Rhodesia Diamond Mining Page 430



	392 SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER questions of co-operation or of rivalry in the pursuit of ends and of means. But these were all matters for the future when on 18 January 1918 Minerals Separation Limited, a London company registered in 1903, specializing in metallurgical operations, and holding various patents for treating ore concentrates, entered into a contract with the Bwana M'Kubwa Copper Mining Company to act as consulting metallurgists to the latter company and to erect a 100-ton minerals separation plant on the property. It was Minerals Separation which provided half the capital for a syndicate, registered on 10 November 1921, as C.V. Limited (Copper Ventures). The other half of the capital was furnished by A. Chester Beatty and associated friends. It was this syndicate which 'fathered' three of the concession companies founded between 1923 and 1926.

	♦ IV ♦ The 'forward' policy of the British South Africa Company was inspired by Edmund Davis.⁷ Speaking to the shareholders of that company on 23 February 1926, he told them: . . . When looking at the map not many years ago, I was somewhat struck by the position of the Katanga and with what was taking place over the Northern Rhodesia Congo border. In the Katanga they have a copper belt about 225 miles long and about 30 to 60 miles wide. It was early in 1923—or it may have been late in 1922—that I suggested to the members of this board that they should place the development, or at any rate the prospecting, of Northern Rhodesia in the hands of syndicates with ample capital, properly managed, and with the necessary technical staff at their disposal. If the result of that policy proves me to have been correct, then credit will be due to the board and not to me, for I only initiated the policy and it had to be approved by the members of the board, and if that policy is correct, you will be surprised at no distant date by the results which will be obtained. . . . ' He had become a director of the B.S.A. Company in 1925 and was knighted in 1927. He was thus a most important link between the B.S.A. Company and the Rhodesian interests of Anglo American Corporation, before Ernest Oppenheimer himself became a director of the B.S.A. Company. He joined the board of Anglo American Corporation in 1928, and was deputy chairman of Rhodesian Anglo American until his death on 20 February 1939. Another important early link between Anglo American Corporation and the B.S.A. Company was the late Sir Drummond Chaplin, who had been Administrator both of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and who became a director both of the 'Chartered' company and of Anglo American Corporation.