Material Crimes

“But didn’t colonialism give them railways?” The “Cape-to-Cairo” railway was meant to stretch from Africa’s southern tip to Egypt in the north. It was the unrealised fantasy of an unruly cast of imperial hustlers, including most infamously Cecil Rhodes. As Dom Davies traces the legacy of this unfinished railway across Africa, he finds that tracks of colonial plunder, resource extraction, and white supremacy continue to haunt the continent. Talking to Adam Elliott-Cooper, Megan Jones, Uhuru Portia Phalafala, Sara Salem, and Jonny Steinberg, he explores the violence of the Cape-to-Cairo railway as both a symbolic and material crime. Using songs and poetry of resistance, he also unravels how fantasies of a connected Africa energised successive generations of activists, from Black Consciousness poets to Rhodes Must Fall. 

Useful Links

Global History of Capitalism Project, Case Study #31: Rhodes Must Fall: https://globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk/files/case31-rhodesmustfallpdf

The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes: https://info.publicintelligence.net/RhodesLastWill.pdf

UCT Rhodes Must Fall Mission Statement: https://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/assets/documents/events/UCT-Rhodes-Must-Fall-Statement.pdf

Further Reading

Dominic Davies. The Broken Promise of Infrastructure (Lawrence Wishart, 2023).

Megan Jones. "The Train as Motif in Soweto Poetry," Literature, Critique, and Empire Today 53:1 (2018), pp. 21-42.

Uhuru Portia Phalafala. Mine Mine Mine (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Sara Salem. "Cape to Cairo." The Architectural Review (June 2025), pp.50-53.

This episode was supported by the Independent Social Research Fund, Leverhulme Trust, and City St. George’s Department of Media, Culture, and Creative Industries.