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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map xiii

1. Pupils of Maru-a-Pula school receiving technical training in agricultural 11

equipment from Kalahari Ford, one of the ITM companies in Botswana.
2. The bus is a vital link in Africa, transporting people and merchandise between 15
villages and towns and its arrival and departure creates scenes of vibrant
activity. The bus in the picture was manufactured by PEW, one of the
ITM companies, in Blantyre, Malawi.
3. The size of logs from Liberia’s tropical hardwood forests is awesome and can 20
only be handled by huge machines, like the one above. The loggers relied on
Libtraco, the ITM company in Monrovia, for their supplies and product support
4. Working in remote areas, where logistical support was paramount, became the 28
hallmark of ITM, as we proved with our Angolan diamond mining operations.
And river bed mining first required diversion of the river Cuango by the
construction of large dykes and dams.
5. Drilling for water in Makuno district in Eastern Uganda. An Ingersoll Rand 44
drilling rig, one of the many products we distributed in many parts of Africa.
6. I celebrated my fiftieth birthday waiting for a room at the Federal Palace 50
Hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.
7. Inside the Lagos warehouse of Bisiolu Technical Ltd, our Nigerian affiliate 52
that distributed building materials, engineering products and industrial
chemicals throughout the country.
8. Downtown Harare, in the early years of independence. ITM businesses 60
in Zimbabwe included construction, builders’ hardware, the manufacture
of paint, concrete pipes and structural steel products and the extraction
of black granite in the Mtoko region for export to Italy.
9. Zimbabwean workers fabricating steel in the workshop of Wade Adams 62
Engineering in Harare.
10. Old and new technologies working side by side. Wade Adams’ workers 64
building a new canal in Zimbabwe.
11. Meridien Equity Bank’s spacious premises and colourful customers in 73
Lagos, Nigeria.
12. Hard-working, meticulous and concentrating. Zambian mechanics 76
assembling a Skania truck in Mazembe’s Kitwe premises.
13. Camels, carrying supplies to the markets, pass by the magnificent 91
building of BIAO Niger, in Niamey.
14. Rush hour in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. 92
15. The manager of BIAO Mali, standing in front of the Bank’s premises in 95
Bamako in his magnificent Malian traditional costume.
16. Some of Chiluba’s spare shoes: 50 pairs of them in psychedelic colours 110
on two-inch heels. They were kept in a warehouse in 21 trunks and 11
suitcases, together with 150 suits and 300 shirts. Nobody knows how
many he kept in his house for everyday use.
17. The façade of the Meridien BIAO Bank grand headquarters in Douala, 117
Cameroon. With 26 branches it was the biggest bank in the network.
18. The ill-fated floating washing plant of the Goldenrae mine in Ghana 124
that came into production in 1990 and never managed to achieve
its anticipated capacity.
19. In the company plane with Henry Shikopa, my friend and partner since 135
1958. There were always papers to read and discuss between destinations.
20. The banking hall of the main Lusaka branch of Meridien BIAO Bank 143
Zambia. Spacious, pleasant and efficient.
21. One of the millions of hard-working and cheerful peasants of Africa. 145
This one, from Uganda, is carrying green bananas to the market on his
bicycle. But his brothers, elsewhere, could be carrying charcoal, or
vegetables, or chicken, or pigs, or goats, cycling daily many miles to the
market and back, in order to earn a meagre living.
22. Our affiliate, Amedo, Kenya, had 22 branches selling Singer sewing 165
machines and other domestic equipment it assembled. Sewing schools
at most branches helped to create a loyal clientele.
23. The Meridien BIAO Niger branch at Taboua, on the edge of the Sahara 168
desert, was housed in a traditional building and serviced customers living
in that remote area.
24. Two facets of Tanzanian agriculture: rice processing at Kapunga factory, built 182
by Wade Adams, and a Masai boy herding his family’s cattle in the foreground.
25. A labour-intensive but effective packing facility of pineapple and grapefruit 193
adjacent to the plantation, belonging to one of Meridien BIAO’s customers
in Swaziland.
26. One of the stalls of the open-air market, which spreads over the two southbound 259
lanes of Freedom Way in downtown Lusaka, sells plumbing and electrical materials.
A CKNOWLED GEM ENTS

My thanks first go to Danae for her unwavering support and encouragement.

And for her courage to relive all over again through the medium of this
painful book the trials and tribulations, the breakthroughs and the setbacks, the
joys and the sorrows and all the other challenges we experienced doing business
in so many English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking African countries and
learning to cope with their ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity and the
legacies of their former colonial masters.
Also to my sons Stelios and Harry, who read the manuscript and helped me
fill up gaps that had been pushed deep into my subconscious because they hurt
so much to remember.

ix
Zounds, Mardonius, what manner of men are these that you have brought us
to fight withal? ’tis not for money they contend but for glory of achievement.

(Translation from the Loeb Classical Library Edition

of Herodotus ‘The Persian Wars’ Book VIII)
I NTRODUCTION

Everybody has been meddling in Africa. And everybody has a formula for its
salvation. In the old days salvation was the promised ‘protection’ of one
European empire or another and the Christian gospel. Nowadays it is more
of the same, but for European empires read ‘Western democracies’ and for the
Christian gospel read free markets.
Imperial protection and Christianity brought colonialism and exploitation.
But with it came advancement that culminated in independence. The Gospel of
the Free Markets according to the Western Democracies is expected to bring
Foreign Direct Investment, which will cure all the present-day ills of Africa
and propel it to the economic levels of the Asian tigers. African countries are,
obligingly, following the commandments of the free market, either out of
conviction or in order to reach one divined goal or another and obtain the
promised rewards.
So, they opened their markets to foreign goods and they have been very
accommodating to the demands of foreign direct investment. Sometimes
these are exorbitant, such as the foreign investment in the Zambian mining
industry that managed to secure virtually tax-free status for a couple of decades
and left the citizens wondering when they are likely to enjoy any advantages
from such investments. But such are the privileges that go with big investors or,
as some might say, the new colonisers.
At lower levels foreign direct investment comes in many guises: white South
African companies (the new voortrekkers, not running away from the British
this time but piggybacking on their black government instead) spreading
into the black north; Rhodesian farmers fleeing the land redistribution in
Zimbabwe and looking for new land as far north as Nigeria; but the most
common appears to be in the form of new immigrants, from the Middle
East, from South Asia, from China, etc. They engage in trading and small
and medium enterprises that provide some useful addition to the industrial
foundation of small African countries. But such immigrant ‘investors’ with
1
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

greater access to finance are likely to displace the locals who occupy these
levels of enterprise at the moment.
Ideally, foreign investment should come as an adjunct to local enterprise.
But this is not possible, because in most African countries local enterprise has
not developed sufficiently to generate projects and expansion that would attract
foreign investment. So, in the near term, foreign investment, like the colonial
regimes of old, will continue to pursue its own goals on its own terms and
remain a caste apart. And, like the old colonial regimes, it will delay the
emergence of local enterprise.
Free markets carry a different risk. They destroy nascent local enterprises,
which cannot compete with imported products because of their size and the
mediocre skills of their workers. But substituting local products with cheaper
imported ones is considered the cornerstone of free markets, even though
Africans may think that this condemns them to remaining producers of raw
materials for ever.
And the apostles of the free markets do not practise what they preach. So far,
they have merely promised that, if Africa does join the Free Market Church, they
may, some day after the year 2013, begin dismantling the economic barriers they
set in order to protect their own agriculture against competition from African
and other Third World produce.
Africa’s defences are limited. Very few countries, most prominent amongst
them Nigeria and Ghana, have attained the levels of sophistication that enable
them to stand up to these pressures and protect their own interests. South Africa
is equally capable of making up its own mind, but its problems are domestic. Its
economy is dominated by huge, long-established white-owned businesses whose
interests and viewpoint are at variance with those of the majority of the
population. Most other countries do not have sufficient experience and self-
confidence to determine the suitability of the economic advice they receive, so
they go along with it, sometimes because it is easier to acquiesce than resist,
and in any case there is always the hope of a promised land at the end of
the tunnel.
When is this going to change? When countries have firm opinions on what
is in their best interests and are in a position to stand up to the conflicting
pressures placed on them. Financial sophistication is necessary, and like the
Nigerians and Ghanaians before them, Africans from many other countries
are now working internationally gaining that extra experience. But the most
important ingredient of economic emancipation is the development of African
business. It is only when local enterprise becomes big enough and sophisticated
2
 I NTRO D U CTI O N

enough to prime it that foreign investment will become meaningful and part of
the national scene.
A Venture in Africa is the story of the rise and fall of an African
conglomerate I founded in 1971 and led for the next 25 years. Its industrial arm,
the ITM group, spawned a financial arm out of the sheer necessity to finance
supplies to Africa during the dark decades of the 1970s and 1980s. This evolved
into Meridien BIAO, the most extensive African banking network.
Over the years we had operations of one kind or another in some 30
anglophone, francophone and lusophone African countries, and in the process
we became familiar with their idiosyncrasies and problems, some of them of
their own making, others resulting from their colonial history and yet others
from superpower rivalry and the cold war. For example, the United States is as
much responsible for the rise of Mobutu and his iron grip on and plunder of
Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) as Belgium, the colonial power
that ruled the country until 1960 and then engineered the breakaway of its
richest province, Katanga.
I have tried to give a flavour of all the challenges we met, adding short
historical and other details, especially where I thought that they were a factor
in shaping later events, such as political developments, civil wars, military
dictatorships and economic collapse. In my travels, I always kept an open
mind and tried to understand the roots of problems and make an informed
interpretation of events. Telling the story after the passage of years makes me see
the funny side of many an unmitigated disaster that at the time I thought we
would never be able to overcome.
The group collapsed in 1995 and I describe the events that led to its
destruction. Even though it was the most painful chapter of my life, I have tried
not to be emotional and not to lose my sense of humour.
I have tried to tell the story with honesty and frankness without holding
anything back and without embellishment, so that the reader can get a true
picture of the challenges we faced, as well as a genuine flavour of Africa in the
1970s, the 1980s and early 1990s.

3
1. T H E F I R S T S T E P S

‘I need BIAO like a hole in the head,’ I said to the London manager of the
Banque Internationale pour l’Afrique Occidentale when he approached me
suggesting that I take it over. He made the suggestion during a conference in
Paris on the subject of ‘Growth of Private Enterprise in Africa – Opportunities
for International Investment’, organised by the International Herald Tribune and
the African Development Bank on 23 and 24 March 1990, at which I was one
of the speakers. I did not follow my own counsel, and I would come to regret it
five years later.
BIAO started life in Senegal in the middle of the nineteenth century
as the Central Bank of West Africa. It carried on this role until after the
dissolution of the French colonial ‘empire’ in 1960, when it converted to
a commercial bank. It had been in difficulties for some years and the French
government wanted to merge it with Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP),
one of the major French banks, but the African countries in which
BIAO had subsidiaries were wary of the French monopoly of the banking
sector in francophone Africa and were looking for an African solution.
The French, unlike the British, had kept a firm grip over their colonies
after independence.
At the time I was the chief executive of ITM (Investment Trade and Manage-
ment) International, a trading group, whose operations spread over some 20
African countries and which had a banking subsidiary, the Meridien International
Bank (MIBL). ITM was the successor of Sardanis Associates Ltd, a conglomerate
I had set up in 1971 in association with the British merchant bank Fraser
Ansbacher, a Zambian friend and some associates with whom I had worked in
the Industrial Development Corporation (Indeco) of Zambia in the 1960s. They
were mainly British, some of them of East African Indian origin, expecting their
positions in Indeco to be ‘Zambianised’, and they joined me as they completed
their contracts.
7
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

Sardanis Associates had phenomenal growth. Its initial equity was small, but
it used the formula I had devised for the Indeco acquisitions in 1968 and 1969
(paying the vendors out of future profits) in order to grow. Successful settler
businessmen wanted to cash out of Africa. But buyers were few because not
many had faith in the future of the new Africa. So when we came along and
made an offer we were able to negotiate extended payment terms. My
successful career in Indeco and my international exposure provided the comfort
that the purchase price would be paid. Local banks helped with some down
payments and working capital. Banks in those days were ready to extend
facilities on an entrepreneur’s reputation and their confidence in his abilities.
And, as I have already said, my associates and I had proved ourselves in Indeco
and, as time went by, in the successful and efficient management and the
profitability of our group.
The development picture in Africa looked very rosy to our eyes in those days
and we determined to build the group around Africa’s development needs –
in other words, heavy equipment, machinery and construction. Our first
acquisition was the Caterpillar Tractor dealership in Zambia, the biggest
supplier of heavy equipment to the Zambian mines, which were thriving at
the time. This was followed by a construction company and other industrial
equipment suppliers. A pharmaceutical business was added as one of the
associates’ capital contribution to the group. We rationalised this deviation from
our original philosophy on the basis that pharmaceuticals were another of
Africa’s major needs. I wrote extensively on the history of our Zambian
business ventures in my book Africa: Another Side of the Coin but I shall give a
short summary here for the new reader.
After an exciting and intellectually very rewarding career in Zambia’s first
administration from 1965 to 1971, I joined Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho, a trading
conglomerate that straddled white and black Africa with some operations in
England and parts of Europe. A very succinct synopsis of my sojourn with
Tiny appeared in the New Africa magazine in the middle of 1971, a couple of
months after I left him in May of that year. It says:
Andrew Sardanis is back in Lusaka after a brief unhappy association with Lonrho.
He had been invited to join the London conglomerate earlier this year but left,
quietly and without fuss, when his terms were not met. Sardanis has had
ideas about reorganising Lonrho, which is hot on enterprise, rather weak
on administration. Among other things, Sardanis wanted the company’s wide
ranging interests controlled by subject, not location. For example African and
Mauritian sugar estates would be administered as a division where they are now
8
 TH E F I R ST STE P S

the responsibility of the regions. But Sardanis and managing director Tiny
Rowland did not see eye to eye. They exchanged words, then a golden
handshake… The wider implication of all this is that Lonrho is pigeonholing
its plans to separate its white and black African interests. Last December it was
announced that Sardanis was to become joint managing director with Rowland
of the new African Industrial and Finance Corporation – ‘Black’ Lonrho.
President Kaunda then gave Sardanis his personal blessing. Now, presumably, he
has been welcomed back with open presidential arms. Not least perhaps because
his services as company doctor are urgently needed for the ailing Indeco. From
the start Sardanis was extremely uncertain about how things would pan out with
Lonrho. He retained his Zambian citizenship and his seat on the boards of
Mindeco and the mining companies. Lusaka will doubtless be delighted to see
‘Mr. 51%’ [a soubriquet given to me by the Newsweek magazine a couple of years
earlier] in circulation again.

