Taking Care of Business Pt. 02

Copyright 2022, PostScriptor

~~~ I've seen the rain in Africa — but not in Namibia ~~~

We were greeted by the flight attendant in the lobby of the private aviation terminal and she accompanied us out to the jet, where we were swiftly seated and our jet departed.

I had been on the jet before and knew the members of the three women crew. They were all very professional and all business when they were in the air. We were served lunch, and after they cleaned up our plates, we were left alone.

Johan, you might have guessed, was not normally my 'driver'. He was, in fact, the head of The Trust's security for its African holdings. In practice, that meant that he had a small mercenary army of mostly former South African soldiers who worked for us. Some white, mostly black, but highly trained and disciplined.

I reviewed his plan for dealing with the problem at our mine, and then he and I both kicked back and slept. It was a long flight from Germany to South Africa.

Although The Trust had holdings in South Africa, that was not our ultimate destination. The mining operation in question was in Namibia, across the border from South Africa in the Hardap province. But we were going to keep a low profile for this trip.

The jet landed at the airport in Jo'berg, deplaned, and we almost immediately got onto a smaller turbo prop plane for the rest of our trip.

We were taking a circuitous route that would add time, but more or less keep the South African authorities from knowing that we had left the country, and the Namibian authorities from knowing that we were in their in country.

Our flight plan that was filed indicated that we were heading down to Kimberly, where the famous diamond mines are. We were partial owners of one of the smaller mines in that area (still very profitable) and one of the few holdings The Trust had that it didn't own outright. We had other minority investors, to my amusement, when I discovered it that included the Queen of England! I had been down in the mine during my teenage years; thousands of feet down! I doubt that the Queen had ever set foot in the mine.

But not long after we got out beyond the air traffic control zone, we deviated from our flight plan and flew over the Kalahari desert to Mamuno, a city on the Botswana/Namibia border. We used the railway from South Africa that went through the town of Mariental to resupply the mine with needed supplies, but we frequently used the little village of Mamuno as a way station for taking out gem stones, something that we kept very quiet. We kept several aircraft there, along with a private fuel supply and a long dirt runway.

When we arrived in Mamuno, we switched over to a helicopter and flew the rest of the way to our 300,000-acre mining concession. We kept low and avoided customs inspectors or military patrols. Namibia has one of the smallest, least capable militaries in Africa. After all, the entire country is mostly desert, and they expect the mining operations to protect themselves.

While I had been making my way into the country through the back door, Johan had flown directly to Windhoek, the capital and largest city in the country. While I had been flying slowly, he had a separate operation moving forward. We had been in contact, and it had been successful thus far.

I was waiting in the house that Jack had built for himself, looking out at the mine. It was an open pit mine, unlike the diamond mines that typically followed 'pipes' the descended for thousands of feet. The Kimberly mine was one of this 'pipe' sort of mine.

Ours was more like the copper mines in Arizona and Chile, or the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, only on a far smaller scale. From the house I could see the workers in the distance. They were almost entirely members of the Ovambo tribe, the largest tribe in Namibia — one of the offshoots of the great Bantu southward migrations. They were operating the heavy equipment that broke up the soil, put it into huge haulers that brought it up to the processing facility at the top of the mine.

The general manager of the mine was a member of the Shona tribe of Zimbabwe, who had attended a formal University mining school, and since he was not Ovambo, he was less inclined to be corrupt or assist in the theft of product. My uncle was not opposed to using long established tribal rivalries to prevent collusion.

Kembo Chitando looked down on the Ovambo workers and was strict and unforgiving with shirkers or thieves. He got a cut of the profits, so he regarded thieves as if they were stealing directly from him. Which, in a way, they were.

There were also a variety of other technical specialists working at the mine who were Afrikaans, and German — descendants of earlier settlers in Namibia.

Johan finally appeared in a vehicle convoy with our guest — the Minister for Mining and Energy, the Hon. Netumbo Kawana. Netumbo was an old SWAPO (South-West African Peoples Organization) hand who had been in the government since its inception in 1990.

