Charles Daniel Helm (28 September 1844 – 14 September 1915) was a Protestant missionary and trusted confident of King Lobengula of

Matabeleland Matabeleland is a region located in southwestern Zimbabwe that is divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi r ...

who played a controversial role as an interpreter during the drafting and signing of the

Rudd Concession The Rudd Concession, a written concession for exclusive mining rights in Matabeleland, Mashonaland and other adjoining territories in what is today Zimbabwe, was granted by King Lobengula of Matabeleland to Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire ...

with agents of

Cecil Rhodes Cecil John Rhodes (5 July 1853 – 26 March 1902) was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his Br ...

British South Africa Company The British South Africa Company (BSAC or BSACo) was chartered in 1889 following the amalgamation of Cecil Rhodes' Central Search Association and the London-based Exploring Company Ltd, which had originally competed to capitalize on the expecte ...

in 1888.

Family life

Helm was born in

Suurbraak Suurbraak is a settlement in Overberg District Municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The village was established in 1812, when the London Missionary Society established a mission station to serve the Attaqua Khoikhoi K ...

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when i ...

on 28 September 1844, the son of Daniel Helm, the missionary there. His maternal grandfather was

William Anderson William Anderson may refer to: Arts and entertainment * William Anderson (artist) (1757–1837), painter of marine and historical paintings * William Anderson (theatre) (1868–1940), Australian stage entrepreneur * William Anderson (1911–1986), ...

. He trained as a missionary at

New College, London New College London (1850–1980) (sometimes known as New College, St John's Wood, or New College, Hampstead) was founded as a Congregationalist college in 1850. Predecessor institutions New College London came into being in 1850 by the amalgamat ...

where he met Baroness Elizabeth von Puttkamer whom he married in 1873.

Career

He became a missionary with the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

. He then returned briefly to Suurbraak, running the mission there following his father's death. However, in 1875 he established a mission at Hope Fountain near Lobengula's capital

Bulawayo Bulawayo (, ; Ndebele: ''Bulawayo'') is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council cl ...

. Helm had studied

Ndebele Ndebele may refer to: *Southern Ndebele people, located in South Africa *Northern Ndebele people, located in Zimbabwe and Botswana Languages *Southern Ndebele language, the language of the South Ndebele *Northern Ndebele language, the language o ...

language and culture, and subsequently gained the confidence of Lobengula.

Rudd Concession

In October 1888 Rhodes sent three agents,

Charles Rudd Charles Dunell Rudd (22 October 1844 – 15 November 1916) was the main business associate of Cecil Rhodes. Early life He was born at Hamworth Hall, Northamptonshire, the son of Henry Rudd (1809–1884), who had a shipbuilding business in Lo ...

James Rochfort Maguire James Rochfort Maguire (4 October 1855 – 18 April 1925) was a British imperialist and Irish Nationalist politician and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Pa ...

and Francis Thompson, to Matabeleland. According to historians such as Dickson A. Mungazi, Helm was in the pay of Rhodes and deliberately misled the king regarding the contents of the agreement he signed. John Lockhart and Christopher Woodhouse asserted in their 1963 biography of Rhodes that Helm had "become one of Rhodes's men"—

Stanlake J. W. T. Samkange Stanlake John William Thompson Samkange (1922–1988) was a Zimbabwean historiographer, educationist, journalist, author, and African nationalist. He was a member of an elite Zimbabwean nationalist political dynasty and the most prolific of the fi ...

cites this biography in his 1968 book ''Origins of Rhodesia'' to support the statement that Helm was "a mere mercenary, a paid hack of Rhodes".

John Semple Galbraith John Semple Galbraith (November 10, 1916 – June 10, 2003) was a British Empire historian concentrating on Canada (The Hudson's Bay Company) and South and East Africa. He served as chancellor of the University of California San Diego, from 1 ...

, in 1974, asserts that "there is no evidence that Rhodes 'bought' Helm, only that he tried", but that in any case Helm firmly favoured the Rhodes proposal as he thought it might lead to Matabeleland becoming more receptive towards Christianity.

Rhodesian Ridgeback

Helm is credited with bringing two rough coated and grey-black bitches from

Kimberley, South Africa Kimberley is the capital and largest city of the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It is located approximately 110 km east of the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The city has considerable historical significance due to its ...

, which were then bred, by

Cornelius van Rooyen Cornelius Johannes van Rooyen (1860-1915), also known as 'Nellis' van Rooyen, was an early colonial settler of Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia), big game hunter, and hunting guide. He is best known today as the breeder of predecessors of the Rhodes ...

, to finally produce the

Rhodesian Ridgeback The Rhodesian Ridgeback is a large dog breed bred in the Southern Africa region. Its forebears can be traced to the semi-domesticated ridged hunting and guardian dogs of the Khoikhoi. These were interbred with European dogs by the early colonist ...

breed of

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

. He died on 14 September 1915 in Bulawayo.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Helm, Charles 1844 births 1915 deaths British Congregationalist missionaries South African Congregationalist missionaries People from Bulawayo People from Swellendam Local Municipality Congregationalist missionaries in South Africa Congregationalist missionaries in Zimbabwe