I did not exactly get the open arms welcome that New Africa was predicting. I
found that people had mixed feelings about me. The politicians felt that I had
abandoned them and treated me a little like a deserter, and my colleagues in the
civil service saw the commercial success of Sardanis Associates and some of
them treated me with disdain. There were mutterings about our acquisition of
the Caterpillar dealership in Zambia. ‘It was a big company; why had Sardanis
not taken control of it for the government in 1968, as he did with most other
big companies? Obviously he kept it for himself,’ people said. I wish I were that
far-sighted and it was not true, anyway. The companies taken over, three years
previously, were all dealing in products that affected everyday lives, and suppliers
of equipment to the mines were not considered, because in 1968 we had not as
yet decided to take control of the mines. That was done almost as an after-
thought in August 1969, as I describe in Africa: Another Side of the Coin.
Sardanis Associates had its admirers and it had its detractors. Some admired
our aggressive training and localisation policies (rare in those days), which had
been the hallmark of my business life, ever since I set foot in the North Western
Province of Northern Rhodesia in 1951. Others criticised our expansion and
made sour comments about it. The most notable was a comment from a
politician when we made a few experimental exports of Zambian mangoes to the
UK: ‘Is Andrew not satisfied with the millions he is making from Mazembe [the
Caterpillar dealership] and he wants to take the food out of our mouths too?’ In
those days the price of copper was still very high and ‘non-traditional exports’
had not yet entered the Zambian vocabulary. And the mango experiment was
not a success.
9
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

By 1973 we had achieved considerable expansion in Zambia. We had the

Caterpillar business, which we operated under the name Mazembe; we bought
controlling interest in Roberts Construction, the biggest construction company
in Zambia, at the time owned by the eponymous South African Group;
we bought another engineering company that specialised in smaller mining
equipment; we had a pharmaceutical and cosmetics company; farms, etc. In
view of the economic and political climate in Zambia at the time we decided
that we would be tempting fate to expand any further within, so for further
expansion we started looking outside.

***

Why we chose Botswana as our first country for expansion, I do not quite
remember – I guess because it was the only independent country south of
Zambia and it was very close. It had been granted independence a couple of
years after Zambia and much later than the rest of Africa. But its evolution as
an independent nation was extremely slow. It was extremely poor, its main
product was beef and its export was entirely dependent on European
Economic Community quotas. The new capital, Gaborone (Botswana had been
administered from the South African city of Mafeking during the colonial days),
was developing slowly and it was a ‘two-street town’ at the time. The biggest city,
Francistown, had been built around the railway hub, and also served as the
commercial city for the not far-off Selebi Pikwe mine, a singularly unsuccessful
copper mining venture and a monument to how wrong mining projects can go
even if they are promoted by the world’s biggest mining groups.
For an independent African country Botswana looked and felt like a colony
– and a South African colony to boot. It seemed to have provided refuge to
retreating colonial administrators from as far away as Kenya and Tanzania, and
of course Zambia. Its civil service was reminiscent of Northern Rhodesia’s, with
white district commissioners in charge of the administration. The commercial
sector was South African. Botswana was part of the South African Customs
Union and South African companies had free access to its market. The South
African contribution in lieu of customs duties was a very big source of revenue
for the government at the time, and created a dependence that seemed to have
a paralysing effect.
A small government organisation operating along the lines of the Industrial
Development Corporation of Zambia and managed by some well-meaning and
bright Americans and Britons was attempting to promote local enterprise,
10
 TH E F I R ST STE P S

without much success because of the constricting influence of the South

African industrial Goliath next door. It never seemed to occur to the Botswana
government of the day that in order to promote local enterprise it had to
loosen the bonds of the South African Customs Union. Some of the younger
members of the government talked about breaking away, but the fear of
jeopardising the South African contribution held them back. The customs

Pupils of Maru-a-Pula school receiving technical training in agricultural equipment from

Kalahari Ford, one of the ITM companies in Botswana.

11
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

contribution amounted to some SA Rand 120 million per annum at the time,
and the then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance (he later became
President) was persuaded that it was very generous and that the government
would not have the capacity to collect the equivalent in customs revenue.
Botswana was a difficult country to do business in. For a start, there were
no direct air services with Zambia. To get to Gaborone one had to fly via
Johannesburg, but as I was not allowed into South Africa I had to charter a
plane every time I needed to visit. Air charter flights in that part of the world
were cowboy operations. They used single- or two-engine propeller planes and
their pilots, some very experienced, did not care much about aviation rules. Bill,
the pilot I used most often, would always have a couple of beers with lunch
before we proceeded to the airport for the return flight to Lusaka. One of the
planes he was using was a trainer and, as I was sitting next to him, he often
passed the controls to me. One day, he did it immediately after take-off. I was
concentrating on gaining height when Bill asked me to look left. Somehow the
earth had risen and it was standing like a mountain outside. I had not realised
that I turned the plane on its side. Bill roared with laughter, but after that I gave
up my attempts at learning to fly and preferred to sit back and have a drink
instead. In any case, a couple of years later we bought a 50% share in a Learjet
and such escapades became impossible.
Our flights to Gaborone became faster and more comfortable for a while,
but as the Zimbabwe liberation war intensified different problems emerged.
Flying from Gaborone to Lusaka one has to fly over Zimbabwe, but when
sanctions were imposed the then Rhodesian government closed its airspace to
all Zambian private flights. The result was that we had to fly over South Africa
to Mozambique and get to Lusaka from the east. The flight was beyond the
Lear’s range so we had to refuel at Lanceria airport, and as I was not allowed
in South Africa I would remain in the plane during the stopover.
The rigidity and narrow-mindedness of the apartheid bureaucracy manifested
itself in a comic incident when my wife, Danae, and our sons Stelios and Harry,
11 and nine at the time, were travelling with me. The Lear was a small plane and
the toilet facilities on board were rudimentary so Danae decided to use the
airport facilities instead. The pilot asked a guard (they were all white in those
days) and he obligingly called a lady, who escorted Danae to the airport loo and
back. But children are unpredictable. A few minutes later they also wanted to go.
We approached the same guard. He was outraged: ‘Man, just because we were
good enough to the lady you want to take advantage of us; they cannot go,’
he pronounced in his Afrikaans-accented English. I tried to persuade the
12
 TH E F I R ST STE P S

boys to do it on the tarmac instead, in full view of the guard, but they were
too shy.
Economic conditions in Botswana improved with the discovery of diamonds,
which made the country one of the most prosperous in Africa. Despite its
wealth, the country remained very conservative and seemed disinclined to spend
any of its riches for development, particularly the development of its people.
Secondary schools remained few and the University did not open its doors
until 1982, 16 years after independence. (Zambia opened its first university two
years after it became independent.) Botswana is now sub-Saharan Africa’s
‘diamond sheikhdom’ and is much praised for its $9 billion in foreign reserves,
held in various Western banks and financial institutions. I wonder how much
better off the country would have been if it had spent more for the development
of its people early on, at the expense of its reserves. Skilled jobs still need to be
done by foreigners from South Africa, other parts of Africa and elsewhere, a
source of grievance and resentment for the local population.
As our operations in Botswana increased in the late 1970s and 1980s, we
had to use more and more Zambians in senior positions because locals were
not available. And, even though it is the only African country that can afford
expensive anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns and free anti-retroviral (ARV) medication
for the infected, Botswana remained the last to start, and in 2005 it had the
distinction of the highest infection rate per head in Africa. Yet the people do not
protest, and Botswana is one of the most stable countries in Africa, much praised
by the Western countries for its conservative governance.
Over the years we did a lot of business in Botswana, starting with builders’
hardware and pharmaceuticals, and later on adding construction, motor vehicle
franchises, tractors and machinery to our range. But we always had to contend
with competition from South African firms, which did not have any investment
in Botswana but could collect large orders by sending their salesmen in and out
and delivering with their own trucks, as if Gaborone was a suburb of Pretoria.
And the Botswana government did restrain itself from giving wholehearted
support to the African National Congress that was fighting the apartheid
regime in South Africa, an attitude I found very strange. I occasionally gave a lift
on the Lear to ANC officials who wanted to visit Gaborone and I witnessed the
difficulties they had with the immigration officers before they were allowed in
for a day or two. In the late 1940s, while I was still a journalist working for the
New Cyprus Guardian I had translated some articles written by Ruth Williams
(later Lady Khama) on the upheaval her marriage to the Bamangwato Chief
Seretse Khama had caused, culminating in his exile from Botswana until he
13
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

renounced his chieftainship, and I was outraged. But in the 1970s the same
British-deposed chief, but by then knighted by Queen Elizabeth as Sir Seretse
Khama, was the President of Botswana and mindful of the problems that open
support of the South African freedom fighters would bring on him and his
country he held back. Knighthood for Botswana’s Presidents became routine,
a phenomenon not seen anywhere else in Africa. Ketumile Masire who
followed Seretse Khama was also knighted. And he carried the title of President
Sir Ketumile Masire for the rest of his term. It never seemed to worry him that a
British knighthood alongside his position of first citizen might be demeaning
to his country.

***

Malawi followed Botswana as our next business destination with the acquisition
of the Caterpillar dealership from its South African owners, who wanted to
withdraw from black Africa. Dr Kamuzu Banda, the President-for-life of Malawi
at the time, was the only African leader with close ties to the South African
apartheid regime and the Portuguese dictatorship in Lisbon – both shunned by
the rest of Africa at the time. But this did not provide enough comfort for the
owners of the Malawi Caterpillar dealership, who opted for retreating to the
white world of South Africa and Rhodesia.
Dr Banda, who had been born in Nyasaland in the 1890s, had studied
medicine in the United States and Britain, where he practised until 1953,
when he moved to Ghana. In 1958, when the Nyasaland African Congress
was looking for an important personality to lead the struggle for
independence, he was persuaded to return to his native land. Nyasaland
achieved majority rule within the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
in 1961 with Banda as its Prime Minister, and independence (as Malawi)
in 1964, after the dissolution of the Federation the previous year. Banda
became President in 1966 and in 1971 he declared himself President-for-
life. In the process he grew increasingly authoritarian, treating his lieutenants
(he called them ‘my boys’) with condescension, making it quite clear that
he considered them inferior, much to their dismay. On their part, they
became progressively embarrassed with his courting of the apartheid regime
of South Africa (he declared himself President-for-life after an official visit
to South Africa) and the Portuguese government, which had been fighting
the independence movements in Mozambique and Angola since the
early 1960s.1
14
 TH E F I R ST STE P S

As the rest of Africa was unequivocal in its support of the independence

movements in the south (South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, Mozambique
and Angola – the unliberated part of the continent at the time), Banda’s
familiarity with those regimes became intolerable to his lieutenants. They
agitated for change and they even attempted to mobilise the rural masses in
support – but in the end he defeated them. Many had to flee into exile,
mainly in Zambia and Tanzania.
One of the most prominent amongst them, Orton Chirwa, who had handed
over the leadership of the Congress to him and had been Banda’s Attorney-
General, ended up in Zambia with his wife Vera, also a lawyer. But Banda, a
vengeful person, never stopped pursuing the exiles. During Christmas 1981,
when the Chirwas were visiting Chipata, a Zambian town a few miles from
the Malawi border, they were abducted and taken back to Malawi. They were
tried for treason by the Southern Regional Traditional Court in Blantyre –
an infamous branch of the judicial system devised by Banda in order to take
care of his enemies without due process. They were sentenced to death
and the verdict was later confirmed by the National Traditional Court of
Appeal, but Banda had to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment
as a result of the international protests that followed. Orton Chirwa died in jail
in 1992 and Vera was pardoned a few weeks later, again because of
international pressure.

The bus is a vital link in Africa, transporting people and merchandise between villages and towns
and its arrival and departure creates scenes of vibrant activity. The bus in the picture was
manufactured by PEW, one of the ITM companies, in Blantyre, Malawi.

15
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

Banda remained authoritarian, eccentric and capricious throughout his life.

In the late 1960s he issued a decree banning blue jeans, miniskirts and long
hair. There were hilarious scenes at the Blantyre airport when international
visitors were forced to have a haircut and change clothes. But Banda took no
notice. Amongst his many other follies was the Kamuzu Academy, a boarding
school for boys that was modelled after Haileybury College, a British public
school, and included Greek and Latin in its curriculum. As Malawi is one of the
poorest countries of Africa he used £10 million of his own money for the
project, Banda would repeatedly boast, never bothering to explain how a
President of a poor country could come by such a large fortune.
But while other African countries were introducing their brand of social and
economic policies in the 1960s, nationalising or partly nationalising various
businesses, Dr Banda’s formula was simple. He was doing the same thing on
behalf of the Malawi Congress Party. And since he was the President-for-life
of both the party and the country he assumed that the income was his and
he knew best what to do with it. He did not declare himself Emperor of Malawi,
as Bokassa did in the Central African Republic, but he sure behaved like one.
He moved the capital of the country from Blantyre to Lilongwe, which was
financed, designed and built by his South African friends. And he decided to
construct a new presidential palace there, whose slow progress became legend.
Whenever Banda travelled outside the country and saw something he fancied,
he wanted it copied and added to his palace, which was getting bigger and bigger
and was never quite finished during his lifetime.
Some of his original lieutenants who did not flee the country and kept
their positions in government ended up in jail or died in unexplained motor
accidents. But discontent eventually caught up with him with widespread
anti-government demonstrations and rioting in 1993, which forced him to
abandon the one-party system and call elections in 1994, which he lost. In 1995
he was charged with the assassination of four political opponents, but by that
time he was senile and he was acquitted. Banda was over 100 years old when
he died in 1997 even though officially he was ten years younger. During his
lifetime it was a punishable offence to discuss his age.
For us, Malawi was like home. Its people are much the same as the people of
the eastern districts of Zambia and speak the same languages. As it had been part
of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland many Malawians had worked on
the Zambian mines, and their children were educated in Zambian schools.
Despite its poverty, Malawi had more educated and skilled people than
Botswana, and we were able to recruit and implement a localisation programme
16
 TH E F I R ST STE P S

that had become the hallmark of our group. We expanded substantially

in various directions, including builders’ hardware, paint, engineering and
construction. Our Wade Adams group undertook many important engineering
projects, one of the most prominent being the construction of a timber products
factory and township for Viply Plywood and Allied Industries Ltd.