The Minister, as he liked to be called, was a man of small stature — around 5' 3". There was talk that he was half Ovambo and half San or Nama, the San being the original bushmen inhabitants, or Nama, a Bantu tribe, but smaller with light bones, and taller than the San. Who knows, and did it matter?

Alas, he was an unhappy guest, since he had been more or less kidnapped from his lover's bed in Windhoek.

"Mr. Walker!" he shouted at me, "What are you doing KIDNAPPING me and bringing me here to this desolate and god forsaken place! If you wanted to see me, you could have just called my assistant and she would have made you an appointment!"

"Ah, mister Minister! Sometimes there are things to be discussed that cannot go thru official channels, or over phone lines, and today is one of those times."

The Minister was still sputtering, until we brought out some of his favorite single-malt Scotch. After he tossed down the first glass and started on the second, his temper had diminished.

"So what is so secret and important that you have your men frighten me half to death?"

"Minister, we have been hearing rumors that you were unhappy with our current arrangement and were considering actions against the mine."

I continued,

"I know that you have your agents working here in the mine, and they are telling you that we seem to be coming close to the end of the time that this mine will be profitable. Within a year or two. Right?"

He nodded his head in agreement without changing his expression.

"But you know that we will continue to put your consideration money into your Swiss account at least until that time, yes? And a big bonus when and if we do close the mine down."

He nodded his head once again.

"So, just exactly what is the problem that has you so upset that you are threatening my operation here?"

Minister Kawana pondered for close to a full minute before he answered.

"You do not understand the politics inside of the government.

"I am being attacked by the Minister for Environmental Affairs. She must also have her sources of information, because she seems to be aware of the limited amount of gem materials remaining. Further, she believes that when you close down the mine you will leave a contaminated open pit that you will expect the government or the United Nations to pay to clean up!

"What she really wants is my portfolio, because she feels that there are, ahem, more benefits to overseeing diamonds, gold, and gems, than running clean up crews.

"So you see her complaint is what you would call, a straw man complaint, since this mine is far from population centers, so who, one might ask, will be damaged by this hypothetical contamination. But she is clubbing me over the head with this every time the cabinet meets!

"Plus, I am having to provide incentives for other members of the government to let The Trust continue to operate so freely in our country."

I paused and reflected on what the Minister had just said.

"Mr. Minister," I said (always using the honorific, because politicians are the same everywhere — they want to have their egos stroked), "Let us take a walk around the production facility and see if we can find some solutions to your problem."

He hesitated a little when I handed him a hard-hat, like he thought that we might throw him over the edge of the pit, which we had considered, but thought that he would be reasonable, at least this time.

As we walked through the building I explained that situation as I saw it.

"First, Mr. Minister, the two-year estimate is based on the seams of gem stones that we currently know about. We are constantly exploring for new seams in areas that we have not uncovered yet. Can you see the long trenches on the sides and bottom of the pit? Those are new areas where we are exploring for precious and semi-precious stones. Some of them will probably contain gems, and will justify keeping the mine operating longer.

"We actually have a very rich variety of stones that we have found here. Amethyst, montebrasite — a very rare stone, ceruleite, citrine — a variety of quartz, Nambulite, tourmaline. But the most expensive stones we have found are Damantoid garnet, that we only discovered in 1996, and friedelite, which is very rare. Those, and the montebrasite, are more expensive per caret than diamonds, which as you know, are really very plentiful and their value only comes from the great diamond houses limiting access to the gem quality stones."

"Even more exciting is a find of benitiote, a gemstone that was previously only found in San Benito County in California, and that mine closed in 2005. We expect the demand and the price for those stones to be very high as well, as soon as we announce their availability."

"But pardon me for going on — I am an enthusiast —you know I am a geologist by training and I've been collecting gemstones since I was a teenager."

I paused, "Yes, we have gemstones that are more expensive than diamonds, but we also have them in only limited quantities, and they are more difficult to bring to market. Still, I think that we can solve your problems."

