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The Power of Personal Perspective: Gold Cufflinks by Derrick Swain

In these days of social media blogs and vlogs, it is highly unusual that an ordinary businessman writes a book about his experiences – even if it is of a time and place of extraordinary events. Such books are usually the domain of politicians and historians whose first-hand experiences are limited and much influenced by others.

What Derrick Swain’s Gold Cufflinks does is to present a picture of transitional Africa – Zambia in particular – as it moves from colonial to national rule. While the news media’s view of the  struggle – or “bloody birth” as the media had it – was focused on political, faction and tribal leaders, Swain’s account is from the perspective of a young executive in a division of a British trading conglomerate, managing wholesale and retail distribution in Zambia for eight years from 1969.

This was a period of the transfer of assets and management from erstwhile colonial organisations to newly established local authorities and the integration of local nationals into management positions. At the same time, the best of these companies were modernising all aspects of management, personnel, stock control and supply chains, and coping with enormous difficulties resulting from profligate economic policies of new governments.

While these matters do not appear to be the subject of a fascinating book, Swain makes it so by focusing on the people he met and their personal relationships. As anyone who has been in business eventually learns, you don’t work for companies, you work for people – and those people can turn up later, enriching (or complicating) life.

What is refreshing is that in his focus on people, he very seldom talks about nationality, let alone colour, race or tribe. His concern is whether someone is honest and can do the job, and he appears to have attracted – and trained – many who rose to the occasion.

Inevitably – and joyfully – the book includes some wonderful scenes of African life and nature. His descriptions of travelling the vast distances by road and air with natural and manmade obstacles are amusing and frightening. Whereas Zambia was relatively stable, Rhodesia and other surrounding countries were in various stages of turmoil and civil war. Commercial activities, travel and personal safety were all affected by the inevitable fallout.

These fears of personal safety are leavened by countless amusing anecdotes, barbecues, pool parties, golf, card games and romance. Swain meets and marries his wife and has two children during his time in Zambia, and we see how their otherwise normal progress is affected by conditions completely alien to us.

The aura of empire and the history of colonial life pervades the book, but never in an exploitational or master/servant way. (Indeed, Swain’s strong Christian faith informs his attitudes and judgements, and while he mentions his faith in passing, he is never preaching). Rather, the colonial experience is one that was shared by all who worked in the British colonies while struggling to hold to values and beliefs in  often hostile environments, mediating between the reality on the ground and the demands of the London office, and coping with an extreme sense of isolation.

Such was the material that Somerset Maugham used for his short stories two generations earlier, and Swain shows that human nature has not changed. The incidents he relates are sometimes hilariously uplifting, yet deeply ironic and tragic and could well be incorporated within Maugham’s pages.

The second part of the book deals with the author’s move from Zambia to St Lucia where he ran a recently acquired trading company, which included an ailing department store. While many of the challenges were comparable to his African experiences (logistics, staff training, theft, local politics and the London office), Swain noted to a friend that “it was easier to get alongside West Indian culture” than it had been to take on the Zambian way of life. He continued, “I sometimes felt that our Zambian staff, at all levels, saw work as a means of life support and betterment, for many St Lucians work got in the way of living and was a necessary but unwelcome burden on their time.” A British friend rightly comments that this split could also be found back in the United Kingdom.

The eponymous “gold cufflinks,” in the shape of the island of St Lucia,  were presented to him by staff at his office farewell before his return to England.

This is a fascinating, thoughtful and amusing book that should be on the reading lists of anyone interested in those times and places, and the experiences of those involved.

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