I do not know about you but as for me my mind has always been tossed day and night with the anxious inquiry: how on earth did my father who was raised in the so-called ‘jungles of Africa’ arrive at the decision that  my name should be ‘Alfred’ and not Abraham, Moses, Peter, Jacob, David, Solomon or John the Baptist?
I must confess that because I kept on postponing the move, my 89-year-old father died in 1999 before I could ask him if it were probably a White missionary from Chilubula or Kayambi Catholic Missions who had taken it upon himself to name me after a European whose name does not seem to appear in the Bible.
When I went to Plymouth in the United Kingdom in 1980, a widow who lived alone in her flat, approached our course organizers at the Mirror Training Centre that she would like to invite me (and two other Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) Fellows from the ‘black and Asian’ sections of the Commonwealth, to a special meal at her place. I did not know why then.
But it did not take long for me to know the reason. Apparently my Christian name seem to have rekindled in her fond memories of one the greatest men in Anglo-Saxon history. After the meal, which she had personally prepared, the old lady turned to me and said:
“How nice it was for me to learn that you were among the visiting fellows. You are Alfred – you were named after Alfred – the King of England – and founder of the powerful British Navy. Did you know that? I found it rather interesting that an African should be called Alfred.”
Well, you can imagine how I felt at the time. Frankly, I did not have an immediate reply; so I simply ‘grinned’ while my companions looked on, wondering whether to come to my ‘rescue’. However, she politely escorted us to the door and we left for the Camelot Hotel where we were staying before moving on to Oxford University (Queen Elizabeth House).
Back in Ndola, a German engineer Willie (pronounced ‘Villie’) from Munich who was in a group of experts brought into the country to install kilns at a local cement/lime company, upon being introductions, immediately became interested in me, proclaiming: “Alfred is a German name, did you know that?
“As a practising journalist you surely know that the man who founded Reuters, the first news agency in the world – Alfred Reuters – was also a German though he later migrated to England,” he said as we -Tarso, Willie Mutoloka, Scott Brown, Perry Miti and Jack Mutale – chatted outside the Raylton Club, once a popular jaunt for young professionals, which has since been converted into a church along Broadway.
I had forgotten about all these episodes until this week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state and government leaders’ meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, at which President Edgar Lungu emphasized the need for rapid industrialization of the region (in which the proposed Kazungula Bridge over the Zambezi River to be constructed by Botswana and Zambian governments is going to play a pivotal role).
The meeting, which was presided over by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, the current SADC and African Union (AU) chairman, made me wonder once again if my dad, who was a teacher/bricklayer – had ever heard of another Alfred after whom he probably decided to name me.

. Beit

He is Alfred Beit whose financial ‘muscle’ actually made it possible for Cecil John Rhodes to dream of his famous ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ railway project. I first heard of Alfred Beit in the early 1960s from our headmaster and former Mufulira Wanderers FC goalkeeper Musa Kasonka, who used to take us in history. He often narrated how Beit contributed to the development of Northern Rhodesia and the Copperbelt in particular.
Born in Germany in 1853 to parents of Jewish origin, Alfred had a modest upbringing. In later life he used to refer to himself as one of the poor Beits of Hamburg. “My father found it difficult to even pay for my schooling,” he is quoted as saying. At school he showed no great aptitude for any subject; so his father decided against sending him to university. Instead he found him employment with the firm of Lippert and Company, wool importers and diamond merchants.
Alfred was later sent to Holland where he advanced his knowledge of the diamond-cutting industry before proceeding to South Africa in 1875 where he helped set up mining operations that thrived on migrant labour from countries like Botswana, (Bechuanaland), Mozambique, Nyasaland (Malawi), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South West Africa (Namibia) , Belgian Congo (Zaire/DRC) and Tanganyika (Tanzania).
That time xenophobia (hatred for foreigners especially other Africans from countries) that broke out in Durban (KwaZulu Natal) last month and in Cape Town in 2008, was unheard of, as industry captain knew they could not survive without migrant miners and other workers from outside South Africa.
Working initially as Lippert and Company agent in Kimberly, young Alfred Beit saw the potential of the diamond fields. He realised that the Cape diamonds were of very high quality but were being sold at a price far below their true value in Europe. In 1880, Beit went into partnership with the diamond merchant Jules Porges. It was while he was a Porget employee that he demonstrated his genius for making money. He asked his father to send him 2,000 pounds sterling. Instead of buying diamonds, he invested in property.
‘Kimberly was growing so fast that the demand for houses was extraordinary’, he is quoted saying in an interview, adding that he decided to buy ‘a bit of land’ and put up 12 to 13 offices – corrugated iron shanties – of which h kept one for himself. He rented the rest from which he received an income of 1,800 pounds a month, a ‘massive’ in those days. He later sold the plot of land for  a whooping 260,000 pounds.
Most Zambians and Zimbabweans know that before independence in 1964 and 1980 respectively their countries were called Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia because they were named after self-appointed British Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes whose company – British South Africa Company (BSA) – even ruled Northern Rhodesia until 1924 when the country became a British Protectorate, under a special charter.