***

In no time we became a successful regional group, with an office in London that

procured supplies and organised finance for our companies and our customers
who wanted to purchase heavy equipment fleets. On the family side, we had a
house in London and our sons Stelios and Harry at Cranleigh, a public (read
private boarding) school in Surrey. Danae spent most of her time in London and
I would come and go. The future looked great and we were looking forward to
more expansion in the region when a bolt struck from the blue.
On 17 November 1973 the Bank of Zambia instructed Barclays, our main
bank, to freeze the accounts of all our Zambian companies. As I explained in
Africa: Another Side of the Coin, this was the consequence of the abrogation of the
mining agreements that I had negotiated on behalf of the Zambian government
and the Cabinet and Parliament had approved in 1969/70. I had applied my
usual formula of paying out of future profits and the government had issued
bonds (the Zimco bonds) to the two mining groups that had owned them,
repayable over eight and 12 years with interest at 6%. Tiny Rowland, my
erstwhile boss in Lonrho, persuaded the government to abrogate the agreements
and repay the Zimco bonds at par when the bonds were trading on the market
at 48%. Rowland bought bonds before the redemption and, with a small number
of Zambian accomplices, he made a fortune. I had smelt the rat and informed the
President of Zambia. Even though he took no notice, his subordinates decided
that I had to be kept under pressure in case I spilled the beans, and they
embarked upon a vicious campaign of persecution. I covered the events in great
detail in Africa: Another Side of the Coin so I do not intend to repeat them here.
But the next three years were spent on protecting business, family and self from
the never-ending twists and turns of investigations and attacks. The problem was
resolved in 1976. By that time the government had negotiated a new deal with
the foreign shareholders of the mines, which created the Zambian Consolidated
Copper Mines Ltd (ZCCM), in which it took absolute control (66%). That set
the mining industry on a gradual course of self-destruction which would occur
before the end of the twentieth century.
17
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

The three-year period from the end of 1973 to 1976 was, for me sad and
demoralising. Many a time I was tempted to give up, but it is not in my make-
up to succumb to intimidation. So, I had to devise an alternative strategy. It
dawned on me that if I wanted an international business career it should no
longer carry my name, as Sardanis Associates did, and should be domiciled
outside Zambia. I had to resort to the anonymity of Luxembourg, where ITM
International was set up.

18
2. LI B E R I A : A B L A C K R H O D E S I A

‘Liberia is another Rhodesia but the world has not noticed because the
“Rhodesians” of Liberia are black,’ I told Kenneth Kaunda, the President of
Zambia, in 1976 after I returned from my first trip there. He roared with laughter
and narrated his own experience with the Americo-Liberians. He had been at the
airport when Tubman, Liberia’s President from 1943 to 1971, arrived to attend
the Tanganyika independence celebrations. As is customary in Africa, foreign
dignitaries are entertained on arrival by local dancing troupes. Watching the
Tanganyikan troupe, Mrs Tubman turned to her husband: ‘Look, darling, the
boys here dance like the boys at home,’ she said – a telling comment that
summed up the ‘Rhodesian’-style attitudes of supremacy and remoteness the
Americo-Liberians held towards the indigenous people of their country.
I had gone to Liberia to investigate the Caterpillar dealership there, which
was owned by an Italian-American who wanted to retire. By that time we were
running the dealerships in Zambia and Malawi very successfully and his
approach to us had the blessings of the Caterpillar Tractor Company’s office in
Geneva, which supervised Africa and the Middle East.
Liberia, the oldest republic on the continent, was one of the three
independent countries that existed in Africa before the collapse of colonialism
created 50 more out of the large tracts of the colonial empires of Britain, France,
Belgium and Portugal and the mandated territories that had belonged to
Germany before the First World War. It was created in the 1820s by the
American Colonization Society which acquired land from the local chiefs and
started settling a large number of freed slaves from America and the Caribbean.
Resettling African-Americans back ‘home’ may have appeared a good idea at the
time but in reality Liberia was not their home. The new residents were not aware
of their roots and in spite of their African origin they remained a caste apart.
They treated the indigenous people like most other settlers did in Africa and the
world did not notice.
19
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, named after the American President Monroe

when the then Governor declared its independence in 1847, was reminiscent of
the American South, with grand solid buildings dotted around the town and
churches on every corner. It seemed to have the biggest number of churches per
head of population I had seen anywhere. It also had a university, which had
started as a college in the nineteenth century. Amongst the impressive stone
buildings were the Masonic temple and the grand headquarters of the True Whig
Party, standing next to each other on top of a hill overlooking the harbour. (In
later years these magnificent buildings were occupied by squatters and civil war

The size of logs from Liberia’s tropical hardwood forests is awesome and can only be handled by
huge machines, like the one above. The loggers relied on Libtraco, the ITM company in Monrovia,
for their supplies and product support.

20
 LI B E R IA: A B LAC K R H O D E S IA

refugees.) The True Whig was the Americo-Liberian Party and had been running
the country for ever, as far as I could gather. They represented less than 10% of
the population but they dominated the government until 1980, when President
Tolbert was assassinated by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, who then took over.
Tolbert was highly regarded overseas and his brother Steve, who was his
Minister of Finance, was a big businessman with fingers in many business pies,
one of the many signs of corruption in the country. The Liberian business
community, mainly foreign (European, American, Lebanese and Asian), seemed
very content with this set-up and thought that it would carry on for ever. Or so
they tried to make me believe.
The Liberian Tractor Co. (Libtraco) we were proposing to buy was managed
by a team of American and European expatriates, but its chairman was local.
Rudolph Grimes was an Americo-Liberian Harvard-trained lawyer. A nice man,
he had been President Tubman’s Secretary of State and his house was full
of memorabilia of his glory days. Pictures with President Kennedy, Dag
Hammarskjöld and many other international dignitaries at various international
conferences adorned the walls of his house. His circle was entirely Americo-
Liberian and in the few days I stayed I realised that, though small in numbers,
their influence in the country was pervasive, while the local population was
relegated to the level of second-class citizenry.
Liberia was a small but prosperous country, nevertheless. It had big iron ore
mines owned and operated by very reputable international companies; rubber
plantations, the biggest of which, not far out of Monrovia, had belonged to the
American Firestone company since the 1920s; and many timber concessions –
all very big users of heavy tractors and other industrial machines, which made
Libtraco a very profitable business. Other Liberian products included diamonds,
coffee and cocoa, palm oil and sugar cane, all of which generated substantial
exports. Citibank and Chase, the two prominent American international banks
then and now, were the main banks in the country.
We concluded the deal and reaped good profits from Libtraco for a few
years. But the inevitable had to happen. The discontent of the local people
encouraged Doe’s coup, which was followed by atrocities, including many
executions of prominent citizens on the beach, near the barracks of Monrovia.
Yet gradually life in the country settled down again and many Americo-Liberians
cooperated and accepted important Cabinet positions in Doe’s administration,
though some had to flee the country afterwards, in fear for their lives. But the
economy kept deteriorating, until civil war broke out – that would be in
the 1990s.
21
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

***

In the meantime our group was moving from strength to strength. We were
running a very efficient business and did not confine our activities to the
Caterpillar dealerships. As time went by we redefined our aims and expanded
our range of goods and services. Our first group brochure in 1978 describes the
development scene of the time:

The developing countries have a constant and growing demand for a wide range
of goods and services. Depending on individual development programmes
such demand is usually linked to the spread of education, health and social
services, the exploitation of raw materials or the development of agriculture,
transport, communications and housing.

Apart from the Caterpillar franchises we put together a group of other franchises
of motor vehicles and parts, farm machinery, light industrial equipment, tools
and hardware, building materials and construction, mechanical and electrical
engineering and industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Our companies
would either import or produce locally depending on the local market and
the product.
By the latter part of the 1970s we were employing 6000 people in 19
countries, mainly in Africa, and our annual sales had risen to over $200
million. Our management philosophy was to give employment priority to local
people and for this purpose we operated very extensive training programmes. We
employed expatriates in jobs where there was no local expertise. Occasionally we
had to deviate from this rule when the main clients were foreign companies,
which in those days did not take African executives seriously, as was the case
with the mining companies of Zambia, even after the Zambian mines came
under government control. Localisation had been my philosophy all along and
I was at pains to explain to my associates that it was not starry-eyed. It was based
on the common-sense point of view that local people have an intuitive
knowledge of their market place, which foreigners need decades to absorb,
because of their different cultural background and because expatriate life is
insulated from local realities. My other point was that when you give local
people responsibility and authority they respond to it and try harder than
expatriates. This view was not commonly held at the time; in fact, the view that
‘you cannot trust Africans – they are lazy and incompetent and dishonest’
prevailed. And some competitors viewed our policy with derision; but our many
years of successful operations have proved that it was sound.
22
 LI B E R IA: A B LAC K R H O D E S IA

Of course, Zambian executives viewed their expatriate counterparts with the

same jaundiced eye – ‘They are extravagant, they are here for the good life and
they really are not any better than us.’ I remember the comments of a Zambian
friend and partner since 1958 who was in charge of our Zambian operations in
the 1970s when I proposed to transfer the manager of Mazembe to supervise
all the Caterpillar dealerships out of New York. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Take him,
but watch him. He is a big spender. He changes motor cars like he changes
shirts.’ I often agreed with the Zambians’ view of some expatriates, an attitude
that my deputy in London considered ‘disgusting’ and said so to me many
times. The mentality of ‘you must not let the side down’ if you had a white skin
transcended fairness, business principles and common sense.
We had many hard-working and dedicated expatriates over the years, who
not only cared about performance and results but also paid serious attention to
training. But we had other varieties too. Some of them, especially some older
Britons who stayed on, still lived in the past and had an exaggerated idea of
their importance, while they undervalued the abilities of black employees.
Some paid more attention to the golf club and their social life and persuaded
themselves that these were important tools in business promotion. Others
fancied themselves as business geniuses of international calibre and often flew
at tangents completely unrelated to the business at hand. Most would have
loved to be out of Africa, but were trapped in the perks of the expatriate
contracts, such as overseas education for their children paid for by the company,
and marked time dreaming of the day when their children would finish high
school and they would be free to go home. But by that time they would have
fallen into the trap of the expatriate life and become permanent roving
expatriates, a little like the ‘Flying Dutchman’, I often thought.
To service the needs of our African businesses we opened offices in London,
New York, Munich and Toronto. These offices had direct liaison with some of
our major suppliers and procured goods for our African companies, but, more
importantly, secured finance for both our companies and other customers in
the countries where we operated. The choice of London, New York, Munich and
Toronto was made in order to tap the Export Credit Guarantee Department of
the UK, the Foreign Credit Insurance Association and Export Import Bank of
the United States, the Hermes Kreditversicherungs of West Germany and the
Export Development Corporation of Canada, which at the time provided
generous cover for the financing of their countries’ exports to Africa. That
became more and more necessary as the recession resulting from the oil price
explosion of the mid-1970s set in.
23
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

Over the years we gained the reputation not only of being a very efficient
group but also of having in-depth knowledge of Africa and the ability to
operate anywhere, regardless of political, social and economic problems.
Even the Caterpillar Tractor Company must have thought along these lines
when they asked us to go to Angola.

