By Charles Wyndham.

Wandering into cafe Dijo’s at Game City in Gaborone to have some chicken pie, I dropped into Woolworths to buy some papers.

I bought all the local papers to hear the latest about the Louis Nchindo affair.

My first mistake was to think that three papers might provide three different views or interpretations of the events surrounding his apparent suicide.

To me skimming through the papers between mouthfuls of pie, all the articles could have been written by the same guy, he may even have made the chicken pie.

That said, the whole affair to a relatively disinterested outsider is becoming more intriguing, unlike my chicken pie.

Nchindo’s body has been cremated which is what I now think would have been a good idea for the pie.

This is unfortunate, in relation to Nchindo’s remains, as it may prevent the spread of such outlandish rumours that he was shot five times.

What is not a rumour, is that Nchindo’s father also committed suicide having been found with some illicit diamonds.

The more and more that one hears makes it quite clear that Nchindo was the king maker in Botswana.

This larger than life character had a rapacious capacity for expenditure, he also had a remarkable ability to fund it.

Whatever is said publicly to the contrary, those locals to whom I chat are convinced that if this was a suicide there is more than likely to have been an element of assistance in their view.

Weight of numbers of course does not mean this view is the truth, but equally it cannot necessarily be completely discounted, certainly not at this stage anyway.

Such gossip becomes more prevalent with what appears to be such remarkable haste in cremating the body of the deceased, following the controversial circumstances of this death.

It is I suppose inevitable that Nchindo’s death will spawn a long list of conspiracy theories just as the death of Princess Diana in a car smash did and which have been proved to be just that, conspiracy theories.

What we do know now is that Nchindo ended up as the chairman of Debswana, which in his glory days contributed over 70% to De Beers diamond account and I think roughly the same amount to Botswana’s foreign exchange earnings.

Nchindo was joined at the hips with De Beers, not solely because but exemplified by being a close friend of the previous De Beers managing director Gary Ralfe.

It was over an hilarious breakfast in Tel Aviv that a colleague and I were given a blow by blow account of how the guy running with the De Beers privatisation in 2001 got Nchindo to sign the necessary papers.

The speed and secrecy surrounding the privatisation has often been commented upon, just as the fact that at the time many thought that the company was bought very cheaply indeed.

The price of De Beers at any time based on contribution to profits, basically revolves around the value of the Botswana assets.

It was therefore presumably key to De Beers in its privatisation to ensure a sympathetic valuation of the Botswana mines.

Another interesting aspect of the Nchindo affair who has been openly accused (without any denial as far as I am aware) of being the conduit or instigator or whatever other words you choose, for the funding of the BDP, the party that has been power since independence, by De Beers.

The official response from De Beers has been one of contrite moral rectitude, since 2007 with new management the company is one of pristine correctness.

I have two comments to this.

Firstly, it was in 2000, a year before privatisation which apparently Gary Ralfe had no idea was about to take place, that the launch of De Beers new Supplier of Choice (SoC), strategy took place. 

The actual implementation did not take place till 2003, due to legal wrangles with the EU anti competition authorities.

But SoC included what was called Best Practice Principles where De Beers effectively set out to monitor the good behaviour of its clients to ensure that everyone followed the highest code of conduct.

In the context of what we now know was going on in Botswana this is pretty ripe.

Secondly, for De Beers to hide behind a new change in management in 2007, is odd.

Firstly, the change from Gary Ralfe to Gareth Penny as managing director of De Beers, to which I presume this comment refers, can hardly be called wiping the slate clean.

Interesting whatever accusations any one might want to make about Gary Ralfe he cannot, however, conveniently be lumbered with these stories about the going ons around the privatisation. He was not involved in the initial work and it is believed was sympathetic to the bid being increased, which it was, however marginally.

The odd change in personnel does not constitute new management as claimed.

Indeed, before and after privatisation it was and is Nicky Oppenheimer who is the chairman of the company, there has simply not been an effective change in management.

Nicky Oppenheimer was deputy chairman of De Beers in 1990 and chairman in 1998. On privatisation, Oppenheimer was and is paid an annual management fee of $15 million for running De Beers.

This whole Nchindo affair raises deeply worrying and unpleasant issues, even more than my chicken pie.