To give his company some degree of legitimacy, Rhodes deliberately added the prefix ‘British’ to his company’s title as a stratagem in his campaign to ‘grab’ more land and win mineral rights in his negotiations with African chiefs in the region.
But did you know that without Alfred Beit’s wealth Rhodes’ BSA Company would not have achieved as much success as it did in the initial industrialization of the Southern African sub-continent? It would be no exaggeration to state, too, that without the BSAC, De Beers and Anglo American Corporation (ACC) and, of course, the Harry Oppenheimer family who helped develop  our mining industry, the xenophobia-free Copper-Belt would not have grown and attracted migrant workers from all corners of the country and the world at large.
Historical records show that Alfred Beit and Cecil Rhodes first met in Kimberly around 1879 by sheer accident. Apparently a curious Rhodes looked into Beit’s corrugated iron sheet office one evening, and wondered if he ever took a rest. “Not often,” Beit is told his uninvited guest.
“Well, what is your game?” asked Rhodes.
“I am going to control the whole diamond output before I am much older,” said the 35-year-old Beit.
“That’s funny,’ said Rhodes, adding, “I’d made up my mind to do the same. We’d better join hands.”
Beit joined Rhodes on the board of De Beer Diamond Company, which had been founded in 1880, and he played a key role merging all the diamond mines of Kimberly under De Beers Consolidated Mines (remember Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines-ZCCM?). The company was registered in 1888 with Beit advancing Rhodes 250, 000 pounds sterling – and believe it or not – without security. I say how many Zambian ‘magnates’ are prepared to do that?  Can anyone stand up and be counted? None?
Anyway, the two ‘imperialists’ teamed up and their interests went far beyond Kimberly and gold fields of the Rand in South Africa, where Beit supported the development of a new system of deep-shaft mining, a system that was also used extensively to develop various mine operations at Kitwe, Mufulira, Roan Antelope in Luanshya, Nchanga (Chingola), Chililabombwe (Bancroft),  Chibuluma and Chambeshi.
As stated earlier, Rhodes had an expansionist dream of pushing the frontiers of the British Empire northwards but it was Beit who helped turn it into reality. Rhodes was consequently the driving force behind the BSAC, which received its Royal Charter in 1889. Its purpose was to annex Mashonaland and Matebeleland on behalf of the British, extend the railway line and telegraph system  north of the Zambezi River and open up a vast new swathe of territory for ‘colonization and mineral exploitation’.
According to researcher and author Charlie Pye-Smith, Beit became the director of the company, which managed the affairs of Rhodesia until its white settlers opted to come under ‘direct British rule’ in 1924. He also became director of the Bechuanaland Railway Company Limited, which was responsible for extending the railway north of Kimberly and changed its name to Rhodesia Railways Trust Ltd in 1899. The Railway Trust was owned by BSAC, the Chartered Company.
(From what I can remember, would this probably explain why at the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1963, most Rhodesia Railways (RR) rolling stock/assets ended up in Southern Rhodesia, leaving Zambia Railways with ailing locomotive engines?)
For the remainder of his relatively short life – he died at the age of 53 – Beit devoted his energies on running the affairs of Rhodesia. It recorded that although he moved back to London soon after the formation of the charter company, and took up British citizenship, he periodically returned to southern Africa to further his business interests.
Said not to have been a domineering giant but a slightly built man of poor health, Beit was not cut out for rugged travel. He made his long trip to Mashonaland in 1891 at the request of Rhodes. According to Pye-Smith, this was despite the fact that in those days there was only one dirt road, hacked out of the miombo woodlands by the early pioneers, and a network of other tracks which were passable only in good weather. Lions picked off unsuspecting travelers while many of the indigenous people were hostile to the invasion of settlers and adventurers at the time.
He made his last trip to the region in 1903 (seven years before my father was born in Northern Province) but suffered a stroke near Salisbury (Harare) and never recovered his health, dying three years later on July 16, 1906 at his country residence in Hertfordshire, England.
To his credit also, Beit, after whom the Beit Bridge in Zimbabwe is named, played major role in the development of the railway system in the region. By the time of his death, the railway had reached 374 miles north of the Zambezi. He believed that the best way to develop the region was by ensuring that ‘exports’ and ‘imports’ could rapidly “leave and enter this part of Africa”.
He left a Railways Fund from which form er Vice President Enoch Kavindele could probably benefit in his quest to build his proposed Solwezi-Angola national railways.
Beit in fact left many trusts that are funding various charities, including the Beit Cure Children’s Surgical Hospital in Lusaka. That is his enduring legacy, which our leaders must strive to emulate.
As for my name Alfred; do I have any regrets? All I can say is: “If it’s your will Lord ‘I say yes’”.
•    Additional reporting:  Charlie Pye-Smith: For the Benefit of the People, A Hundred Years of the Beit Trust.
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