One on One

By 1983, our stint in Botswana had ended, and one of the jobs our parent company, South African Breweries (SAB), gave us was to prise some of the sorghum beer businesses away from the administration boards. These boards were part of the apartheid government and were, in their own words, running sorghum beer businesses “for the benefit of the black community”!  

Sorghum beer takes the basic concept of African ‘home brew’ and industrialises the process. The result is a wholesome low alcohol drink, usually with a pinkish tinge from the sorghum. It’s an ‘acquired taste’, if I could put it like that. The company’s subsidiary in Zimbabwe and Botswana had major investments in Sorghum beer operations in those countries, so the expertise existed to run such operations. 

This was nevertheless a stupid idea. To imagine that the South African Government would allow South African Breweries, who were regarded as part of the ‘English speaking business establishment’ and therefore hostile to their regime, to acquire a significant share of the lucrative sorghum beer business was fatuous. We already had a virtual monopoly of the lager beer market, and the Government had been hostile to SAB’s takeover of a large wine producing company.  

South Africa’s whites, for those who don’t know, were sharply divided between English speaking and Afrikaner, with much hostility and distrust between the two, as well as a whole raft of cultural demarcation lines that spilled over into many areas of life. The wine business, for example, was considered the province of Afrikaners.  

We tried, nevertheless, and after a few months talking to various admin boards, I had a phone call from one of their chairmen. 

We talked very briefly what I was doing before the man suddenly said, “Witbank Hotel, one on one, ten o’clock Tuesday.” 

“Ok. Ten o’clock Tuesday.” 

“Ja, be sure you are alone, must be one on one.” 

“Ok, one on one.” 

I agreed with my immediate superior that I would attend the meeting before driving off to the Witbank Hotel.  

Witbank, a coal mining centre, was and probably still is a dirty uninspiring town, about 150 kms east of Jo’burg. The hotel was typical of many of the country hotels in South Africa at the time – dull, but usually good value. 

I waited in the bar for a few minutes, eyeing the only other customer. It soon became clear that this was the person I was here to meet. He was chairman of one of the so-called ‘Bantu Administration Boards’ who ran most of the sorghum beer industry. It took him just a few minutes to explain that he could deliver the whole industry to us, provided we pay him so many cents per litre. This would have been a staggering sum running into the millions of dollars.  

I listened and told him I would get back to him. I had no idea whether this was an elaborate ploy to trap us into attempting to bribe a government official, or whether it was a genuine attempt to get us to bribe him personally. 

I didn’t bother to find out. I drove directly to the offices of our lawyers in Jo’burg and made a statement to one of the senior partners, which was put on file. We never made any contact with that man again. And even if we’d gone public, it would be my word against his – ‘one on one’, as it were.  

Corruption in lily-white South Africa? You must be joking... 

The Witbank Hotel appears briefly in the third book of my ‘Winds of Change’ trilogy, ‘No Peace for the Wicked’.)