THE other day as my wife and I prepared for our morning church service in Ndola, I decided to put on my Sunday best – a suit with a tie to match. Trouble was: I could not find the suitable one there and then.
So I literally turned our wardrobe upside down as I frantically rummaged through it, looking for the right necktie to match my navy-blue suit until I stumbled on a Debswana Diamond Company necktie that a man named Louis Goodwill Nchindo had given me as a memento at a meet-the-editors tea party.
The party was held in the diamond mining company’s boardroom in Gaborone way back in 1997-98.
Nchindo, who was then the managing director, had invited media practitioners from both public and private sectors for a cup of tea at company head offices in the Gaborone Main Mall through media and public relations director Jacob Sesinyi.
Being a foreigner, I did not expect to be among the invited until Sesinyi phoned me to find out “if you are not coming because everyone else is here.”
So off I went to the meeting in Debswana House, which is located opposite the British High Commission.
The tea-with-editors was a public relations project designed to brief journalists on operations of Debswana, which is a 50-50 jointly-owned company by world renowned diamond titans, De Beers of South Africa and the Botswana government.
It is the discovery of diamonds in the late 1970s and their prudent management that have helped transform the previously poor and semi-arid country of less than three million people into Africa’s economic miracle.
At independence from Britain in September 1966, the country depended on the beef industry as the source of its foreign exchange earnings.
After the routine briefing session – Nchindo, who played the role of linkman between the Botswana government and the Oppenheimmer family-owned De Beers mining company – invited observations and questions from the assembled editors.
The number of issues raised by the inquisitive editors, including the issue of the slow pace of localisation of key jobs at Orapa and Jwaneng mine operations, is beyond the scope of this essay.
But suffice it to say that the process did help clear the air – and everyone left the meeting feeling pretty satisfied at the way things went.
Naturally, for my part, as a ‘Mokwerekwere’ (foreigner), I could not ask some ‘awkward’ questions as my local or indigenous colleagues had done during the questions/observations session.
So I confined myself to what one might call ‘soft-targets’ like football, which is very popular among Batswana, in particular.
It had struck me as particularly odd upon my arrival in 1992 to find that Gaborone, the nation’s capital city and industrial centre, had only one football ground, the National Stadium, which is located directly opposite the University of Botswana (UB) and the Gaborone Golf Club.
This stadium also served (and still serves) as the home ground of Gaborone United (GU) and Township Rollers, the two dominant forces in the Botswana Football Association-run Premier League at the time.
I had always wondered too as to why big companies like Debswana, which made millions of Pula in profits and thus contributed much to the country’s billions of US dollars in foreign reserves, could not come forward and assist government by constructing another stadium.
When I put this to him, Nchindo simply smiled but said: “For your information, we (Debswana) are the ones who sponsored the construction of the national stadium; so no one can accuse us of having done nothing.”
However, I was unapologetic about it, as I strongly believed that the BFA and other stakeholders could find some way of pooling resources and building an extra stadium in Gaborone, one of the fastest growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa.
A second and probably bigger and ultramodern arena would not only help broaden the scope of competition but would also give soccer fans in the city a wider choice as to where to go and watch matches whenever
their favourite teams were playing.
But the status quo has, however, not changed as GU and their city rivals, Township Rollers (a side Zambia’s Freddie Mwila once trained when he worked in Botswana as an expatriate coach in the early 1990s), continue to share the same venue for their home matches.
Unfortunately, I never had a second chance to interact with Louis Goodwill Nchindo, whose gift of their company necktie I treasure because it is the only one of its design and kind in my wardrobe.
Just who was Louis Nchndo?
My former boss, the late Clara Olsen, who also once served as executive secretary of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), often referred to him as ‘your countryman’ because his father was believed to be a Zambian of Lozi extraction.
A former migrant labourer on South African gold mines, the man did not return to Northern Rhodesia upon his retirement, but married a Motlokwa woman and settled in Botswana’s Tlkoweng Village.
As a result, Nchindo was born in Tlokweng Village in 1941.
He was a brilliant student who went on to study political science and economics at Oxford University in the United Kingdom (UK).
After graduation in the UK where he had interacted with other young Batswana students like former president Festus Mogae and education minister and now real estate magnate David Magang, Nchindo returned home after stint in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, South America, with Proctor and Gamble.
In Gaborone, the young Nchindo continued to excel and soon became Barclays Bank Botswana’s (BBB) chief executive officer (CEO).
He moved to the newly established Botswana Stock Exchange as its director a few years later.
To cap it all, Nchindo served as a presidential aide (economic affairs) in the Office of President (OP) and later helped establish Debswana Diamond Company as a 50-50 joint venture between the Botswana government and De Beers in 1991.
All seemed to be well until the nation one day woke up to the horrifying disclosure that Nchindo was dead – and had apparently been eaten by wild animals – most likely lions – in the country’s Pandamatenga game reserve area where he had gone hunting.
The news filtered through after his family had reported him missing.
Concerned at this unexpected turn of events, government quickly sent a combined search-party of army and police operatives to the area where they found Nchindo’s remains, including a wristwatch which was reportedly still on his partly severed arm.
His vehicle was also found intact and parked a few metres away.
The entire nation was shocked at the tragic loss of a son – one of its best brains and gifted nation-builders.
For me, as an individual, Nchindo was a unique source of inspiration in many ways.
Though his biological father came from Zambia, he served the country of his birth without flinching.
There is no doubt that he was widely accepted as a Motswana. For his part, he did not sit back complaining, as some people do, that they’re being discriminated against or marginalized simply because of their parents’ country or countries of origin.
Others, of course, may want to disagree but I believe the man served his country well, hence his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Botswana civil service.
He did many good things for the benefit of the country before he left public office, which is why, I would like to believe President Mogae awarded him Botswana’s highest award – the Presidential Order of Honour Award.
It is now seven years since Nchindo died, but his green/navy-blue company neck-tie will always serve as a constant reminder of the only meeting I had with the man of goodwill – Louis Goodwill Nchindo.
To some people, a gift of a necktie is trivial, unimportant; but as far as I am concerned, a gift – no matter how small – is important.
It is more honourable to give than to receive.
Jesus Christ told a paralytic that “gold and silver I don’t have but what I have: rise up and walk.”
The man rose up, leaping and praising God.
I am no paralytic, but I do walk with a little sense of pride each time I wear the necktie Nchindo gave me because I happened to me the only Zambian journalist at his ‘meet-the-editors’ tea party, probably the last before his demise. MHSRIP.
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