Re your Rhodes/Hitler comparison: slaggers-off of the arch imperialist never seem to give him credit for his two great legacies. One was Groote Schuur, his beautiful Herbert Baker house and extensive estate that included most of the eastern flank of Table Mountain which he left to the nation. On it were established our spectacular national botanic garden Kirstenbosch (pride of one of the world’s richest ecosystems), the University of Cape Town, Newlands and Cecilia forests, and it’s because of this bequest that there’s more natural bush than posh houses climbing the slopes.

The other legacy of course was the Rhodes Scholarships that have sent generations of the Commonwealth and USA young to Oxford. In Cape Town there’s now a Mandela Rhodes Trust that funds outstanding local graduates to go on studying at African universities. CEO of the Trust is The Native Commissioner novelist Shaun Johnson and it’s housed in one of Cape Town’s elegant old buildings at the corner of Wales Street and St Georges Mall. The building was donated by De Beers to the Trust and is worth a visit: stately offices and portraits of Cecil J and Mandela glaring at each other across the length of the boardroom table. On the wood-panelled side walls are photographs of all the scholars – an impressive array. Many of their forebears could well have toiled in the Kimberley mines or on Rhodes’s estates.

On the subject of imperial violence, for those wishing to know more about Rhodes’ lack of compunction when it came to sowing upheaval in Africa, I can recommend Olive Schreiner’s slim fable, Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland. Schreiner was a contemporary of Rhodes’ and abhorred what he became. Her book was a direct attack on him and his legacy.