Swaziland

Adventures Of A Civil Servant (Part 2):

Having found out where Swaziland was on the map I applied for the job. It was a unique experience to work in such a remote African country so early in my career.

I had only been at Wolverhampton three months, when a vacancy was advertised for a “Manpower Planning Specialist” in Swaziland. The requirements were quite vague. In the early part of my career, I applied for all jobs abroad that I was possibly qualified for. Indeed I was put on a shortlist in around 1965 for a transfer to the newly created Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (I received a letter about seven years later to say that I was still on the list, but nothing since.) Having found out where Swaziland was on the map I applied for the job. I received an acknowledgement, but then heard nothing for several months.

Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity in January and I was required to go for interview in London in a few days’ time. Among the people on the panel was a woman from the Ministry of Overseas Development (ODM) and Dr Richard Jolly, from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. By this time I knew that I would be required to make a survey of the supply and demand for manpower in Swaziland. In answer to a question about how I would go about this, I said that I would visit all the employers in the country. My heart was in my mouth in case they asked me how I was going to do that, when I couldn’t drive. Very soon after that, at the age of 29, I had my first driving lesson!

Not long after that, Richard Jolly sent me a long letter, saying that he would not be making the final decision on the appointment, but recommending a long list of publications that I should read, if I got the job. (Dr Jolly had done a similar survey in Zambia.) At the time I wasn’t sure whether the letter meant that I would get the job or whether it was meant to tell me not to think of applying for such a job, without knowing more about it. Sometime later, I received a letter saying my name had been forwarded to the Swaziland Government, but the appointment was in their hands.

Again, there was a long break, when nothing happened. Indeed, I had put Swaziland out of my mind and started making plans for the summer. Then, around Easter, some three months after my interview in London, I was called to an urgent meeting with the woman from ODM to make arrangements for going to Swaziland. While I was in London, I met Godwin Nxumalo [1], who was the Swazi official, responsible for running the two employment exchanges. He was the first Swazi I met: he had a round brown face and smiling eyes. He was typical of many Swazis, though there were many others who were not so attractive, of which more later. I also met a peer of the realm for the first time. I don’t remember his name, but he was much involved with Overseas Development. I remember being worried about how to address him.

[1] ‘Nx’ is pronounced by making a clicking sound at the front of the mouth.

At the meeting with ODM, the woman asked when I could start. I said I would prefer to go in June, after Jennifer, my wife, had taken the ‘A’ Level examination she had been studying for. The reply came that, at the previous interview, I had implied that I would be available in about six weeks. I did not give in then, but in subsequent correspondence I relented to say that I would go within six weeks of getting a contract with the Swaziland Government. ODM kept up the pressure and pinned me down to a date. I finally agreed that we would arrive in Swaziland on Friday 30th May 1969. I still did not have a contract with the Swaziland Government. In the meantime, we had let our house in Birmingham on a 17 month tenancy!

By this time we had tried to learn a bit about Swaziland, but the books we read gave contradictory impressions. The semi-official publications stressed the quality of public and private services: water, electricity, telephone, schools, banks and shops etc. Others pointed out how wild (or ‘natural’) the country was. One quote I remember almost put me off going: Snakes abound in Swaziland. (In fact I saw only two or three all the time we were there; Jennifer saw rather more, the last of which she beheaded with a spade.)

We had been in an aeroplane only a few times before we went to Swaziland. We flew from Elmdon aerodrome near Birmingham. At that time the future Birmingham International Airport consisted of a runway and a shed for passenger arrivals and departures. We had a very short flight to Heathrow, a few hours’ wait and then a 17-hour overnight flight with South African Airlines (SAA) to Johannesburg. It was unusual for the British Government, who were paying, to use SAA, rather than the national (and nationalised) carrier, British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC). Because of their apartheid regime, SAA were banned from flying over many African countries, so we had a refuelling stop in the Cap Verde Islands, which were Portuguese.