24
3. A N G O L A : D I A M O N D S
A N D … T H R E AT S

‘Bon dias, Camarada.’ I found the greeting of the receptionist of the Hotel
Tropico, in Luanda, unnerving. I travelled in many parts of the world, but I had
never, before or since, been addressed as ‘comrade’ by hotel staff.
We had arrived in Luanda, the capital of Angola, in the middle of the
night, after a repeatedly delayed flight from Lisbon. Going through Angolan
immigration and customs was an exhausting process. The forms were long and
detailed and in Portuguese, and there were only a couple of officers on duty,
who did not speak English and who were suspicious of all foreigners. It was lunch
time by the time we arrived at the Hotel Tropico in the centre of Luanda.
It must have been a beautiful city in its prime. It had obviously been a
Portuguese colonists’ town, with beautiful villas and gardens, but as the
colonists had departed en masse before independence it looked abandoned and
neglected. The shops in the town centre had been looted and the shop fronts
were either boarded or had gaping holes for shop windows. Refuse had not been
collected for months and was lying all over the place, rotting in the tropical
heat. The stench was unbearable. In the hotel, nothing worked. The elevators
and air-conditioning were not functioning. It was hot, but you could not open
the window of your room because of the stench from the street. Electric bulbs
were few and far between, placed sparingly to give a little light in the public areas
and the corridors. The rooms had one each. The restaurant was on the eighth
floor and as the elevators did not work one had to climb eight flights of stairs
in the stifling heat. There were only two items on the menu: meat stew and rice
or fish stew and rice. And the hotel staff addressed you as ‘comrade’ but were
not inclined to help you. I guess they thought that comrades should share
the workload.
I had gone to Luanda in August 1976 with a group from our finance and
Caterpillar divisions at the request of the Caterpillar Tractor Company to
investigate what could be done with Sorrel, the distributor of its earth-moving
25
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

equipment in Angola. The Portuguese owner, like most Portuguese, had left
the country before independence and decided that it was not safe for him or
members of his family to return. I understood that before his departure he had
cleverly managed to ship most of his inventory out of the country, and he was
afraid that he might be arrested for economic sabotage if he went back.
Sorrel’s operations gave an insight into the Portuguese governance of Angola,
where the literacy rate before independence was just 10%. Sorrel’s labour
force had been 50% Portuguese and 50% local (the expatriates in our Zambian
operations at the time were less than 5%), an indication that the Portuguese were
performing not only the skilled jobs but unskilled ones as well. As they had
now left the country and the Angolan labour force was completely untrained
the company could not function. Yet it had been very profitable and had been
very important to Diamang, the diamond mining company that owned about
1200 earth-moving machines, most of them lying idle in various diamond
fields up-country and in urgent need of repairs. The government was very
anxious to resuscitate diamond mining, a major earner of hard currency, and
making the machines operational was imperative – but impossible without
skilled workers.
Angola’s independence war had been one of the messiest in Africa. It had
been fought against Portugal since 1960 by three different liberation movements
representing the dominant ethnic and linguistic groups in three different parts
of the country: FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola – National
Front for the Liberation of Angola), representing the Bacongo in the north-west;
MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – Popular Movement for
the Liberation of Angola), the oldest of the groups, representing the Mpundu in
the north as well as the intellectuals of the Luanda region; and UNITA (União
Nacional para Independência Total de Angola – National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola), representing the Ovimbundu and related tribes in
the south and east. But independence did not come about from the struggles
of these movements. It came about as a result of the military coup that ousted
the dictatorship in Portugal in April 1974 and decided some months later to
grant independence to its African colonies. This acted as a signal to the three
liberation movements to start fighting each other for domination.
The Bacongo of FNLA, a small group representing some 15% of the
population of Angola, centred on the provinces of Cabinda, Zaire and Uige,
turned to Mobutu for support because they considered the country of Zaire
(now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) as their spiritual home. MPLA,
representing a third of the population, whose stronghold was Luanda and was
26
 AN G O LA: D IAM O N D S AN D … TH R EATS

dominated by left-wing intellectuals, African, mulatto and white, turned to the

Soviet Union and Cuba. UNITA, representing the Ovimbundu tribes that
comprise some 40% of the population, spread on the central plateau provinces
of Benguela, Bie and Huambo, as well as the Luena along the borders of
Zambia, turned to the South Africans, who administered neighbouring Namibia.
In view of the Soviet–Cuban influence on MPLA, the Americans inevitably got
involved too. They assisted FNLA through Mobutu but, more seriously, they
assisted Jonas Savimbi, the UNITA leader, through the South Africans. Together
they hatched a plan to split Angola in two along the 11th parallel (the
northern end of the Ovimbundu tribal area) and thus give control of some
two-thirds of the land area of the country to Savimbi. I remember an officer
of the American embassy (presumably the CIA agent) expounding the merits
of such division at the Lusaka Flying Club, on the grounds of the old airport.
An interim government under Portuguese High Commissioner Cardoso and
with the participation of all three movements was established in January 1975
and independence was set for 11 November of that year, but this did not
stop the civil war. Eventually MPLA, with the assistance of the Soviets and the
Cubans, prevailed. Cardoso duly departed on 10 November and independence
was declared on 11 November 1975, with the Soviet Union being the only
country to recognise the new nation. In January 1976 the South Africans, who
had invaded Angola in order to carry out the partition plan, departed and
UNITA withdrew to its tribal areas, as FNLA had done some months earlier.
After a lot of hand-wringing, with Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda holding it evenly
split between MPLA and UNITA, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)
recognised MPLA as the government of Angola in February 1976.
Having prevailed over the other two liberation movements, the MPLA
government was anxious to get the country back to some semblance of normality
– a near-impossible task, as it had no access to many parts of the country that
were under the control of the rival movements. Getting Diamang back into
production and earning hard currency from diamonds would be a major step
forward. To achieve it they needed to rehabilitate the earth-moving machines,
and they wanted us to agree to do so as soon as possible. We visited various
ministries and the central bank in order to familiarise ourselves with the
government’s thinking before we made the decision to take on the task of
running Sorrel. The sheer optimism, bordering on wishful thinking, that
prevailed was touching.
One young man at the central bank was bullish about the prospects of the
economy, which was based mainly on agriculture and diamonds before the
27
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

discovery of oil. ‘But how can agriculture run, without the participation of the
Portuguese owners who fled the civil war?’ I asked. He explained with great
enthusiasm the MPLA plan to organise volunteers from nearby towns to work
on the coffee plantations. He was taking part, he said, and he and his family
would be spending their weekends working on the plantations. I did not have
the heart to tell him that weekending bankers and picnicking government
functionaries could not possibly keep the plantations going. The plan worked

Working in remote areas, where logistical support was paramount, became the hallmark of ITM,
as we proved with our Angolan diamond mining operations. And river bed mining first required
diversion of the river Cuango by the construction of large dykes and dams.

28
 AN G O LA: D IAM O N D S AN D … TH R EATS

surprisingly well, though, for about a year, but the enthusiasm could not last
and inevitably the industry was destroyed.
We did agree to run Sorrel under contract with the Angolan government,
which had nationalised it together with every other business and property in
Angola. But Caterpillar felt that we had to pay $2 million to the departed
Portuguese owner – a courtesy it would not repeat in relation to our own
departure many years later.
I do not remember who suggested recruiting Filipinos as mechanics for our
Angolan operations, but it was a brilliant idea. It solved our skilled labour
problems and turned Sorrel into an efficient Caterpillar Tractor dealer. We
offered 12-month contracts (nine months in Angola and three months’ home
leave) and within a few months we had over 200 Filipinos of various skills
operating in various parts of the country. They were efficient, but, more
importantly, they were tough. They did not mind the lack of personal comforts.
Initially they worked and slept in partitioned freight containers, but as time went
by we improved the living conditions and organised well-tended compounds,
messes and clinics, with Filipino doctors, nurses and cooks. Most of the workers
were happy to renew their contracts time and again. And they ignored the
hostilities around the diamond mining areas, and the UNITA raids which kept
increasing in frequency, because UNITA was determined to take control of the
diamond mines, which were located in and around its own tribal areas, and use
the income to finance its military operations. We operated in many mining areas
which were spread over a large part of the country. As time went by our Filipino
force grew to a few hundred. Apart from Caterpillar mechanics, we recruited
long-distance drivers, motor mechanics, miners, clerks, doctors, nurses, cooks
and many others. They played a vital role in transporting supplies to the mining
areas some 700 miles east of Luanda. Without those supplies neither the mines
nor our camps could function. And the runs from the port of Luanda to the
mines were not easy. They were long military convoys with many trucks, trailers,
troop carriers and military escort vehicles, which frequently came under fire
from UNITA.
My own ‘runs’ from Lusaka to Luanda that I had to make very frequently in
the early years were not much easier. By that time we had our own Learjet but
we had to make a long detour through Namibia in order to avoid the UNITA
missiles. Not that the Angolan government missiles were ‘friendlier’. A plane
carrying the President of Botswana was hit, but, thankfully, did not crash. And
missiles were not the only danger. Entry and exit formalities had their own
hazards. In August 1978 I arrived for a short visit and needed to get back by
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Friday, because we would be moving house over the weekend from Lusaka to
Chaminuka. The trouble with short visits was that they did not give enough
time to get the exit permit stamp on my passport, without which I could not
depart. Diamang did their best and at lunchtime on Friday they brought my exit
permit. But not the exit permit for the Caterpillar representative, who would
be taking a lift with me. He was anxious to get to Geneva and we decided to risk
it. Escorted by Diamang personnel we managed the airport formalities without
much hassle, but when the door of the plane closed and we were ready to taxi, a
posse of military policemen armed with AK-47s arrived. We opened the door and
they came on board. They wanted to check the passports again. Shivers went
down my spine. Instead of helping Danae to move house, I had visions of
myself in an Angolan jail for trying to smuggle an unauthorised American out
of the country. But they were either not very clever or not very literate. The
American who had been in Angola the year before, had an exit permit from
his previous visit. They did not notice the difference in the dates and we got
away with it.
We worked as contractors to Diamang, for the rehabilitation and main-
tenance of the earth-moving equipment. Mining was carried out by a company
called Mining and Technical Services (MATS), a publicly unacknowledged
subsidiary of De Beers. Despite the distrust and dislike of each other the South
African diamond mining colossus was running Angola’s diamond industry
under contract to Diamang, a company nationalised and owned 100% by the
Marxist government of Angola. But in February 1984 the pot boiled over.
Diamond production had dropped from some $250 million worth in 1980 to
less than $50 million. The Angolans were convinced that the reason De Beers
curtailed production was that the world price for diamonds had slumped. De
Beers, on its part, complained of production problems caused by the war. In the
end they parted company, the South Africans declaring that they could not
subject their staff to the dangers of Angola any more. As we were on-site, willing
and able, we were offered a contract to operate some diamond fields, as direct
contractors to Diamang. This did not please De Beers, and Peter Leyden, a De
Beers director from Johannesburg, whom I had known from the 1960s when he
was working with the Anglo American Corporation (De Beers’ sister company)
in Zambia, tried to get in touch with me through our London office. I was not
in London and he left a message that ‘De Beers heard that we were seeking to
start mining an area, which was under an agreement between the Angolan
government and MATS and they considered this to be an unfriendly act’. He
suggested that I meet Ted Dawes at the Diamond Trading Company headquarters
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 AN G O LA: D IAM O N D S AN D … TH R EATS

in London. I went with my deputy. Mr Dawes had two others in his office, a
Peter Gallegos and a John Mackenzie. The meeting took place on 24 July 1984
and the record was written by my deputy. It reads:

Dawes said that he understood that we had come at the behest of Peter Leyden.
Sardanis said we had come because we understood they wanted to discuss
Angola. Dawes said that rumour, and news stronger than rumour had it that
Intraco [our Angolan company] was aiming to take over responsibility for the
Cafunfo area despite the existence of a contract between Diamang and MATS
running until 31 December 1984, and that Intraco had even been thinking about
and were manoeuvring towards taking over the whole of MATS responsibilities
for operating the Diamang mines. This could be considered not merely, in Peter
Leyden’s phrase an unfriendly act but a distinctly hostile one.
Sardanis said that ITM certainly had no intention of competing with De
Beers as we had no capacity to do so, but felt an appropriate position for us to
be that of taking the leftovers from De Beers. Our understanding was that they
had abandoned Cafunfo and were no longer interested in it and Diamang has as
a result asked us to become involved.
Dawes said that they had not abandoned Cafunfo. They did not return there
after the February raid because the military situation was unsatisfactory and they
were unwilling to risk British lives [quickly amended to British and Portuguese
lives]. Other people may take a different attitude. However during his visit to
Angola last week he had discussed the military situation both with the FAPLA
[Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola – Popular Armed Liberation
Forces of Angola] commander on the spot in Cafunfo and the general in Luanda
responsible for the whole of Lunda Norte province and he was now satisfied
that the security situation at least in a portion of Cuango division was good
enough to resume operations. Thus MATS personnel would be returning to
Cafunfo in the immediate future and taking up their normal tasks.
Sardanis said that Intraco had made a much earlier positive judgement on
the military situation, so had had people in Cafunfo for a considerable time now
carrying out repair work. No doubt, in view of this and perhaps because they
were very concerned that MATS were not returning to Cafunfo and mining
operations were not getting under way, the Diamang administration had asked
Intraco to put up a proposal for full rehabilitation of Cafunfo as a mining
operation. If Diamang now told us they no longer need such a proposal from
Intraco we would bow out gracefully. If Diamang did so it would possibly be
because they had achieved their objective of getting MATS back on the job…
There was discussion as to whether Intraco’s original introduction to the Diamang
project was as a result of De Beers’ initiative. Dawes thought it was but Sardanis
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emphasised that it was the result of Caterpillar’s initiative, as an Intraco team

visited Angola in August 1976, the year before the Diamang rehabilitation
programme was first raised.
Dawes said there had been a good relationship between MATS and Intraco
with Intraco in a subordinate role as a contractor to Diamang. He said that
Intraco’s manager was an excellent man who was very ‘comme il faut’ with the
local situation. Sardanis agreed and said that we were proud of him. Dawes said
that we must go back to a situation where Cafunfo was running normally again
with Intraco repairing the earthmoving equipment. My deputy said that we were
no longer just repairing the earthmoving equipment but now in Cafunfo
repairing housing, the water pump systems, electrical reticulation, etc. and we
were interested in doing more and more general repair and rehabilitation work.
Mackenzie showed disagreement as to whether Intraco had indeed repaired the
electricity generation plant in Cafunfo.
Dawes said he was glad to have had the opportunity to clear up the position
but we should know that if Diamang in any way abrogated their existing contract
MATS would not only withdraw from the contract and claim penalties but
demand return of all monies advanced to Diamang. Also, we should know that
he will always act to defend the De Beers interests and when necessary play very
rough indeed, quite unlike his more civilised colleagues in Johannesburg with
whom we were more familiar. Sardanis expressed jovial incredulity [here my
deputy was being polite]; Dawes said he would stop at nothing defending the
interest of De Beers and I shot back: ‘Including eliminating us, Mr Dawes?’.

