Background
Helm was born in Suurbraak, Cape Colony on 28 September 1844, the son of Daniel Helm, the missionary there.
Helm was born in Suurbraak, Cape Colony on 28 September 1844, the son of Daniel Helm, the missionary there.
He became a missionary with the London Missionary Society. 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.
Helm had studied Ndebele language and culture, and subsequently gained the confidence of Lobengula.
In October 1888 Rhodes sent three agents, Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire 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. West. T. Samkange 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". Helm is credited with bringing two rough coated and grey-black bitches from Kimberley, South Africa, which were then bred to finally produce the breed of dog.
He died on 14 September 1915 in Bulawayo.