Peter, our elder and, at that time, only son, was a month over two years old. Like us he had been subjected to a number of injections. These must have been traumatic, because 17 months later, on the return journey, he was running round Johannesburg Airport, shouting “no more ’jections!” On the journey out, we think it was his ears that were the problem. Whatever it was, he cried noisily most of the way to the Cap Verde Islands. He had only just gone to sleep when we had to wake him up to get off the plane.

I shall never forget my first experience of Africa. We got off the plane. It must have been around midnight. It was dark and very, pleasantly, warm. Palm trees surrounded the brightly lit area where black men with smiling faces served us with drinks. Certainly one of the most exotic experiences of my life! How boring it is to be a civil servant!

We arrived in Johannesburg and had two nights in a hotel there before we were due to catch the 8:00 a.m. Swazi Air flight to Matsapa, near Manzini in Swaziland. So far, everything had gone like clockwork. When we arrived at Johannesburg airport – we were among the first potential passengers for that flight – we were told that, as we had not confirmed our onward flight, we were not on the flight list. (No-one had told me that this had to be done – presumably, it was assumed that ‘everyone knew!’) We were told to wait on standby, in case the flight was not full. Things were looking good until a few minutes before the deadline, when a Scotsman, his wife and three children turned up, taking the five seats which I had thought were still available. I had either miscalculated or been misinformed, because in the end we were allowed on the plane.

The small plane, a DC3, flew just over the tops of the forests. The following may not be right – it doesn’t seem possible – but my recollection is that when I went to the toilet, I could see the trees through the toilet hole. We were taken to the Swazi Inn, a mile or two outside Mbabane, the capital. We were to stay in the Swazi Inn, until the Swaziland Government found us accommodation.

We were put in a rondavel, twenty yards or so from the main building. I arranged a telephone call to my mother in England to tell her we had arrived. The phone rang about ten minutes later and it was so clear that my mother sounded as though she was in the next room. (I subsequently found out that this was in stark contrast to telephone calls to the south of Swaziland. For these it was necessary to call the operator, who had a wind-up machine to dial the number. It could take several hours to get a call through and, even then, the reception was not good.)

We were then introduced to South African restaurant menus. These typically, for a fixed price, consisted of nine or ten items from which one could choose freely. The idea was that one would choose three courses, but there was nothing to prevent one from eating one’s way all through the menu, as my counterpart, Tennyson Nkonyane, did on one occasion.

I was allocated to the Economic Planning Unit in the Swaziland Government. The Head of the unit was Dr Jule, a Norwegian, whom, with little originality, we called Father Christmas. The Senior Economist was Ralph Clarke, a rather outspoken man, who had spent most of his career on international development work mostly in Africa. The other members of the team were James Nxumalo, who had a master’s degree at an American University, but very little influence, and Michael Zwane, who was a very quiet graduate, whom I was supposed to train to take over from me when I left. There were also two secretaries, one of South African origin and one Swazi.

On the Sunday after we arrived – around the 1st June, so almost the middle of winter – we were invited to go for a picnic with Dr Jule, Ralph Clarke and his wife, Jenny, and a young British graduate, Bruce Dinwiddy [2], who was due to return back to England at the end of his secondment from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) a non-governmental organisation. We had a picnic out in the country, not far from Mbabane. Dr Jule produced a bottle of South African bubbly. Bruce commented that he was looking forward to getting back to Europe, where he could drink ‘real champagne’. (I, on the other hand, had never tasted champagne outside France – a bottle of cheap red wine was a luxury in those days.)

[2] Bruce Dinwiddy went on to have a distinguished career in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including High Commissioner in Dar es Salaam (1998 – 2001) and Governor of the Cayman Islands (2002 – 2005).

My first working day was the Queen’s birthday. We were invited for drinks on the High Commissioner’s lawn. A young woman asked me what I wanted to drink. Not knowing what to say, I asked for a Martini. I was brought a drink which was not the Martini Rosso that I was expecting, but which I liked very much. So began my brief love affair with gin and tonic. I subsequently discovered that the young woman who took my order was Sue Webster, who, along with her husband, Stan, has now been our friend for over 50 years.