But the bully did not succeed in changing the mind of the Angolans. He
probably knew that before the meeting. He had been in Angola the week before
and he must have raised the threat relating to the De Beers contract supposedly
running until the end of the year. Obviously, the Angolans ignored him, and
the purpose of the meeting with us was to intimidate us to withdraw. If we had
done so De Beers would have achieved its objective of curtailing production for
a few more months and probably negotiating a more advantageous contract.
But I do not get easily intimidated. As I was leaving I repeated that we were going
to do what Diamang requested. We would bow out if it asked us to. But it did
not. Our contract included production targets, which were set on the levels
achieved by De Beers, and large bonuses if they were exceeded. Within a few
months we were exceeding the targets three- and fourfold, which would indicate
that the fears of the Angolan government that De Beers was suppressing
production were justified – a point that worked in our favour as the bonuses
became huge.
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Except that payments were slow in coming. Diamang was succeeded by

ENDIAMA (Empresa Nacional de Diamantes de Angola) after a reorganisation
and payments became slower still. We would produce and deliver an average of
over 100,000 carats every month, but ENDIAMA did not always pay within the
stipulated period. It would sell the diamonds and collect the money, but it
applied the proceeds according to the government’s priorities, mainly to
the military, instead of paying its contractors. Extracting payments for new
equipment was an almost impossible task. ENDIAMA would confirm the order
but not pay until the last possible moment. On our part we never delivered new
equipment until payment was received – and in the nick of time it would
arrive, though not without agonising anticipation. On one occasion we had a
whole fleet of Caterpillar machines on board a chartered vessel in Baltimore, but
the $9 million payment from ENDIAMA was still ‘on the way’. As the vessel
had to sail because the demurrage was mounting up, we gave instructions for it
to sail to Abidjan. Luckily, the funds arrived before it reached there; otherwise
we would have to send the machines to Europe instead of Luanda and look
for buyers elsewhere, at tremendous extra cost and major loss.
As time went by the infrastructure of Angola collapsed completely. The roads
became impassable and dangerous from lurking UNITA guerrillas. Truck
convoys were escorted by the army and the journeys were long and hazardous.
The only way to ensure timely supplies of parts, food and medicines was by air.
Initially we worked in association with an Irish airfreight operator, but later we
established Transafrik, an airfreight company in association with an Austrian
entrepreneur. The planes, bought on the second-hand market, had to collect
supplies from South Africa, a fact known to the government of Angola, which
turned a blind eye. But planes cannot fly unless they file a flight plan and get
landing permission, which could not be done from Angola in relation to South
Africa. So we had to register the company in São Tomé, a minute island in the
Atlantic about 1000 sq. km. in land area and with a population of 100,000. It had
also achieved independence from the Portuguese at the same time as Angola.
The trouble with operating in buccaneering environments, as Angola and
São Tomé were at that time, was that thousands of new problems cropped up
daily and needed urgent solutions. And each problem presented a different
opportunity. From the distance of London, New York or Lusaka, you knew that
you did not want to get involved. But you found yourself involved anyway,
because the local management acted before telling you, or with the permission
of one of your senior colleagues who did not calculate the ramifications. In the
end you found yourself doing things you never really intended to do and, worse,
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you realised that, without meaning to, you had created a number of baronies and
associations that you could no longer control. They were all controlled by the
local ‘regent’ – the term ‘general manager’ does not convey his importance and
grandeur (the staff used to call our manager in Angola ‘the Fuehrer’ because
of his arbitrary manner and German origin). He would have liked to declare
independence but recognised the benefit of operating under our name. Such
characters behave reverentially when face to face with you, but badmouth you
and the organisation behind your back – a form of behaviour that I have since
noticed amongst all employees who have something to hide. And when they
get to that stage they can no longer be replaced, because in the countries they
operate they have all the contacts and because they have done many favours
to all the people that matter. One small mercy for us in the case of Angola:
none of our senior executives was ever caught smuggling diamonds out of the
country, a nightmare always at the back of my mind, which would have given
us a bad name even though the smuggling would not have been with our
knowledge and consent or for our benefit.
We did make good profits in Angola, and some members of our staff became
very rich in the process. But we found ourselves running a hotel in São Tomé
and passenger air services between São Tomé and Libreville; building apartments
for rent, and villas and a fishing resort for some of our executives and those of
our partners; and, to cap it all, spending money on an abortive oil exploration
project for which we had neither the expertise nor the resources. Lots of group
money was spent on rigs and drilling and sample analysis, the Fuehrer having
been struck by an acute attack of ‘black gold’ fever. And in the end we found
that the exploration licence and the contract were not held in our name but in
his name. He assured us that the reason was ‘local politics’, but added that we
should trust him as ‘when oil is discovered the benefits would come to the
group’. As oil was never discovered, this promise was never put to the test, but
the abortive venture cost millions. The Transafrik planes would, at our expense,
fly building materials from South Africa and furniture and carpets and
everything that was needed to build and equip luxury villas in those highly
unstable areas. But the Fuehrer would become unstoppable.

***

At some stage the Philippines appointed the Fuehrer as its consul in Angola,
obviously because as our local manager he was in charge of all the Filipinos
in that country. He took that appointment as recognition of his stature as an
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 AN G O LA: D IAM O N D S AN D … TH R EATS

international statesman and an African expert and, using this newly acquired
status, he decided to write to President Reagan asking him to change his policy
on Angola. The letter was written on Philippines Foreign Service letterhead
bearing the Philippines coat of arms and our Luanda address, which was also
the address of the consulate. It was signed and sealed by the Fuehrer as consul,
though he added an additional title under the consulate seal: ‘President Mining
and Project Management Division, ITM’. The letter, dated 3 February 1986, is
a gem of megalomania and naiveté, but as it describes the situation on the
ground at a very turbulent time and is amusing at the same time I thought it
worth quoting from. It read:
After much anguish and thinking I have decided to appeal to you personally in
relation to developments taking place that will further destabilize the present
situation in Angola…

After setting out his credentials – 19 years in Africa, eight years in Angola,
Filipino consul and CEO of a Caterpillar dealership and a diamond mining
operation that employs 350 expatriates, including Americans, Canadians,
Filipinos, Portuguese and British – he continued:
…My appeal to you Mr President is specifically this: the further involvement
or support by the United States Government to help the opposition forces of
the MPLA namely UNITA will not only destabilise the political economic
situation of Angola further but will at the same time endanger the lives and
safety of Western foreign workers in this country. May I mention to you Mr
President that in 1984, the Diamond Mine of Cafunfo was attacked and two
of my employees (Filipino nationals) were killed and 33 of my employees,
Portuguese, English and Filipino were kidnapped and taken into the south of
Angola. On December 31, 1984 the same mine was attacked again after we had
tried to rebuild the infrastructure and a further 17 Filipinos employed by this
company were kidnapped.

After reminding Reagan that an American pilot had been killed and a
Lockheed C-130 Hercules destroyed in the same raid, he continued:
Mr President, I visited the site in Cafunfo Diamond Mines shortly after they had
been attacked and I personally saw a mass grave of over 280 dead people who
had been buried and had been massacred by UNITA forces. Some of these
people testified to me [sic] that the remaining Angolan workers in the Cafunfo
Diamond Mine had been killed and shot in their houses. A lot of them were
women, children and older men. I mention this to you Mr President not for
propaganda or other reasons but because I personally have seen this destruction
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and my company and my staff have been involved in these attacks [sic]. Putting
politics aside, whatever the involvement in the superpower game that is being
done by the United States at present will adversely affect its reputation and its
position in this country as well as in Africa. If your efforts to support UNITA
have the result of producing more deaths and misery, surely they cannot be
efforts that are correct. As a son of a Missionary and a poor Christian [sic] I
appeal to your Christian values to consider the result that this type of action will
produce and would have in causing perpetuation and increase of death and
misery in this land. I do not think anything, even major political superpower
manoeuvring justifies further deaths of innocent Angolan people as well as
foreign workers and anything that contributes to this and causes further massacre
cannot come from a country or a person with Christian upbringing and Christian
beliefs. My appeal to you is humanitarian…
Then he warned Reagan:
With the many counsellors and advisers and political jockeys that must be around
you I am sure it is difficult for you to come to a decision that will be right from
a government and human standpoint. Let me say this, it is my opinion that a
decision that affects the lives of people and their future is a difficult one to
take and if the wrong one is taken the results are in the form of deep scars for
many years to come…
The Fuehrer must have felt very proud of this effort of his because he sent
me a copy. I do not know if he sent a copy to the Foreign Minister of the
Philippines, but, as I did not hear that the Foreign Minister of the time had
died of apoplexy, I assume he did not.
I am sure that Reagan’s ‘political jockeys’ were thrilled to read the letter,
which went on for six pages. More probably the Fuehrer’s cronies in Angola read
the letter, which must have enhanced his standing with the government. But
America did not listen and the raids on Cafunfo carried on. After one
particularly fierce battle UNITA guerrillas blew up millions of dollars worth of
equipment, killed several workers and captured 77 of our Filipino employees and
marched them to Savimbi’s headquarters near the Caprivi Strip in Namibia,
a journey of some 1000 kilometres, where they were released to the South
African authorities. They arrived well and healthy despite their ordeal. We
repatriated them, but many of them came back again.
Angola was not the first country that brought me into contact with
diamond mining. In the early 1970s I had been on the board of Diminco,
the newly nationalised Diamond Mining Company of Sierra Leone, which
took control of Sierra Leone Selection Trust’s operations.
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4 . T H E S TA R S O F S I E R R A L E O N E

I felt like a sitting duck in Siaka Stevens’ open-top car. But next to me the
President of Sierra Leone looked calm and cheerful and did not seem to mind
the five o’clock traffic in Freetown’s narrow streets that slowed his car to a crawl.
Sierra Leone had been a turbulent country and Stevens had been installed as
President after a coup by non-commissioned officers. It occurred to me that if
somebody decided to throw a bomb at him I would be one of the victims. Siaka
Stevens had invited me to advise him on how to take over control of the
diamond industry without interfering with its operations and upsetting
production, because of my reputation as the architect of Zambia’s economic
reforms. We had just finished a meeting at his office and he offered me a lift to
the Paramount Hotel, the only one in Freetown in those days, in his open-top
Mercedes 600 – a huge car.
When the takeover was completed he asked me to join the board of the
newly formed National Diamond Mining Company (Diminco), owned 51% by
the government and 49% by its original owners, the Sierra Leone Selection
Trust. I stayed on that board for about three years and during that period I
watched the beginnings of the collapse of the country. The Sierra Leone
diamonds were of jewellery quality and fetched high prices. But they were easy
to mine, which invited many illegal diamond diggers. All they had to do was to
dig a few feet into the ground until they reached the alluvial deposit – a few
inches of sand set on the old river bed that had over the millennia silted and the
river changed its course. They washed the sand and the diamonds remained at
the bottom of the pan. Strictly speaking, the deposits were the property of the
company and nobody else was allowed to mine them. But the diamond diggers,
financed by Lebanese traders, would find all sorts of ways to evade the
company. The most common was boys’ initiation rites. A large area would be
fenced and declared sacred ground out of bounds for the uninitiated. Inside the
fence, though, instead of initiation ceremonies, the illegal miners were busy
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digging. I flew over such areas in the company helicopter and the spectacle was
fascinating. The area within the fence looked like a sieve – all the pits, flooded
and full of water after they had been mined and abandoned, looked like huge
holes in a huge sieve. And the miners looked like ants busily digging new holes.
It was affecting the company’s business because after an area has been ‘raped’
in this fashion it was no longer economic to follow up with proper mining. The
board, at one of its meetings, appointed a committee to ask for the President’s
intervention. But Siaka Stevens was not very pleased with our initiative. He was
a tall, big man with bloodshot eyes, not used to coming under pressure. He was
annoyed and he showed it. He dismissed our argument that illegal digging was
harmful to Sierra Leone’s economy. ‘Yes, the Lebanese finance the diggers,’ he
admitted. ‘But the country does not suffer because the proceeds from the sales
have to come back to finance more digging.’ He was not prepared to see that the
Lebanese were paying a pittance for the diamonds and were making huge profits
outside the country. He did not see anything strange that Middle East Airlines,
the Lebanese national carrier, had regular flights to Freetown, its only destination
in sub-Saharan Africa. The flights were almost empty, but they were the only
means of exporting the diamonds directly to Beirut without having to cross
other borders and running the risk of being discovered by other authorities.
Stevens was obviously benefiting from the illegal diamonds and did not take
any action. His close ties with the Lebanese would become more open in later
years, when a notorious Lebanese entrepreneur was regularly invited to attend
Cabinet meetings.
I resigned from the board of Diminco over the sale of the Star of Sierra Leone
– a 682-carat diamond. The company’s consultants advised the board to sell the
diamond by special auction. When the tenders were opened the highest price
offered was £1,100,000. The consultants were confident that we could get at least
£1,250,000 and advised us to try another auction three months later. There was
deathly silence in the boardroom when at the next meeting I asked the general
manager how much the Star of Sierra Leone fetched. After a lot of hesitation he
reported that the diamond had been sold for £950,000 to a New York jeweller
on the instruction of Siaka Stevens. By that time the corruption of the Stevens
regime had become legendary and I decided that I no longer had a role to play
on that board.
I went back to Sierra Leone, a few years later, after we had bought two
international trading companies: Morison Sons & Jones, a nineteenth-century
British trading house from the Guinness group, and Breckwoldt & Co., a 1930s
Hamburg trading house, from the son of its founder. Both companies had
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 TH E STAR S O F S I E R R A LE O N E

subsidiaries in Sierra Leone, and I would visit three or four times a year.
Business would take me to Sierra Leone for the next 20 or so years and I
watched with great sadness that country’s descent into chaos and civil war.
The reasons were not dissimilar to those of Liberia. While Monrovia became
the citadel of freed American slaves, Freetown was the citadel of the ‘recaptives’
– the slaves freed from ships carrying them to the New World. Unlike the
Americo-Liberians, who had a common language and religion, the recaptives
had very little in common. They spoke different tongues and had different
customs, yet over the years they kneaded together a community more
enterprising and better educated than the indigenous people around them. They
also developed Krio, their own patois, a mixture of local languages and English
that has since spread to the whole of West Africa, with a variation for the
French-speaking territories. By the middle of the twentieth century the recaptives
had become the cream of Sierra Leone society, not just better educated but more
affluent than the indigenous people. And they were at the top of the civil service
too. When I visited for the first time I was very impressed with the quality of the
top civil servants of Sierra Leone – almost all of them with British surnames,
indicating their ‘recaptive’ ancestry. They were more sophisticated and better
educated than most of their Zambian counterparts of that period – thanks to the
Fourah Bay College, one of the oldest learning institutions in Africa, established
in 1876.
Breckwoldt and Morison also had subsidiaries in The Gambia, Liberia, Ivory
Coast, Ghana, Togo and Nigeria, which gave us extensive coverage of West
Africa. Most of the businesses were vehicle franchises (Peugeot, Renault,
Volkswagen), industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals, toiletries and cosmetics
and textiles. The textiles, mainly brightly coloured expensive brocades, were very
popular amongst the elite in Ghana and Nigeria and to a lesser extent all over
the rest of West Africa, where often husband and wife wear traditional dress made
of the same material.
The Breckwoldt acquisition also increased the ethnic mixture of the group by
adding a very large number of Germans. Contrary to the image I had of
Germans being staid and imperturbable, I found the Breckwoldt staff highly
emotional, almost childish in their dislike of change. The staff of the Hamburg
head office predicted that we would lose all the franchises because German
manufacturers would not want to deal with a British group (their perception of
ITM). They were indignant at the claim in our promotional material that we
operated on all six continents. After all, what they had learned at school was that
there are only five continents on the globe – did the British create a sixth? I must
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confess that that is what I had learned at school too, but my deputy was a
geographer with an Oxford degree, and who was I to contradict him? Their views
of the British aside, they also seemed to have nothing but contempt for our
choice of manager, a German we transferred from our Munich office. It struck
me that the burghers of Hamburg considered their southern compatriots
somewhat inferior.

