was
in a state of continuous reconstruction, and nothing of any value had
been found in the Rhodesian Congo Border Concession territory.
In due course the corporation became interested in other enterprises in Northern Rhodesia. . . 1
Though
Ernest Oppenheimer was to play subsequently such a great role in the
history of Northern Rhodesia, he never claimed for himself the status
of the pioneer; he gave pride of place in this respect to Edmund Davis,
who, he told the shareholders of Anglo American Corporation, on 22 May
1926, 'has been associated with mining in Northern Rhodesia from its
earhest inception, and is the father of most of the enterprises in that
territory'. And though copper output there in the early twenties was,
to all intents and purposes, nonexistent, that was not because no
efforts had been made in the past to discover and exploit base metal
mines. Even though, by the generation to which Rhodes and his
co-pioneers belonged, Rhodesia was looked at primarily as a possible
new 'El Dorado',2 and secondarily as an area for white
farmer settlement, British exploration began almost as soon as the
British South Africa Company (the owners, at that time, of all land and
mining rights, as well as the administrators of all the vast
territories which subsequently became Rhodesia) had been established by
Royal Charter on 29 October 1889.3 Copper had been worked by
the Natives for many generations, if not for centuries, and the
presence of disused Native workings was one of the indications of the
existence of copper which could be utihzed by the earlier prospectors
as a basis of operations: the era of organized 'scientific' prospecting
lay three decades ahead.
1
In the interests of historical accuracy, it must be pointed out that
the passage quoted above, from the memorandum, as well as the further
documentation available in the files of the Anglo American Corporation,
refutes the statement that 'Sir Edmund Davis, chairman of the Bwana
M'Kubwa company (of which Mr. (A. C.) Beatty was also a director), was
chairman of the Rhodesian Congo Border Concession company, and in order
to assist Sir Edmund Davis on the technical side of the operations Mr.
Beatty introduced him to the Anglo American Corporation of South
Africa, formed in 1917 by a prominent Rand gold-mining group led by Sir
Ernest Oppenheimer' (K. Bradley, Copper venture, p. 80). Apart
from all else, Sir Edmund Davis was not at the time a member of the
board of Rhodesian Congo Border Concession company, though Mr. A. C.
Beatty was; the chairman was Mr. Francis L. Gibbs, who was also
chairman of Minerals Separation Ltd., the original consulting engineers
(and, subsequently, for some time general managers of the R.C.B.C.).
2 One of the ablest of the journalists of the time, founder of the well-known and still existent weekly publication South Africa (renamed Southern Africa from 15 July 1961), Mr. E. P. Mathers, entitled his descriptive work on the area now known as Rhodesia: Zambesia: England's El Dorado in Africa (London, 1891).
3 When the administrative powers of the 'Chartered' company ceased in 1923-4 rights to land became vested in the Crown.