Our first seven weeks in Swaziland was dominated by domestic matters. I bought a car – a Renault Caravelle – which most people thought was the name of an aeroplane. It was a beautiful red car, but not very reliable. I managed to pass my test, but probably did not deserve to - I’m fairly sure I would have been failed, if I had been black.

The main preoccupation, however, was housing. The British Government paid my salary and allowances, but the Swaziland Government was contracted to provide us with suitable accommodation. It had been the tradition in colonial days for expatriate staff to be housed in good quality Government accommodation. We went there a year after independence and the new Swazi Government had decided to allocate these houses to local staff, when the expatriates left. Consequently, there was a shortage of accommodation.

In the meantime Jennifer was stranded with Peter in a hotel, which was very nice, but too far from Mbabane to contemplate walking there – it was on the side of a mountain and there were no pavements, but there were fast cars and bad drivers. We had been there a couple of weeks, when Ralph Clarke advised me to write to the Permanent Secretary for Establishments and Training, Christopher Dlamini, to remind him that they were supposed to provide me with accommodation. At about the same time, we were invited to go to look at an apartment. Access to the building was via a footbridge, which had a ten-foot drop either side of it. We turned that down, because we thought it was unsuitable for a two-year old boy. We were fortunate that for two separate weeks we were lent beautiful houses by people that we had not met before, but who had heard of our plight and were going away.

After we had been there six weeks, things came to a crunch. We decided to go to the British High Commission to complain. We saw Ray Stevens, who was the Executive Officer. We told him our story and asked “What is the British Government going to do about it?” “Not much,” said Jennifer afterwards, but she was wrong. The next afternoon I was summoned to Mr Dlamini’s office. He was a big fierce-looking man, with a fearsome reputation. He was accompanied by Mr Smit, the South African Principal responsible for staffing matters. The High Commissioner had written to Mr Dlamini, pointing out their responsibility for accommodation and threatening to withdraw me (meaning ‘send us home!’), if they did not find accommodation within a week. Mr Dlamini was furious (or at least pretended to be). He said that if I had a problem I should come to him, rather than go running to the British Government. Fortunately, I was able to say that I had written to him, but had not received a reply. Mr Smit, to his credit, confirmed my story. The rest of the interview consisted of quite aggressive questioning, whereby Mr Dlamini appeared to be weighing up whether or not I was expendable. The interview ended with him saying that, as I knew, he had no property available, but, if I could find anything reasonable within the next week, he would rent it for us. A few days later, one of my acquaintances found out about a small house that was vacant. It belonged to a Jewish businessman and property owner, Mr Goldblatt. He lived in the big house next door. This house had originally been built for his Portuguese servant. It was not nearly as grand as the houses that most of my colleagues lived in, but we were lucky to find it and it was certainly preferable to the alternative, which was to be sent home!

We moved in there the following week. At the bottom of the garden was a tin shed, where a girl of about nineteen, Sarah, lived with her little boy, who was a bit younger than Peter. (The boy’s father also lived there, but nobody was supposed to know that!) Sarah asked if she could stay on as our servant. Although the conditions were appalling, the alternatives, as far as she was concerned, were worse.

We had a reasonable sized garden, though small by the standards of my colleagues. I was 29 and used to doing my own gardening. Every Saturday boys would come knocking at our door, asking if they could do our gardens. One day, a boy called John came round. He was slightly disabled, but had “a bit more about him” than most of the boys. He said he needed the work to pay for his schooling. I took him on and he did a good job. One day, I decided that I wanted part of the garden grassing over. The grass there was mainly Kikuyu grass, which spread horizontally. “Very good, sah”, he said. He promptly went out of the gate and dug up some of the grass verge. Within a very short time, I had my lawn, because the grass he planted spread very quickly.