As we walked down the lines where the rocks were separated from the dirt, and to the line where experts were separating potential gems from the dross, I pointed out a barrel to the Minister.

"As far as the environmental impact of our shutting down, I have an agreement waiting in the office that commits The Trust to refilling the pit, after making sure that we have removed any contaminants from the soil."

We passed two fifty-gallon drums labeled as contaminated soil.

"We have already been very careful to clean up toxic messes. Most of what you see is soil contaminated with oil, gas, cleaning fluids, those sorts of chemicals."

The Minister looked into the drums containing the oil soaked dirt.

"So what do you do with it?" he asked, gesturing to the drums.

"We ship them to our deep mine in South Africa and put them in one of the lower tunnels that we have already exhausted and bury them."

The Minister thought that was very funny. Like many old time SWAPO comrades, he thought that putting something over on the South Africans was a great joke.

By this time, as anticipated, I had completely bored him to tears, so we returned to the office.

There I armed him with the already signed agreement to do the cleanup that he could take to the next cabinet meeting and spring on his Minister for the Environment.

But then there was the issue of more money.

"So, how much more do you need to spread the joy to your associates to let us keep our mine running smoothly?"

Then the bargaining started.

At the end of the day, we gave him another 10% above what we had been paying him, and cut a deal that he would continue to get his grift through the end of the cleanup process. That would be at least five years away. He thought that he had made a hard deal. It was exactly what we had expected and prepared for. He was happy; we were happy.

As Johan and his merry band drove the Minister back to Windhoek, I reflected on my duplicity. As I bamboozled him with talk about the gems that we were getting from the mine, he had actually seen what was making the mine so obscenely profitable in recent days.

It was those two fifty-gallon drums filled with contaminated dirt. Mixed in that dirt was a large amount of Rhodium, element number 45 in the periodic table. It has a number of uses, but by far the most notable today is in the catalytic converters on every automobile exhaust system

We had been shocked to find it in the trailings of the mine. We had been checking for gold, or copper, zinc, or one of the other metals regularly found in Namibia. None of those were present in amounts that would justify processing them. It was accidental that we found the Rhodium, and we were dumbfounded at the concentration in the trailings.

Understand that a recent price for Rhodium was $30,000 per troy OUNCE! And we were shipping it in 50 gallon drums at a time as contaminated soil to our facility in South Africa, where it was purified, all of the crap removed, and turned into little silver colored metallic bars that we sold. We passed it through a number of phony corporations as cutouts to hide the original source, and fed it into the market slowly, keeping everyone fooled.

Yes, we would take our time 'cleaning up' the pit, and we would keep 'exploring' for gems, all the while removing as much Rhodium as we can get away with.

Oh well!

I thanked Kembo and all of the specialists for their work and got one of the pilots to fly me to Windhoek in the Mooney that we kept at the mine. The Minister could be driven in a 4X4, but I had a reason to make tracks.

We had a small leased ranch outside of Windhoek, large enough to have a runway for the airplanes, with a nice modern house.

We only needed two official places in Namibia, one at the mine and the other for when we needed to stay close to the capital.

The house by the mine was fairly primitive; indeed all of the barracks for the men working there were primitive by modern standards. But by rural Namibian standards they were at least middle class: running water, showers, sinks, electrical power.

That the mine house was a bit rustic had never bothered Uncle Jack or me. We were used to roughing it in places far from civilization, so it was comfortable enough for us. Not a place for wives or girlfriends.

The house in Windhoek was much nicer, bigger, and more comfortable. This house was not just a place for us to stay, but was also a place for having social events for the Windhoek elites. We would also hold meetings in 'The Big House', as we called it. It allowed us privacy from the many eyes that would be watching the representative of The Trust.

Actually, The Trust rented several other houses in Windhoek as well, but they were neither as large or fancy as the Big House, and their purposes were more nefarious. In fact we kept it very secret that The Trust was connected to them. They were houses for our spies.

