandonment of Uganda hung in the balance at home, he threw all the weight of his influence into the scale of retention, and offered at his own personal ex pense to connect that territory by telegraph with Salisbury. In 1893, a war with the Matabele added to the British empire about 450,00o square miles of country, of which large portions consist of healthy uplands suitable for white colonization. The pioneer party crossed the frontier at the end of 1889. In six years, though the country had passed through the trial of a war, two native re bellions, and the scourge of rinderpest, it had become Rhodesia, a well-settled province of the British empire, with a white popula tion of some 12,000 persons.