A feature of the garden, which puzzled us when we first moved in, was a dry concrete channel that ran diagonally across the garden. We soon found out what it was for, when the first rains came in September. (It “knows how” to rain in Swaziland – the average annual rainfall in Mbabane is 1337 mm, which falls usually in the summer months between September and April.) Our house was situated below street level, so, when it rained, the water used to gush through the garden gate. Some of it then went into the channel and rushed through the garden and out into the end of Mr Goldblatt’s garden, which was further downhill. Some of the rest went into the drain at the corner of the house, but most brought with it a large quantity of red sandy soil and deposited it on the concrete driveway at the side of the house.

A feature of our garden that was admired by all our friends was a tree. It was a tall tree – I don’t know what sort – but it was entwined by three different creepers with burgundy, orange and yellow flowers and was spectacular for long periods of the year.

There was also a black cat living on our premises. We fed it. Periodically it mated with the Siamese cat belonging to Mr Goldblatt. The mother was too proud to keep her mongrel offspring, so she deposited them with the father in our carport. We did not have many problems with exotic wildlife, but we did have a perennial problem with beetles in the kitchen. On one occasion one locust got into our bedroom. In the space of a few hours, it devoured Jennifer’s large wicker sewing basket. On another occasion a chameleon – grey to match the sky – crawled ever so slowly across our washing line.

Chameleon

Our offices were in Allister Miller Street. From my office window I had a view over the town to the Prime Minister and High Commissioner’s residences in the hills on the outskirts of the town. My basic UK annual salary at that time was about £1800. For the “hardship” of living in Swaziland, with its wonderful climate and beautiful scenery, I was paid another £800 or so, tax free, plus accommodation and other expatriate perks. When I contrasted that with the view from my window in Wolverhampton, I found it difficult to believe my good fortune.

Allister Miller Street, Mbabane, 1970

We shared the building with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One day Jennifer had been to see me, accompanied by Peter. She was standing waiting for the lift with a senior Swazi diplomat. Suddenly Peter asked: “Mummy, why has that man got a white face?” Fortunately, the man saw the funny side of it – or he was a good diplomat! Sometime later Peter went to the private Nursery School. Most of the children there were white. One day he came home and said he’d got a new friend. He spent some time describing this boy to his mother, but didn’t think to say that the boy was black.

Workwise I was floundering at the beginning. I had only a vague idea of what I needed to do and even less of an idea of how I was going to do it. It was however clear that different parts of the Swaziland Government had different ideas as to what they wanted me to do. Dr Jule had no particular interest in what I was supposed to be doing. This became clear to me when, after I’d been there a few weeks, he came to me and asked, as they were very busy, would I help out and do some project appraisals. When I replied that I didn’t know how to do it, he was surprised, because he thought I had a post-graduate qualification in Economics. This was strictly true – I had obtained a GCE A level in Economics at Bourneville College of Further Education in 1968, six years after I obtained my Bachelor’s degree. Dr Jule implied that he only agreed to my appointment because he thought I was an economist and I might be a useful pair of hands.

Things changed after I had been there six or eight weeks. David Anderson from the Ford Foundation came on a visit to Mbabane. I was introduced to him and for some reason he seemed to take a liking to me – or felt sorry for me. He had a colleague, Bob Thomas, who had been doing manpower surveys all over Africa, most recently in Tanzania. David arranged for Bob to come to Mbabane a few weeks later. Bob was an economist, but an action man, rather than a purist. He had a method: it was rough and ready, but it was “guaranteed” to produce results in a few months rather than years. (I subsequently discovered that Richard Jolly had done a similar study in Zambia, using a computer, but two years’ later the information was locked into the computer and was not accessible.)

I went to Manzini with Bob Thomas to meet the Swaziland Employers’ Federation. They were on the defensive, as the objective of the manpower exercise was to prepare for the replacement of expatriate workers by Swazi workers in the private sector, in particular in skilled and management posts. They insisted that I should ask, in every case, what qualifications and how many years’ training would be required for a Swazi person to do the job. This was very tiresome, but I did it on most occasions.