Our main spy was Saara Mbandeka. She was Netumbo Kawana's secretary and personal assistant. She hated her boss and somehow Uncle Jack had found her. He paid her, cash, in U.S. dollars — eagerly accepted in all of the Southern African countries, and provided her with a decent house in a nicer area of Windhoek for her and her daughter. She loved Uncle Jack as much as she hated her boss.

Our second agent in Namibia was a rather slimy individual name François Martin, a refugee in Namibia, escaping one step ahead of the French authorities.

Frankie, as we called him, was about 5' 10" tall, thin, and about 35 years old. He was also bisexual and had a thing for black men. We set him up in a small place, not as nice as Saara's, in a shadier part of town, with video cameras hidden in virtually every room of the house — including the bathroom.

We also set Frankie up with a bar to run (he liked his booze, so we didn't expect to see any profits!) and a stipend in addition. Frankie didn't care about the cameras, and I think that after awhile, he probably forgot they were even there.

I arrived at the Big House just in time to welcome Saara and her 18-year old daughter as they drove into the driveway.

Saara was from a group in Namibia called the 'Basters' — a bastardized version of, well, the word 'bastards.' They were a proud group of mixed descendants of African women and European, mainly Afrikaans settlers.

Saara was a beautiful woman in her late thirties (I had noticed that Uncle Jack seemed to like employing good looking women!) and her daughter, Heather, was just staggeringly beautiful. From what I understood, Saara's husband, and Heather's father, was Afrikaans as well, and he had been killed in a mining accident where he worked. Saara was a young single mother, struggling to make ends meet, when Jack encountered her and brought her into The Trust fold.

I think one of the reasons that she hated Netumbo was his lack of respect for women in general and her in particular. But she was so efficient, organizing his office and work with such skill that he couldn't operate without her.

When she saw me, she jumped out of the car and ran up and grabbed me in a fierce hug. She had tears running down her face. Heather was behind her, but much more reserved.

"Oh, Kevin! I heard about Mr. Jack! I am so sad. You know how much I loved him! He was so good to me and Heather. And now he is gone. What will we all do?"

I hugged her back, and patted her amazing bubble butt and said,

"We will continue on, just as Jack would have wanted us to."

She looked up at me with eyes full of hope.

"So we can stay in the house?"

"Of course. And you will continue working for The Trust. In fact, come in, I need to tell you about my meeting with your other boss."

"Oh, him!" she said with a sneer. "I have some photos and videos for you, in case you need them."

I could see Heather standing behind her mother with a big grin plastered on her face.

"Well, lets go in and get settled!" I announced.

Inside we went into the kitchen and sat in chairs on one side of the large island.

"What can I get you girls to drink?" They both giggled.

"Could I have a Jack and Coke?" Saara had come to the U.S. with my Uncle several times and had fallen in love with Jack Daniels©, so we always kept a supply at the house.

"And you?" I asked Heather.

She looked at me rather shyly and asked, "Could I have a 'Dew'"

She was referring to one of the American soft drinks that Uncle Jack had shipped in from South Africa. Almost everything had to be shipped in to Namibia, and I think that she was worried that it would be expensive. The Coke© that her mother was having was bottled in Namibia, so that was in endless supply.

"Of course, and as many as you would like."

I went off and got the drinks; I think they were both surprised when I served them, instead of expecting the vice versa.

"Let's put off business until after dinner," I suggested.

I spoke with 'cook' and she went off to fix dinner.

Yes, by the way, we had a number of people working in the Big House. In Africa, there aren't usually government social welfare nets for the people, so if you have money, you are expected to have a big, if not overpaid, staff. People to cook and clean; gardeners, people to wash your clothes, and so forth. I'm pretty sure that we had a couple of older women on the payroll whose duty was just to be there to advise the younger women who were working for us!

Anyway, our chef was Afrikaans and trained at one of the cooking schools in Cape Town, South Africa, so she knew what she was doing.

We had a filet mignon of Impala served on a bed of mashed potatoes with fresh green beans — I wish I knew how they were prepared and what was in them, because they were all excellent. A crème brûlée for dessert and we were sated for the evening.