Rudd Concession - Aftermath - Lippert Concession

Lippert Concession

Edward Renny-Tailyour, representing the Hamburg businessman Eduard Lippert—an estranged cousin of Beit—had been attempting to gain a concession from Lobengula since early 1888. Rhodes saw Lippert's activities as unwelcome meddling and so repeatedly tried (and failed) to settle with him. In April 1891, Renny-Tailyour grandly announced that he and Lobengula had made an agreement: in return for £1,000 up front and £500 annually, the king would bestow on Lippert the exclusive rights to manage lands, establish banks, mint money, and conduct trade in the territory of the Chartered Company. The authenticity of this document was disputed, largely because the only witnesses to have signed it, apart from inDuna Mshete, were Renny-Tailyour's associates, one of whom soon attested that Lobengula had believed himself to be granting a concession to Theophilus Shepstone's son, "Offy" Shepstone, with Lippert merely acting as an agent. The Lippert concession therefore had a number of potential defects, but Lippert was still confident he could extract a princely fee for it from the Chartered Company; he named his price as £250,000 in cash or shares at par, preferably cash.

Rhodes, backed by Loch, initially condemned the Lippert concession as a fraud and branded Lippert's locally based agents enemies of the peace. Loch declared that all concessions that lacked the British High Commissioner's approval were invalid, and assured Rhodes that if Lippert tried to gazette his agreement, he would issue a proclamation warning of its infringement on the Rudd Concession and the Company's charter, and threaten Lippert's associates with legal action. The Colonial Office agreed with Loch that Lippert's claims encroached on the Rudd Concession and the charter. Thus guaranteed government backing, Rhodes said he would not pay Lippert's price, which he said was blackmail. Meanwhile, Loch ordered the arrest of Renny-Tailyour and a colleague at Tati. But Rhodes soon came to question the wisdom of defying Lippert. Beit, in whose business acumen Rhodes had great faith, wired Rhodes on 30 May 1891 that he thought the Lippert concession was real and that Lippert's legal adviser was confident that its legality would be upheld in an in English court. Deciding it might be safer to simply buy out Lippert, Rhodes told Beit to start bargaining.

Lippert's agreement turned out to be an unexpected blessing for Rhodes in that it included a concession on land rights from Lobengula, which the Chartered Company itself lacked, and needed if it was to be recognised by Whitehall as legally owning the occupied territory in Mashonaland. After two months and a number of breakdowns in talks, Rudd took over the negotiations. He and Lippert agreed on 12 September 1891 that the Company would take over the concession from Lippert on the condition that he returned to Bulawayo and had it more properly formalised by Lobengula; in return the Company would grant the German 75 square miles (190 km2) of his choice in Matabeleland (with full land and mineral rights), 30,000 shares in the Chartered Company, and other financial incentives.

The success of this plan hinged on Lobengula continuing to believe that Lippert was acting against Rhodes rather than on his behalf. The religious Moffat was deeply troubled by what he called the "palpable immorality" of this deceit, but agreed not to interfere, deciding that Lobengula was just as untrustworthy as Lippert. With Moffat looking on as a witness, Lippert delivered his side of the deal in November 1891, extracting from the Matabele king the exclusive land rights for a century in the Chartered Company's operative territories, including permission to lay out farms and towns and to levy rents, in place of what had been agreed in April. As arranged, Lippert sold these rights to the Company, whereupon Loch approved the concession, expressing contentment at the solving of the Company's land rights problem; in an internal Whitehall memorandum, the Colonial Office affably remarked how expediently that administrative obstacle had been removed. The Matabele remained unaware of this subterfuge until May 1892.