The winter in Swaziland was beautiful: cold nights and bright sunny days, with the temperatures changing from 0 to 20 degrees and back again in a few hours. The rainy season normally started in September and lasted about six months. In 1969 the rains began in September, but ended on Christmas Day – we had no significant rain in the remaining ten months that we were there. The rainy season coincided with the period, when I was doing the field work for my manpowersurvey. During this period I visited all the major employers in the country and obtained information about all their skilled and managerial jobs.

By this time, Michael Zwane had been replaced by Nkonyane. He had a first name, Tennyson, but most people referred to him just as ‘Nkonyane’. He accompanied me on some of these trips. Although I am a linguist, I decided that there was no mileage in learning the local language, SiSwati. Nkonyane had other ideas. One evening in a hotel, he explained to me that SiSwati is a rhyming language. For example, there are two expressions for ‘where’: Lipi li and Upi u, which rhymed with the noun. Apart from the standard greeting (Sawubona) and the response (Jebo), that is about all I learned. However, that came in useful. Towards the end of our stay, we decided to go on a ‘grand tour’ of Swaziland. Somewhere in the south of the country we took a wrong turning: there was a myriad of unmarked, dirt roads in Swaziland. We arrived at an unmarked cross-road and didn’t know which way to go. As often seemed to be the case, a Swazi came out of the bush. I asked him if he spoke English. He replied in a perfect Oxford accent: “No!” So I used my complete SiSwati vocabulary to ask: Upi u Hlatikulu? (Where is Hlatikulu?) He beamed at me and pointed in the right direction.)

Nkonyane was an interesting character. He did not have the formal education of Michael Zwane, but he was well connected politically and had a lot of drive and determination. (He actually said that I did too!) He had a drink problem and sometimes came round to our house in the evening, asking to see Jennifer. When she could, she hid in the bedroom and pretended to be sleeping.

In parallel with my survey, the Minister of State for Establishments and Training, Christopher Dlamini’s boss, set up a Localisation Committee. I was a member. The aim of this committee was similar to that of my survey: to draw up a timetable for replacing foreign public servants by Swazi nationals. There were some interesting exchanges, in particular between the Minister and the (British) Director of the Public Works Department. On one occasion, the latter failed to attend a meeting, because he had broken a leg. When asked subsequently how he had done it, he replied: “I slipped, when kicking the cat!” Sympathy quickly evaporated!

I was also involved with the Ministry of Education. During my interview in London for the job, Richard Jolly had asked me a question about education policy. I had hazarded a reply and then said that I thought that would be a matter for the Ministry of Education to deal with. I have never forgotten Richard’s reply: “Education is much too important to be left to Ministries of Education!” I had a good relationship with the Director of Education, Hennie Esterhuizen – I bought my golf clubs off him – but the Permanent Secretary often turned to me for an opinion rather than his officials. One of these was Telfer Blacklock, one of my golfing partners. He was, like me, a Higher Executive Officer (HEO) in the British Civil Service, but he was kept strictly in his place by his hierarchy.

Early in 1970 I had completed the fieldwork for my survey and now had the job of tabulating them. I don’t remember the detail now, but, along with Jennifer, we produced some tables, based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). The title of my report was to be: Analysis of Swaziland’s Manpower Resources and Requirements: 1969-1974. I believe the Analysis of Swaziland’s Manpower Resources was good, but the rest was based on heroic assumptions, in particular on economic growth. The economists in our unit refused to produce a forecast, so Bob Thomas said I should do it. I chose 5% per annum.