***

Banjul felt like a run-down capital of a very remote province somewhere in

colonial Africa. It is in fact the capital of The Gambia, the smallest country in
mainland Africa and one of the many oddities of the continent. The Gambia is
a sliver of land a few miles either side of the river Gambia, stretching from the
coast for 295 miles upstream. Completely surrounded by Senegal, its total area
is 11,300 sq. km., and its main resources are peanuts and tourism. The beautiful
beaches around Banjul attract many visitors from Northern Europe, in search of
light, sun and warmth during the European winter. After a few visits I ventured
to ask why the Gambian immigration officers always made a last-minute
inspection of the plane just before departure, particularly questioning Gambian
youngsters on board. It was explained to me that some visitors at times smuggle
their holiday lovers out of The Gambia, who end up destitute in some Northern
European country or other after their hosts tire of them.
Unlike Banjul, Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire, was a buzzing
metropolis. But there was something un-African about it. First of all, I guess,
were the many steel and glass buildings that dominated the town, and the state-
of-the-art highway network that surrounded it. But what struck me in the early
1980s was the large number of French men and women performing jobs that
in English-speaking Africa had long ceased to be done by expatriates. In Abidjan,
there were French salesladies in shops, French barmen in hotels and even waiters
in restaurants. And the ubiquitous baguettes sold on every street corner. The
markets were, of course, very African and very colourful with men and women
in their exotic costumes. Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea have been the leaders in
African haute couture for decades.

***

There was an enormous difference in the post-independence behaviour of

Britain and France towards their former colonies. After independence, Britain
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 TH E STAR S O F S I E R R A LE O N E

persuaded itself that the colonies had been a major economic burden and
rushed towards cutting ties as fast as possible. It turned inwards, and its major
preoccupation was to save the pound from devaluation. In the process it cut
down many forms of assistance to its former colonies, including the topping up
of salaries of British civil servants still working in Africa – an irrational act whose
benefit I could never fathom, especially as these payments were made in sterling
to the beneficiaries’ accounts in Britain. The recipients lived on the emoluments
they received from the host government. In the early 1970s, when the Prime
Minister, Ted Heath, applied to join the European Economic Community,
Britain also demolished the various commonwealth trade preferences – a
measure that did not affect Africa as much as it affected the rest of the
Commonwealth. And in the early 1980s Margaret Thatcher increased the
tuition costs for foreign nationals wanting to study at British universities.
Somehow, Britain did not calculate the enormous benefits it derived from
the colonial markets and the cultural influence associated with British higher
education and Britons living and working in former colonies. As the British
withdrew, their place was taken over by the Japanese, the Germans, the Italians
and other Europeans, as well as Indians and Middle Easterners, particularly
Lebanese, who brought new attitudes unburdened by a colonial past and new
products of higher quality and lower prices. The vehicle market, for example,
changed from being dominated by British-made cars and trucks to Japanese,
Italian, German and Scandinavian in less than five years.
On the education front, the Soviet Union grabbed the opportunity to
develop cultural ties with Africa by offering scholarships to its Lumumba
University, to Leipzig and to many other institutions in the communist world.
I did not think so at the beginning, but I now know that this worked to the
benefit of the ex-colonies. The British withdrawal forced them into an un-
expected cosmopolitan and economic emancipation they may not have been
prepared for, like many had not been prepared for independence. Many
economic disasters may have come about as a result of this forced self-reliance.
But the English-speaking countries of Africa made those mistakes a few decades
ago and are now much the wiser as a result.
By contrast, the French maintained close ties and control of their ex-colonies.
For a start, the Bank of France guaranteed the free convertibility of the CFA
(Communauté Financière d’Afrique) franc to the French franc at the rate of
fifty to one, its original parity set at its inception in 1947. As a result the Bank of
France had virtual control over all the central banks in French-speaking Africa,
and in view of the free convertibility French business in the area thrived. In
41
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

addition France secured preferential trade treaties with all its ex-colonies, in
contrast to the British who dismantled them. So Frenchmen and French
products and French businesses enjoyed preference over those of other countries.
While Japanese vehicles and Japanese and American computers captured the
English-speaking markets, Renault and Peugeot and Citroën vehicles and Bull
computers were dominating the French-speaking ones. But this was not all.
The French kept a grip on the choice of President of most French-speaking
African countries and openly interfered in support of some long-serving
strongmen or for the demise of others.
The different behaviour of the French and the British may have given the
false impression that there was greater stability and prosperity in French-speaking
Africa. This was not the case. With French patronage strongmen may remain in
power for lengthy periods of time, but when they pass on they leave a vacuum
that leads to instability and civil war. Côte d’Ivoire is a prime example. From a
beacon of stability and prosperity in West Africa it has been ravaged by conflict
and civil war since the death of Houphouet Boigny, its first and only President
for over 30 years. Togo is following the same path after the death of Gnassingbe
Éyadéma, another French protégé, a former sergeant who participated in the
assassination of the first President of Togo in 1963 and took power in a coup
in 1967. Upon his death Éyadéma’s son was installed as President and has
subsequently ‘won’ a controversial national election. But discontent is simmering
below the surface.
We would expand further into French and British West Africa in later years,
but in the early 1980s the ITM group turned eastwards to the Middle East,
India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, Australia and the South Pacific.

42
5 . A N U N P R O F I TA B L E D I V E R S I O N

‘Like a mary-jane?’ I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I realised
that the Filipino girl was offering me a marijuana cigarette. I found her in my
room – part of the hospitality of Usiphil, the Caterpillar dealers in Manila, when
we went to visit them at the insistence of Caterpillar. Usiphil had protested
vehemently that we were poaching its staff by recruiting in the Philippines for
Angola, and Caterpillar felt so strongly about it that, in a letter demanding that
we stop, a Mr Page, senior Caterpillar executive responsible for that region at
the time, described our recruitment in the Philippines as an act of ‘industrial
piracy’ and demanded that we stop. We were stunned. We thought we deserved
praise for our initiative to resuscitate and keep the Angolan Caterpillar
operations going, but we were being hit on the head instead. Despite the
excellence of its products and its worldwide distribution operations Caterpillar
remains essentially a Peoria, Illinois, company, with mentality to match. And
when it gets on its high horse there is no point in raising the ethical principles
of an issue, or the more down-to-earth argument that the Philippines is a huge
country and its distributor there could not possibly be hurt by the recruitment
of a few workers for Angola (not all our recruits were Caterpillar mechanics). So
we went to the Philippines and our visit ended happily with an agreement to
transfer our recruitment contract to Usiphil’s recruitment affiliate, which must
have been the reason for the fuss – hence the generous hospitality, not only to
me but to every member of my team. Girls in your room seemed to be a
common method of hospitality in the East as I would find later.
By then, Caterpillar was no longer the main focus of our attention. Apart
from our own expansion, we now had to absorb Morison and Breckwoldt, which
operated in West Africa as well as the Middle East, South and South-East Asia,
Australia and the South Pacific. There was logic in the reasons why Guinness,
a brewery group, wanted to get rid of an old trading house such as Morisons that
operated in Africa and Asia, which we considered to be a good match with our
43
 A VE NTU R E I N AF R I CA

other activities. We should have been more sceptical about Breckwoldt, which
we bought from a consortium of German banks and other lenders. We were
persuaded that the German group got into trouble because the founder, who
was very old, had to retire and his son was not capable of running it. The son,
downing a few cognacs with lunch during the negotiations, seemed to confirm
that point of view. But, as we soon found out, European trading houses could
no longer compete with the up-and-coming Malaysian, Chinese, Singaporean
and Australian entrepreneurs in that region.
Nevertheless, these acquisitions gave us an international as distinct from just
African flavour, and the opportunity to rationalise our operations and divide
them into coherent subgroups. To emphasise our wide geographical spread, we
chose Meridian (in what seemed to us its more elegant French spelling) as the
brand for our international trade and finance operations, which traded largely
as Meridien Trade and Meridien Credit Corporations.
A group brochure of the early 1980s describes them:
Meridien Trade promotes commerce among the developed and developing
countries of the world through a global network of export marketing companies
in the major commercial centres of the world. These are supplemented by
branches, sales or liaison offices in many other countries so that Meridien has
trading personnel ranging from big export houses of more than a hundred

Drilling for water in Makuno district in Eastern Uganda. An Ingersoll Rand drilling rig, one of
the many products we distributed in many parts of Africa.

