Rhodes: unrecognized good in him?

The discussion section of WikiPedia has some rather heated argument on Rhodes. This was put up as a response to some of the negatives and I think will be of interest to viewers of this movie.
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Here are three points for you all:

1. The area later called 'Rhodesia' never had more than 300,000 people or so; the land would support no more. The arrival of the civilization that Rhodes promoted and its agriculture, industry and medicine caused the population of Rhodesia to grow to over 8 million by final independence in 1980. On the most basic level, this was good for the lives of the people. Because they were actualy living, for a change.

2. Speaking of living, the Matabele (related to the Zulus) were in the process of exterminating and enslaving the Shona people in the area. The arrival of Rhodes' Pioneer Column in 1890 put a stop to that after a few years. It is likely that if they had shown up ten years later, the place would not now be called 'Zimbabwe'(after an old Shona ruin), but 'Gwen'debele' ('Matabeleland').

3. Racialism was certainly abroad in the Victorian era, but much of Rhodes' disdain for 'savages' and so forth was based on the Stone Age way of life they followed, as briefly described above. The guideline laid down by 'vicious racist' Rhodes for joining the new way of life was 'equal rights for all civilized men'. This implied eventual rule by the black majority of the land. The imperfect carrying out of this policy forms the history of the land.

To the facts above I will add one opinion: blaming the current state of Zimbabwe on Rhodes is the most arrant nonsense. That state is caused by the same heavy-handed socialist state-planning policies that have ruined every other country which tried them.