By this time Dr Jule and Ralph Clarke had left. The unit had merged with the statistical office and become the Department of Economic Planning and Statistics. Our Permanent Secretary was James Nxumalo – the little fat boy in the corner, when I arrived. James reported directly to the Prime Minister, Prince Makhosini Dlamini. On one occasion in the early autumn, the Prime Minister sent for me. It being still very warm in the daytime, most expatriate officials wore “safari suits”, sometimes with long trousers, sometimes with short trousers. The Prime Minister had a rule that no one was allowed to go to see him in short trousers. This was a problem for me, because on that particular day I was wearing shorts and Jennifer had the car. (The Prime Minister’s residence and office were out of town, so I needed the car to get there.) I telephoned Jennifer and asked her to bring the car and a pair of trousers. The car was parked in our carport near the front door. In order to get the car on to the road, she needed to reverse round the corner of the house. At the corner of the house was a drain, which had lost its lid. In her haste, Jennifer got one wheel of the car stuck in this drain. Both she and Sarah, the maid, were pregnant, but, after a long delay, somehow they managed to get the car out of the drain.

Top: Swaziland's first independence anniversary September 1969

Bottom: Princess Alexandra and King Sobhuza II are welcomed by Prime Minister Prince Makhosini Dlamini

When I had completed my report, I was asked to prepare a Cabinet Paper with policy proposals. This I did. I had to go to a Cabinet Meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office to present the paper. It is remarkable, with my subsequent experience of the British and European Civil Service, that I went alone, unaccompanied by a more senior colleague. It is even more remarkable that I went into the meeting as soon as I arrived and was allowed to listen to the discussion on the previous item on the agenda. I don’t remember the detail, but there was a proposal to do something in one part of the country, which might give rise to political difficulties. At that time the ruling party held all the seats in the Parliament. However, one of the Ministers pointed out that the Opposition had nearly won that seat at the last election and argued against doing anything that would help their cause.

My Cabinet Paper was well received and my proposals in relation to education and training became Government policy. Glory days!

By this time my secondment was drawing to a close, so I left on the crest of the wave. I was sad, but I left at the right time. Early in 1971, there was a political crisis and the Government abandoned the planned approach I had outlined in favour of the traditional free for all.

Other stories

There was a certain amount of rivalry between the different providers of development aid. Ralph Clarke was very outspoken. His departure was hastened by a comment he made, where he referred to the Chinese Nationalists (based in Formosa (Taiwan) under Chiang-Kai-Shek) as the Blue Chinese, as opposed to the Red Chinese of Mao Tse-Tung (as he was then known). This was considered to be somewhat derogatory and an embarrassment to Swaziland Government.

At the Queen’s Birthday Party in June 1969, as I said above, I acquired a taste for gin and tonic. This lasted until September, when Bruce Dinwiddy invited us to his farewell party. (He didn’t leave in the end, but he did have the party.) As usual I was drinking gin and tonic. Suddenly the room began to spin and I decided that I had to leave as soon as I could. At the same time the Secretary to the Cabinet came into the party, obviously (to everyone else) the worse for wear, having come from another party. I won’t go into details of my state of health – suffice it to say that I have never wanted to drink gin again. The following weekend, the Secretary to the Cabinet organised a drinks do for David Anderson from the Ford Foundation, to which we were invited. When we arrived, the host took me on one side and said he was sorry I had taken offence at his behaviour at Bruce’s party. He implied that when I “grew up” I would become more tolerant of other people’s drinking habits. I don’t think it had anything to do with his ‘drink’ problem, but he got his marching orders soon after and was replaced by a Swazi.

A car was essential in Swaziland. After a very short time, on the advice of Ralph Clarke, we bought our red Renault Caravelle. I had had several months of driving lessons in Birmingham, but had failed my driving test. Jennifer had also had a few driving lessons, but had not taken her test. As mentioned earlier, thanks to the indulgence of the driving examiner in Mbabane, I passed my test fairly quickly.

One Saturday, when we hadn’t been there very long, we went for a drive along the tar road towards Johannesburg. While we were out it started to snow – the only time we ever saw snow while we were there. On the way back – we were out of the snow – I suggested to Jennifer that she should drive the car for a while. I don’t remember the detail, but we had an altercation, the result of which was that Jennifer refused to drive for several months.