44
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side to side. Ropes creaked and quivered. There was hardly any
wind. On the tip of the quay a girl was sitting with her head on a
man's shoulder. One of his arms was round her waist. Their legs
dangled over the edge. It was a night for love.
Beatrix said nothing for several minutes. She stood hatless, with
her hands behind her back and her shoulders square. She looked
dangerously young, Franklin thought, and far too precious to be
unguarded. But with another look he corrected himself,—so young
that her confidence was a better guard than an armed man. He
wondered what she was thinking about.
"You've never had a sister, have you?" she asked suddenly.
"No," said Franklin.
"What a pity."
"Why?"
"She would have been a lucky girl."
"There you are," thought Franklin. "Nothing but a brother, you
see."
She faced him unexpectedly. "What are you going to do with me
now?"
He knew his answer but he made it, "What do you want me to
do with you?"
And she made hers, "Something must be done."
He stood looking at her. He had no inkling that they were at
cross purposes because he was not a woman's man. Also because
he was entirely without conceit. It was only when he dreamed and a
miracle happened, that Beatrix returned his love. In her new state,
which was so new that she felt almost a stranger in the world,
Beatrix was without conceit too. She believed that Franklin, because
she had seen the nobility of his character out there in that strange
mist, had outgrown the attraction of her sex and had become
brotherly. Some big moment was needed to startle these two young
people who were so much alike into the truth,—these two who had
always been handicapped by excessive wealth and whose lives had
touched in a manner that was so bizarre and accidental. What if the
big moment never came? Big moments are not put in the way of
everybody and even if they are, go by unrecognized in so many
instances.
"Yes," said Franklin, "we can't go on like this."
"You still think that the only way out is marriage?"
"I'm afraid so."
"And then divorce?"
"Yes."
Beatrix heaved a deep sigh. "I've asked so much of you. I
couldn't ask you for that."
"You don't have to ask me. It's my suggestion."
"You certainly are a sportsman," she said. And then she gave a
little gasp. "Good Heavens, what must I have been made of to have
done that thing? It seems incredible as I look at it now."
He spoke wistfully, eagerly. "Does it? Why? You're the same
Beatrix. You haven't changed."
"Are you the same Pelham Franklin? Haven't you changed? Let's
be honest out here to-night. This is the hour for honesty with the
moon so plain and the stars so gleaming and the sky so transparent.
Besides, I can't tell you why, but I have a sort of premonition that
you and I are going to be required to face another crisis. I got the
feeling this afternoon, when I was lying down. A bird was singing
outside my window, a curious, jerky little song, and it seemed to tell
me that I must meet something squarely and with courage."
"Courage?" said Franklin. "You have that."
"You think so?"
"I don't know it if you haven't got it."
"That's the first really nice thing you've ever said to me,
Pelham."
It was a pity that she couldn't see the queer thing that
happened to his eyes. "I don't say everything I think," he said, with
a sort of laugh.
"That's nothing to be proud of. There's lots of room for silence
in the grave. Let's go back." She was impatient again. She couldn't
understand why things were not going as she would have them go.
They always had.
He stopped her. "No, not yet. I want to tell you something,
kiddie."
Tears came into her eyes somehow when he called her that.
"Listen. If anything is on the way to us,—and if you think so I
expect there is,—most probably it will send me one way over the
earth and you another because this way has failed. When I'm out of
sight I want you to remember one thing."
"I shall remember it all," she said.
"But especially one thing. I set out to break you."
"You've done that," she said.
"No, please don't rot me,—not to-night, out here. If ever my
name flicks across your memory at any time remember my idiotic
attempt to give you the spurs."
"Why especially that?"
 "Because you beat me,—beat me to a frazzle and that's the only
good thing about this episode."
"You're very generous," she said, and held out her hand. She
had an insane desire to sit down on those dirty boards and cry.
Everything he did and said made her love him more and more. What
was the matter with her that she had turned him into a brother? Life
had appeared to be so easy to arrange. It had become so difficult.
He took her hand and held it tight. "I'm not generous," he said,
scoffing. "Don't let any man try the breaking business. Remain as
you are. Be the spoilt girl all the rest of your life, kiddie. You're all
right. Now come in and go to bed and sleep hard. That thing you got
just now may find us in the morning."
And they turned their backs to the moon and to love and walked
away without another word.
Malcolm and Ida Larpent had gone to bed. And the fat girl with
the big bow and her young friends had disappeared. The Victrola
was silent. There were no lights in the drawing-room or the sun
parlor, but the click of billiard balls came into the foyer and the reek
of cheap cigars. Two colored bell boys on the verge of sleep sat near
the desk. Outside the frogs were still at work on their endless
ensemble.
Beatrix nodded and smiled and went upstairs. She had left her
key in Mrs. Keene's room. Franklin hung about aimlessly for ten
minutes reading the railroad timetables with no interest and the
printed notices to visitors and looking at the colored advertisements
of steamships and whisky and magazines, without taking them in.
Yes, the episode had failed. He was beat,—beat to a frazzle. What
was going to happen next?
 Ida Larpent heard him stride along the passage, go into his
room and shut the door. Through the thin walls she could hear him
shunt a chair and do something to his windows and move about.
She wore a curious smile and an almost transparent nightgown.
Her black hair was all about her shoulders and in her eyes there was
a strange eagerness.
For half an hour she sat as still as a statue watching the hands
of her little diamond-studded watch. Her opportunity had come. She
was going to seize it. She knew men, no one better. This one needed
love and she, yes, she of all women would give it to him.
In that long, peculiar half hour during which her body was
without movement, her brain worked and her heart raced. She loved
and would make a sacrifice for love. That was the burden of her
inward song. Not of the future, not of freedom from money worries,
not of mercenary things,—love, her first great love and its fulfilment.
Of that she thought, smiling, and thanking her stars.
And when the half hour was up she rose, put on a peignoir,
slipped out of her room on the tips of her little pink slippers and
tapped at Franklin's door. He called out "Come" and she went in.
He was sitting in a dressing gown in a cane chair, under the
electric lamp that hung from the middle of the ceiling, with a pipe in
his mouth and a book in his hand and his feet on a cranky table.
There was a cloud of good tobacco smoke round his head.
He sprang to his feet at the sight of her. Although there was
nothing of the frightened woman about her, the only thing that
occurred to him was that she needed his help. A thief after her rings,
probably.
 "What's the matter?" instinctively lowering his voice. "Anyone in
your room?"
She shut the door and smiled at him. After all she rather liked
his naïve assumption that she had not gone to his room for anything
but his assistance in some emergency. It was very charming and
boyish and clean and all that. It made things just a little difficult to
explain though. "I see you're not in a hurry to go to bed," she said,
"so may I sit down and have a cigarette? I've lots to say to you and
there has been no other opportunity to-day."
"Of course," he said. "Please do. I hate reading, and sleep is
miles away." He placed his chair for her, the only more or less
comfortable one in the room, and got a cigarette and lit it. "Awfully
nice of you to come in. Well, what's the news?"
He drew up a stiff-backed chair and sat straddle with his arms
on the back of it. A good sort, Ida Larpent, he told himself, and
extraordinarily picturesque. He couldn't make out why she didn't
marry again. She could take her pick.
"Please may I have a pillow? I can feel every rib of cane. It
hurts a little. I'm sorry to be fussy."
"Not a bit." He placed one of his pillows behind her back.
"How's that?"
"Much better, thanks."
He went back to his chair and sat looking at her with a most
friendly and admiring smile.
She liked the last part of it but not the first. It was all more than
a little disconcerting. She knew men but not of his type. It would
perhaps have been better for men, to say nothing of herself, if she
had known one or two. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. She
was conscious of looking extremely alluring in her geranium pink
peignoir and slippers and her silk nightgown cut very low and her
thick, black hair, which fluffed out over her shoulders, rather like that
of a Russian prima ballerina.
"There's no news," she said. "The faithful Mrs. Keene gave me a
good deal of worry, poor, little soul, and Malcolm Fraser has not
been a very entertaining companion. He's by way of not liking me."
Franklin laughed. "Why? He likes everybody."
"Because I don't like him, I suppose. I never get on very well
with poets at any time. They always seem to belong to the cherub
family,—cut off at the shoulders, I mean, and surrounded with
Christmas card clouds."
Franklin laughed again. "You should see him whipping a trout
stream or crawling after deer."
"Mrs. Keene's in the next room," said Mrs. Larpent, warningly.
Would he take the hint and be a little less sun-parlorish?
"Is she? By Jove, yes. I mustn't make such a row. I wouldn't
disturb her for anything."
No, he had missed it. She crossed one leg over the other. Rather
more than a slim, white ankle showed. Well, the night was all in
front of them. "It was a horrid trick, getting rid of us like that. I had
just settled down on the Galatea and was preparing to have the first
really happy time of my life. You alone among men have it in your
power to do that for me, Pelham." She felt that she was hurrying a
little.
"Well, the Galatea can be at your service again. Not yet though,
I'm afraid. Malcolm and I have a plan in the back of our heads." He
got up and heaved a sigh and walked about. Beatrix came back into
his head at the mention of the Galatea. He could see her leaning
against the starboard rail with the sun on her golden head and her
chin held high. He would always be able to see that picture, thank
God!
"Tell me about it," said Mrs. Larpent, hoping that, after all, she
had not hurried too fast and that it was not her remark that made
him restless. Any other man almost would have caught her meaning.
"Not yet," he said. "It isn't sufficiently formed." And then he lit a
cigarette and sat down again, with a chuckle. "I can't fancy you in
this one-eyed hole. I thought, of course, that you'd stay the night
here and then take the first possible train to New York."
"Did you think what would happen to me after that?"
"No, I confess I didn't. Southampton, or some such place.
Society on the beach. You said something about Southampton, in
the summer when you had mercy on me that time and we did the
theatres. You were awfully good to me then."
She tried a daring move. "You paid me well, didn't you?"
Franklin looked as uncomfortable as he felt. He went off at a
quick tangent. "I don't think I shall be in New York next fall," he
said. "I may go back to South Africa."
Was he really quite so dense? she asked herself. Had he
forgotten every single word of that odd talk in the Vanderdykes'
library? Would she have to square up to him and blurt out the truth?
What was he made of?
She would have one more try. She got up. "I must go now," she
said. "It's getting late."
He got up too and opened his door. "Thanks for looking me up,"
he said. "It was very friendly of you."
 She gave him one long, analytical look. No, she and her beauty
meant nothing to him. He was not teasing her into a few
uncontrolled hysterical words: He was simply a big, naïve,
unsuspicious man who thought nothing but good of her. She
deserved better than this. She had never had any luck. And she
loved this man.
She said "Good night" lightly and passed him with a fleeting
smile. But in her own room she flung herself face down on her bed
and cried badly.
Franklin hurled off his dressing gown and switched off the light.
But in front of his eyes as he lay in the dark he could see Beatrix
ankle-deep in a blue sea, with the sun on her red bathing cap, clad
in tights, like a boy.
On her way out of Mrs. Keene's room Beatrix saw Ida Larpent
leave Franklin's. Someone seemed to have thrown a stone at her
heart.

XXXVIII

Ida Larpent did not appear at the breakfast table.

Not for many years had she permitted herself to enjoy the
luxury of tears. It was true that, since she had been flung on her
own resources and faced with the disagreeable necessity of fighting
her own battles, there had been many hours when tears would have
helped her and made her more human. She had refused herself the
indulgence for two reasons. She had no sympathy with what she
called weakness and she shuddered at the idea of spoiling her
appearance, even temporarily, by swollen lids. Her beauty was her
only asset, her only stock-in-trade, and she preserved it with the
eager and consistent care of a leading actress. But Nature had been
too strong for her and she had capitulated like an ordinary woman
for once. She had given herself up to an orgy of disappointment,
wounded vanity, anger and bitterness, and after the storm was over
had spent the rest of the night trying to see into the future,
balancing her account with Fate. She was not in immediate need of
money. Franklin's generosity had put her on her feet for the time
being. She had paid her pressing bills and could face the remainder
of the year without anxiety. But there were other years. What of
them? Her small capital saved from the wreck that she had made of
the fond and foolish Clive's affairs had gone. It was certain that she
had miscalculated the sort of man that Franklin was. Not having
been able to "get him" under what, with most men, would have
been the most favorable circumstances, she saw so little chance of
binding him to her and claiming some sort of protection that she
came to the conclusion that she must give him up. She had played
Venus to his Adonis and failed. It was not pride that made her retire
from the game but the flat knowledge that he could do without her.
Once more then she must go back into the Street of Adventure and
lay her snares for a rich man, young or old. One satisfaction was
here, and this was inconsistent with her materialism. It was better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Beatrix did appear at the breakfast table.
She too, had had a bad night. The shock of seeing Ida Larpent
coming out of Franklin's room was awful. She sat for an hour chilled
to the bone. After having loved no one but herself, and grown
accustomed to the habit of merely touching a bell to procure the
earth, it was startling enough suddenly to wake and find that the
earth meant nothing to her without the man who did not seem to
need her. In itself that was so much a shock that her whole
perspective was shattered and out of focus. And even if Franklin only
liked her as a sister, which gave her sufficient suffering, she loved
him and had surrounded him with a girlish halo of idealism which of
all things did not admit the possibility of such a visit as she had
witnessed.
No one would have imagined who saw her and heard her laugh
that morning that she had sat in the dark for many hours with life
lying all smashed about her like a beautiful stained glass window
through which a shell had burst. She joined Franklin and Malcolm at
breakfast with her chin higher than ever, readier than usual with
banter and mischief, the embodiment of youth, health and careless
joy. Her pride came to her rescue and she intended to live up to
Franklin's estimate of her courage to her last gasp. The difference
between Ida Larpent and Beatrix was breeding.
She found the two men on the veranda outside the dining-room,
—Franklin smoking his inevitable pipe.
"Good morning," she said. Her ringing voice turned them both
around. "Malcolm, if you don't write a long and terrible poem on the
early morning noises of the country, I shall. Even New York with the
explosions in the subway and the rattle of motor buses is a city of
the dead compared with this place. Cocks began to scream at each
other before daybreak, hens have been brawling for hours and the
gobble of turkeys under my window has been worse than an election
meeting. Is Mrs. Larpent down yet?"
"We've not seen her," said Franklin.
"I'm ten minutes late, am I not?"
"About that, but it doesn't matter," said Malcolm.
"I know it doesn't, but ten minutes' grace is enough even for a
woman, so let's go in and eat." And she led the way into the bleak
dining-room, as glad as a school-girl at the chance of being able to
get a little bit back, a very little bit, from Ida Larpent.
The waiters were almost ludicrously obsequious and rolled their
eyes towards Franklin with the nervousness of pet monkeys.
"How's Mrs. Keene?" Both men asked the question together.
"Up and about," said Beatrix. "A little weak, of course, but
otherwise well. Her trouble was wholly mental. Left alone with
Pelham on a yacht, she was convinced that, in order to preserve my
honor, as she puts it, I should have to jump overboard. Poor, dear,
little affectionate Brownie. If only she had taken the trouble to find
out the sort of a man Pelham is she wouldn't have turned a hair."
Malcolm laughed. "Is that meant to be complimentary or
reproachful?"
She saw that Franklin was watching her keenly. "Both," she
said, with a little bow, and sailed on before he could butt in. "I gave
her a faithful account of everything that happened and she is
beginning to believe, very reluctantly, that her favorite women
novelists don't know anything about men. And now what we both
want to know is this. Where are we going, how are we going and
how soon are we going, or are we all going to spend the remainder
of our lives in this rural retreat to make a study of frogs, farmyards
and fogginess?"
Franklin was silent for a moment. This was the old Beatrix. This
was the Beatrix of New York, the careless, superficial, sarcastic
Beatrix of the house party at the Vanderdykes' palace. What a fool
he had been to imagine that he was the man appointed to enable
Miss Honoria to give thanks to God! "The Galatea will anchor off this
place this afternoon," he said. "Malcolm and I will see you and your
staff off to New York on the night train."
"And where do you intend to go?"
"To Europe," he said.
"Is that definitely arranged?"
"Quite. Malcolm and I settled it just now. He will spend a year
or so pottering about London, Paris and Rome and I shall go back to
Africa."
With a mighty effort Beatrix held herself under absolute control.
"But what about the party at Sherry's during Christmas week?"
"Scratched," said Franklin, shortly.
"I see. Well, now we know, don't we? And that's something.
How long, exactly, do you propose that I shall remain a grass
widow?"
"That," said Franklin, "is entirely up to you."
A bell-boy came in, rumbled grinning up to Beatrix and handed
her a telegram. She took it. "Will you allow me?" she asked, and tore
it open. A curious smile played round her lips as she read it over
several times. "No," she said, "it isn't entirely up to me," and gave it
to Franklin.
 And what he read was this. "Ask Pelham to bring you home as
soon as possible. No one is ill but we are all greatly perturbed by
amazing rumors and daily anonymous letters. A consultation is
necessary. Much love. Honoria Vanderdyke."
"H'm," said Franklin. "Sutherland York at work. May I show this
to Malcolm?"
"Of course," said Beatrix.
Malcolm's remark, gravely spoken, was "Scandal again."
"Yes, we are back again at the beginning," said Franklin.
Beatrix pushed back her chair and got up and went out. As she
stood on the veranda with the sun on her golden head there was not
anxiety in her eyes, but triumph. If she really knew Franklin he
would not desert her at this new crisis. He would not go to Europe
and to South Africa. He would not consider only himself.
He came out almost at once and gave her the telegram. "You
may want to keep this," he said, and stood in front of her for orders.
"Thanks,—yes."
They looked eagerly at each other, hoping against hope that
there was something in all this, something more than mere accident,
something which it was not for them to pry into or understand, that
was to bring them as close as only love can bring a man and a
woman.
"Well?"
And Franklin echoed her. "Well?"
They mutually wished to God that they were different, of better
stuff and more worth while.
"It's for you to speak," she said.
 "You were right about the feeling that something was going to
happen to-day."
She nodded and put the telegram in her pocket. It didn't seem
to matter much what the outcome of it was going to be.
"We must all go back on the Galatea to-night," he went on.
"You will alter your plans for me? You will stand by me again?"
He gave a queer sort of laugh. "You didn't call me a sportsman
for nothing," he said.

