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THE NORTHWARD EXPANSION 385
diamonds:
one a metal with an unlimited market, the other at that time still
primarily regarded as a luxury product, confined, so far as the major
sources of production are concerned, to Africa south of the Sahara and
with a highly centralized marketing organization.
He
was now to concern himself also with some major base metals— copper,
lead and zinc—widely distributed internationally, subject, especially
as regards copper, to very wide swings of demand and therefore of
prices, and all of them (again especially copper) having come under the
control of powerful groups, at that time largely American, backed by
great financial resources and dominated by forceful individuals. And
since the area in which these metals were to be exploited was still, in
the twenties of this century, primitive in the extreme, he was called
upon, in the course of development, not only to deal with problems of
geology and of mining and metallurgical technique, with organizational
and financial requirements of a very serious kind, but he also
encountered the problem of labour—both white and black—in a setting
which resembled the South Africa of an earlier age rather than of the
then present.
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♦ II ♦
Ernest
Oppenheimer himself has recorded, in the memorandum (already referred
to) which he prepared for the use of his banking friends in the City of
London, the immediate reason for taking an interest in the affairs of Northern Rhodesia:
...
The corporation's original incursion into Northern Rhodesian mining was
really the result of our diamond activities. After negotiations with
the Belgian and Angola diamond companies, through the intermediary of
Sir Edmund Davis, for the purchase of their diamonds had been
successfully completed, Sir Edmund Davis asked me as a favour to assist
with Bwana (M'Kubwa) finance and I agreed to participate in a small way
on condition that we were appointed consulting engineers. We looked
upon the deal as a share transaction; it was liquidated fairly
promptly, actually with the assistance of Sir Edmund.
Later
on, after negotiations with Mr. Chester Beatty with reference to West
African diamonds had brought us into closer relations with him, he
asked the corporation to help in Rhodesian Congo Border Concession
finance, which it did, again stipulating for the consulting
engineership, which was readily granted. It must be recorded that at
this time Bwana
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