Then another friend called Sue persuaded her to let her give her some driving lessons. They used to go to the football field. Jennifer practised reversing through the goal posts. One day she came back sheepishly to say that she had reversed past one goal post, but had scraped the side of the car on the other one! One Sunday, a few weeks later, I decided to practise a few holes of golf. It was a nine-hole course. Holes three to seven were out in the country. I decided to park the car alongside the bench by the third tee. I duly played my five holes and got back in the car. When I tried to drive off, I had forgotten about the bench and duly jammed the car against the bench. I went home and told Jennifer that I had scraped the car in the same place as she had. To which she replied that, if I had got out of the car to look, I must have scraped the other side – so the car had matching wings!

Jennifer took and passed her driving test a couple of weeks before Jonathan was born. The examiner took one look at her and said that it would be better to stick to the tar roads, which limited the scope considerably, in particular for uphill starts

Earlier on in our stay, I used to park the car in the “main” car park near the bottom of our street, Gilfillan Street. One day I returned to the car park to go home for lunch. I got into the car and drove forward only to jam the car on the concrete area which had once contained an ornamental tree. I was completely stuck. However, as was so often the case in Swaziland, a large number of teenage boys appeared from nowhere and were much amused by my predicament. They took it upon themselves to rock the car until, somehow, miraculously, I was able to drive it off the plant pot.

The car park was nearly opposite the “drive-in” bakery. This was so named because it faced the bottom of the steep hill into the town centre on the main road from Johannesburg. On numerous occasions, drivers failed to stop at the end of the road and drove straight into the bakery in front of them. The standard of driving in Swaziland generally was very poor, with frequent reports of fatalities. That was one of the few reasons that I was not all that sorry to leave when we eventually had to do so.

When we had been there a few months, we decided that it would be “safe” to have another baby, in Mbabane and Jennifer became pregnant. We were entitled to use the private clinic on the outskirts of Mbabane. On the evening of 21 May 1970, Jennifer went into labour and I drove her to the clinic. Doctor Tredway, the doctor in charge of the clinic, also had a general practice in the centre of the town. The arrangement was that the staff in the clinic would telephone him when the baby was due to arrive.

I went to see Jennifer during my lunch break on 22 May and there was no sign of the baby. A friend, Lois Wardle, was looking after Peter, while Jennifer was in the clinic. I finished work at 4:45 pm and went to collect Peter. Lois had a group of friends with her and they insisted that I telephone the clinic to find out if there had been any developments. I said there was no point, as it had been only a few hours since I had seen her. They prevailed and I was told that Jonathan had arrived very quickly. All Dr Tredway did for his 250 rands (about £140) was to put on his white coat and catch him!

Before I got to the clinic, our friends, Stan and Sue, had gone to visit Jennifer. They asked, when she thought the baby would arrive. To their surprise, she replied that they could see him: he was in a cot at the side of the bed. Jennifer was very well treated in the clinic – most of the nurses were Cypriots. I fetched her out a few days later: it was the most glorious late autumn day, with a deep blue sky.

About three months later, Jonathan developed a lump on his neck. Dr Tredway said it needed an urgent operation, which he could do, otherwise there was a risk he would be paralysed. He performed the operation and every doctor who has seen the scar since has said that he did an excellent job. It was only afterwards that I heard the allegation that the night before, Dr Tredway had knocked down and killed the daughter of one of the Swazi Permanent Secretaries.

There was a good social life in Mbabane. Swaziland having achieved independence only a year before we arrived, the colonial clubs and social infrastructure were still in place, as were many of the members of the colonial administration. These were rapidly being replaced by a younger generation of more liberal expatriates, including me, who were there to support, rather than to govern.

After some hesitation because of its racist history, I joined the Mbabane club for the golf and tennis. The tennis was interesting. Because of the altitude (4000 feet above sea level) special tennis balls were used. I used to play two hours singles in the midday sun with my friend Colin, who was on secondment to the British High Commission.