XXXIX

New York again,—tired, hot, irritable New York. A New York in the
summer, careless of her appearance like an overworked woman with
a too large family and, in consequence, a trifle blowsy, with stringy
hair and a rather dirty skirt.
Four cars drove away from the river which lay glistening
beneath an afternoon sun.
"Well," said Beatrix, sitting back, "all we need to make the
procession really noticeable is a mounted policeman, a band and a
banner."
Franklin laughed and looked over his shoulder. Following them
came Mrs. Lester Keene alone in all her glory with the smaller cases.
Behind her, apparently not on speaking terms, Helene and the valet
with a collection of hat and shoe boxes. Finally an open touring car
piled high with luggage.
"What tune would you suggest for the band?"
 "There'd be a nice touch of irony in 'See the Conquering Hero
Comes,'" she said. "Don't you think so?"
"Quite nice." He congratulated himself upon becoming an
excellent actor.
"And now tell me a few things. What about the Galatea?"
"Oh, she'll remain in commission," said Franklin. "McLeod is
going home for a few days and the first officer will be in charge.
Malcolm will stay aboard too. I shall let him know what happens."
"Why didn't you bring him with us?"
"Don't you think he might have been in the way?"
"And where's Mrs. Larpent going?"
"Home first and then to Southampton, I believe."
"I forgot to say good-bye to her in the hurry of getting away
from the yacht," said Beatrix, hoping never to see her again.
"I thought you would," said Franklin, a little dryly. His mind went
back to the strained and uncomfortable return trip during which
Beatrix and Ida Larpent had instinctively avoided each other as
much as possible. He couldn't for the life of him make out why.
"She's very beautiful," said Beatrix, as though she were talking
about a view or a horse.
"Yes, but better than that," said Franklin. "She's a good sort."
And Beatrix changed the conversation abruptly. "Dear little
Brownie! It was very thoughtful of her to insist on riding alone."
"Probably imagined that you and I had plenty to talk about."
"Have we?"
"I suppose so, but I don't know where to begin."
And after that there was silence, for which both of them were
glad. This was the first time since leaving the one-eyed place with its
frogs and chickens that they had been alone. During the return trip
on the Galatea they had both tacitly agreed that no purpose could
be served by being together more than was necessary. Beatrix had
kept Malcolm at her side consistently. She confided nothing, spoke
little and pretended to read one of Jones's novels, keeping her false
brilliance for lunch and dinner. Malcolm, glad to believe that for
some unfathomable reason his companionship was necessary,
stretched himself out in a deck chair and wrote masses of vers libre.
When inspiration failed he surreptitiously watched Beatrix and
wondered why her eyes were nearly always on the horizon with a
wistfulness that worried him. Once or twice it flashed across his
mind that she loved his friend and was hiding the fact because of
pride, and the excitement of the thought drove every other idea out
of his head. But when he saw that her manner to Franklin was
cheery and devil-may-care and boyish,—that word seemed right to
him,—he dismissed it. "No such luck," he said to himself and went
on being quiet when he sensed that she wished for quietude and
broke into voluble conversation when it seemed to him that she
silently asked him to chatter.
He was a lazy fellow, was Malcolm Fraser, a happy-go-lucky
procrastinating young-old man, was this very dear chap, to whom
the mere passing of time counted for little so that it passed
pleasantly and who seemed to be content to absorb the color of life
and revel in the pageantry of Nature. But he had been born a poet
and one fine day, when he took himself seriously, ceased to be
impressionistic and settled down to work, his God-sent sympathy,
the milk of human kindness, of which he was full, and the exquisite
imagery that he had been collecting as a bee gathers honey, would
put him among the few men whose verse fills a hard world with
music and gives back to wounded souls that gift of faith without
which life is a hollow and a useless episode.
All the way back Mrs. Larpent had kept to her own room, giving
out that she was unwell,—as indeed she was. Her mind was sick,
and her body disappointed. Franklin had told her the truth, she was
obliged to own, when he said that he loved Beatrix. There was no
accounting for tastes and it seemed to her that a man might
infinitely better give his heart like a toy to a toy-surfeited child than
to this young autocrat.
And so Franklin had found companionship with Captain McLeod,
the first officer, and—it was enough to make a cat laugh—with Mrs.
Lester Keene. He spent hours trying to make the time pass a little
pleasantly for the elderly woman who was, he knew, anxious,
frightened and full of conscientious but wholly unnecessary self-
reproach. They became good friends before the yacht dropped her
anchor off her usual moorings,—even they. One of Mrs. Keene's
resolutions was that, in future, she would revise her novel-made
opinion of men. That was something to have achieved, had Franklin
only known it.
Through the mostly ugly, but sometimes queerly beautiful and
always unique city they went together, Franklin and Beatrix followed
by their entourage, and it came to them both that, in returning to
the house in which they had joined forces in a manner that now
appeared to them to be inconceivable, they were completing a
curious and a useless circle. They had undergone strange feelings,
placed themselves into difficult and dangerous situations,
disconnected themselves from the irresponsibility, the right to which
was theirs by inheritance, given up an individualism that was part
and parcel of their training and environment, and all for what? To
return discontented, disappointed and dispirited to the spot from
which they had set out. He loved her and would lay his life at her
feet and she loved him and would gladly be his servant, and both,
being alike and having the same want of confidence when it came to
the fundamentals, had not found it out. Fate had played a pretty
game with these two for having dared to tamper with her. And,
oddly enough, Ida Larpent was the only one of the characters in this
little comedy from which she had made her exit who had guessed
what Fate had done and now peeked through the cracks in the
scenery to see how it was going to end. And she, being a worldling,
suspicious of humanity, was not prepared to make a guess.
"Well," said Beatrix at last, gathering herself together. "We're
almost there. In for a very amusing evening, if I know my respected
and respectable family."
Franklin turned and looked at her. There was something in her
voice,—a sort of school-girl note, the note of a high spirited young
thing who had broken bounds and been discovered and faced
punishment,—that made him shoot out a laugh.
"Why laugh?" she asked. She never tolerated being laughed at.
"You'd make a rattlesnake chortle." He laughed again.
"Look out, or I may hit you," she said. "It's one of the things
that makes my arm utterly irresponsible."
He made a gesture that was almost French. "You beat me," he
said. "By Jove, you beat me."
"If you'd beaten me it might have been different," she snapped
back at him.
 "One doesn't beat you," said Franklin. "God made you and that's
the end of it, I find. No argument, as a man I know always says
when the rain has set in for the day or a bottle's empty. You are you,
kiddie, and so are the sun, the moon and the stars."
"You're a fool," she cried, "a fool, a fool!" And then she put her
hand quickly over her mouth. What kind of a fool would she look if
she allowed herself to fling out even the beginning of what was in
her mind?
"I knew that five minutes after I grinned like a Cheshire cheese
and posed before your people as the sheepish husband. All the same
it was worth it, here and there." He was damned if he'd give himself
away either.
"I think so too," she said.
The car turned and went through the great iron gates.
"I shall like the Galatea all the better because you've touched
her," he said.
She laughed because her lips insisted on trembling. "I suppose
you asked Malcolm to give you that. Don't you think one poet in the
family's enough? There's mother's machine-made hair and Aunt
Honoria's perfect nose and dear old daddy's kind but suspicious
eyes. 'It's all right in the wintertime but in the summertime it's
awful.'" She sang these pathetic words beneath her breath and
waved her hand to the waiting family with an air of superb
confidence and affection.
He didn't laugh again. Metaphorically he took off all his hats to
her and laid them at her feet.
 XL

The perfect Mrs. Vanderdyke, fresh from the manipulations of her

constant time-fighters, arranged herself on the top step of the
house. With a light, controlling touch she placed her husband on her
right and her sister-in-law on her left, so that, viewed from below,
they should be exactly framed in the elaborate doorway. She did
this, as she did everything, with a self-conscious sense of the
decorative, of being like royalty, in the public eye, of standing before
an imaginary battery of masked cameras as the chief representative
of American high society.
It was a good picture, she knew, and one of which her country
might well feel proud. She was quite satisfied with her own
appearance. Her head, which had taken an hour to dress, was a
work of art. She wore no hat. After some consideration she had
come to the conclusion that a hat would spoil the intimate, home-
like effect that she desired to achieve. Her face, strangely un-lined
and immobile, had the faintest touch of color. Her chin, held high in
order that there should not be the mere suggestion of sag, certainly
gave her the appearance of gargling, but what did that matter? Her
dress, which had almost broken a woman's heart, gave her youth. Of
her sister-in-law she felt proud. She added the right note of dignity
and autumnal beauty, with her white hair and eagle nose and
unconscious grace. She wished that her husband had taken more
pains with his clothes and had put up a better fight with elderliness
but, after all, he was Vanderdyke and a man.
She was pleased with the way in which Franklin helped Beatrix
out of the car and, going down two steps, she welcomed the
daughter of whom she knew absolutely nothing as though she were
a rather interesting and important relation. "How well you look, dear
Beatrix," she said, in a voice which gave the impression of having
been as well massaged as her face. She placed a light kiss on the
girl's cheek. "But I've never seen you so sunburned before," she
added reproachfully.
"The simple life, Mother," said Beatrix, knowing that her satire
was wasted. She put her arms round her father's neck. "How are
you, Daddy darling? Glad to see me?"
Mr. Vanderdyke, whose to-days were just as monotonous and
uninspired as his yesterdays, was unexpectedly emotional. He held
his only child closely and kissed her several times and said, "My dear,
my dear," a little brokenly. His little girl was returning from her
honeymoon. It might mean so much in the history of the family.
And then it was Aunt Honoria's turn. With eager tenderness and
pride she gathered into her warm arms the girl she would have
given so much to own. Her broken romance lived again at that
moment. Her eyes were blurred with tears.
Not her father and not her mother gave Beatrix a sudden feeling
of being a fraud and an impostor, but this kind, sweet woman whose
silence was so eloquent. How different everything might have been
if only she had been her mother!
With what she intended to be marked cordiality Mrs.
Vanderdyke gave both her hands to Franklin, who had never been so
uncomfortable in his life. She wanted to convey to him the fact that
even in the face of rumors and anonymous letters she believed in
him. "My dear Pelham," she said, "it is kind of you to cut your
honeymoon so short in deference to our wishes."
 "Not at all," replied Franklin. He pulled himself up as he was
about to add, "I'm only too delighted."
Mr. Vanderdyke seemed anxious to support his wife. "My dear
fellow," he said, "my dear fellow," and stuck.
Franklin returned his grip. "I'm awfully glad to see you, sir," he
said. "Er—what stunning weather." He caught the impish look which
Beatrix darted at him and gave it up.
"My dear lad," said Aunt Honoria, so kindly and with a smile that
was so maternal that Franklin put her hand to his lips. It was only as
they all went into the hall that he turned cold under the realization
that he was little better than a cheat among these people. All the
same, with one refreshing glance at Beatrix, whose impression of
half-shy, half-defiant young wifehood was amazingly perfect, he
played the son-in-law to the best of his ability.
Once more they were back, these two, in the place where life
had taken a sudden and astonishing twist. Months seemed to have
gone by since they had been there before.
"The Bannermans, Mrs. Gordon and Ethel, the Duc de la
Faucheroucould and Roy Stanton have been staying," said Mrs.
Vanderdyke. "By a very lucky chance we shall be alone to-night and
to-morrow. We will have a family council after dinner."
Beatrix looked at Franklin over her father's shoulder, and drew
down the corners of her mouth. No, he was not the man to make
her take things seriously.
Mr. Vanderdyke let out some of the uneasiness that he had done
his best to disguise during the welcome. "I wish I'd acted on my
intuition to telephone to my lawyer," he said petulantly. "Eventually
we shall have to take legal advice, I feel sure."
 Aunt Honoria broke in. "Now, now," she said, "we agreed not to
go into this matter until our young people had settled down. It is far
too serious to take up in a desultory manner. Personally, my opinion
is that as soon as Pelham has all the facts and has dined well and is
smoking a cigar he will bring his practicality to bear and possibly do
away with any recourse to the law. I have great confidence in
Pelham," and she smiled at him in a way that made him cold again.
And then Mrs. Lester Keene came in and was greeted graciously
by the two ladies.
Beatrix went across casually to Franklin. "What on earth has
happened?" she asked, in an anxious whisper.
"I wish I knew," he whispered back.
"Do you feel curious? I do."
He nodded gravely. Beatrix and scandal,—they were never
meant to run in double harness.
And then the imp of mischief that was never very far away from
Beatrix took its old accustomed place on her shoulder, and her eyes
began to dance. "I'm not surprised at my family's confidence in you,"
she said. "There's something in your appearance that could win you
orders even for an encyclopedia. What fills me with surprise and
amusement is the confidence they seem to feel in me. That's quite
new."
"Not so loud," he said.
She sent out a ripple of laughter. "Well, you certainly are
practical. That, I know."
"Do you?"
"Don't I?" She looked straight into his eyes and her laughter
ceased.
 Mrs. Vanderdyke joined them. "You have twenty minutes for a
little rest before you dress for dinner, Beatrix. You must be tired after
your hot drive."
"No, Mother, thanks," said Beatrix airily. "Pelham talked all the
way here and was so merry and bright that the journey seemed
short." But she went upstairs to the suite that he would never
forget, and her little touch of sarcasm found its mark.
"Come into my room," said Mr. Vanderdyke, "and we'll smoke a
cigarette."
Franklin followed him.
It was a curious room in which he presently found himself,—a
room which gave a pathetic keynote to the character and life of the
man who spent so many hours in it. Very large and lofty, it was
crammed with ideas at which he appeared to have made a
beginning, dabbled in and wearied of. There were leather-bound
manuscript books in dozens, several of which had labels on the back,
—"Notes on Old China," "Impressions of European Labor
Conditions," "Butterflies," "Songs and Sonnets," "A Life of Russell
Vanderdyke, Book I.," "Trout Streams," "The Improvement of
Factories,"—it would have taken an hour to examine them all. The
note of the dilettante was everywhere,—in the pieces of rare silver
that were mixed with old pottery, Japanese lacquer, Jacobean chests,
Oriental curios, ancient Bibles, first editions, faded prints, modern
etchings, and one or two appalling examples of so-called Cubist
work which appealed to Franklin merely as pervertism or the attempt
of men who had never been taught to paint to illustrate delirium
tremens. It was the room of a man of confirmed irresolution, of an
inherited lack of grip, of an intellect that was as unconcentrated as a
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