There was a cinema club, run by the newer generation, which showed more “highbrow” or classical films. In particular Jennifer remembers with some dismay watching Rosemary’s Baby when she was pregnant. There was also a Theatre Club, run by the older generation, which, as well as putting on theatre productions showed a monthly middle brow film. A few miles out of town was a Drive-in Cinema. This was a novel experience for us, which we have not repeated since. This showed films on the South African commercial circuit. Apartheid being in its hey-day, these films were heavily censored. One film that we watched was Till Death Us Do Part featuring Alf Garnett, the racist Cockney bigot. (Tony Blair’s father-in-law, Anthony Booth also starred as Garnett’s socialist son-in-law.) We could never work out what the South Africans (or Swazis) made of this film.

We had several holidays in Mozambique, in and around Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). Mozambique at the time was a Portuguese province and LM was its capital. It was a beautiful European city and reminded me, at the time, of the South of France. Driving out of LM one was conscious of the rapid transition from a sophisticated capital to the African bush in the space of a few yards. One time we went on a boat trip to the island of Inhaca. We were about a mile from the shore, when the boatman switched off the engine and got out a pole and started punting us towards land. About a hundred yards from the shore, he announced that that was as far as he could take us and we would have to paddle the rest. This did not please Jennifer, who was pregnant and wearing tights. The island itself was the archetypal desert island: deserted apart from one bar, with pure white sand. One of my favourite memories!

The last time we went to Mozambique, some six months later, our son, Jonathan, was about 3 months old. We invited Sarah to go with us, partly as a treat for her – she had never seen the sea – and partly to look after Jonathan. We stayed in a hotel across the road from the beach. We had been there only a few days when Sarah began to complain of stomach pains. She said she had to go home. This we were reluctant to do. By the Thursday the pains had got worse and we had to take her to the hospital. We went to see her in hospital sometime later. I can still see the young male member of staff who said: “There was a baby!” It was only a few months since she had had her second child.

We also had a holiday in Natal in February 1970. While we were there we wanted to get some baby clothes for the baby Jennifer was expecting in May. We also wanted to get the car serviced in an authorised Renault garage. We had an enormous room in a good hotel, one road back from the sea front. There was a choice of eleven items on the menu and we could have eaten all of them, if we had wanted. I took the car to be serviced, but we never went shopping. The humidity was unbearable. The deal in the hotel was five nights for the price of four, but it was so humid that we left after four nights.

We drove south to a place called Hibberdene, where we stayed for a few nights including Jennifer’s 26th birthday. The hotel was situated at the edge of a white sandy beach fringed with palm trees – idyllic. We spent one of the days further along the coast at Ramsgate or Margate! We spent the second week at a place called Chaka’s Rock. The whole of that coast was perfect for a quiet beach holiday with Peter, who by now was nearly three years old. We had some political discussion with the English-speaking landlady. She was a great admirer of Enoch Powell, though he was a bit too much of a socialist for her liking.

Apart from the weekly Times of Swaziland, the only newspapers available were South African. I used to buy the Sunday Times because it had the English football results. I was struck by the strength of the antagonism expressed in that newspaper against the ruling Afrikaner Nationalist Party.

I used to write a letter to my parents every Monday. Amazingly, sometimes the two-way exchange took under a week, which meant that when I came to write, I had already received a reply to the previous week’s letter. At that time, there was a Civil War in Nigeria/Biafra. My mother was worried that these events in Africa might cause us problems. I replied to ask if they were causing them any problems, as they were nearer than us!

Towards the end of my stay, Richard Jolly invited me to visit him in Zambia. We were due to go to see the Victoria Falls, but there was a family problem and so we stayed in Lusaka. Instead, Richard took me to an open air theatre, which was putting on a play about Che Guevara (whom I’d never heard of before!) The President, Kenneth Kaunda, was there and addressed the audience.

Continued in Back To The Smoke#1