The Great Emerald Theft

The farm (as we called it) was a ten acre smallholding in a little settlement called Itimpi some fifteen kilometres from Kitwe. We had moved there earlier that year for a variety of reasons, principal of which was the solitude that it afforded at the end of the day (or week) and the sheer, exquisite beauty of the rural location. Itimpi is the present name for the small township of Garneton which is situated off the Kitwe to Chingola Road on the Zambian Copperbelt. Garneton was established as an enclave for well-to-do European settlers in the nineteen forties and fifties. Almost all the houses are four or five bedroom bungalows built in the colonial style and each situated on ten to fifteen acres of cultivated bushland.

Our farm had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, a large kitchen and an ever-open bar that let onto a huge open veranda on a terrace which looked out past the large anthill on the left across an unkempt lawn that swept down to a grove of tall trees near the stream at the western end of the property. It was from this veranda that we would watch in awe as six or seven tropical storms simultaneously crashed in violent anger during January and February each year. In these lovely surroundings Jenny and I lived with our sons Jem and Tom.

The unkempt lawn (more like a paddock, really) was a result of the exorbitant price of imported machinery, particularly lawnmowers - approximately five times my monthly salary! We simply couldn’t afford one. This was good news for the gardeners of course, it meant a weekend overtime every month or so. A few days of Remy and Ed with the slashers and the constant attention of three goats maintained the lawn in a sort of respectable condition.

There were three kayas or servants’ houses on the estate where up to forty people lived at times - it often happens in African society that relatives will come and live with those of their family that are working. The practice survives because of the perception that those family members working in urban centres have a better standard of living than those in the rural areas. That perception is not always correct but in this case I feel sure that those who lived with us were well looked after and had a satisfactory diet. We had three servants and each had his own Kaya, Robson the housekeeper and Remy and Ed, the gardeners. The kayas were provided with running water and electricity and our staff settled their families therein. When Jenny’s parent’s came to visit in 1986 they asked if they could be photographed with the staff. It came as a great surprise to both Jenny and me that 47 people appeared in that photograph. They weren’t really servants - they were family.

There was a trade-off for us in that such a large number of residents on the property meant that security was improved to such an extent that we had no serious break-ins during our stay there. When the cost of mealie-meal became prohibitive we provided the families with food (referred to as rations) as part of their wages.

There were a number of outbuildings such as a derelict piggery and a guest bungalow which we converted into a chicken house. We kept ducks, geese, chickens, a family of goats, two cats and at least six dogs - all different shapes, sizes and temperaments. These were the domestic animals but we were blessed with many wild creatures too.

One day while our three goats, Billy, Nanny and the kid were munching away at the grass we were concerned to see the inordinate interest that an overhead eagle was taking in the hard-working little herd. The hundred or more trees at the bottom of the lawn were mostly over thirty metres high and were the natural nesting places for many large birds of prey. The one which was devoting so much attention to our little kid was black and brown, wingspan of about two metres and a with a large rooster-like crest.

We beat a tattoo on a variety of kitchen utensils, waved our arms madly and turned on the burglar alarm as loud as possible - all to no avail. The bird circled around more boldly, getting closer and closer to our precious goats. We looked on in horror as the eagle swooped out of the sky, dropping like a stone with talons ready to seize. It came to ground some three metres from our now, terrified goats and lifted off again with a two metre black snake in its claws. The relief was immense as we realised that the goats were in much more danger from the snakes than from the eagles. It was, of course, a snake eagle.

Sitting on that same veranda one New Year’s Day we spied a waving of the long grass down in the paddock near the trees. It was late afternoon and we had been entertaining a friend to a festive drink. We concentrated hard in case the cheap local brandy was having an effect on our senses. No, the grass kept moving and whatever was causing it to move continued its progress scything along in our direction. The dogs now began to take an interest led by Scion Dhu, the German Shepherd, closely followed by Wombat and Roo, our faithful Bull Terriers. They sniffed around the thing and began barking in a frenzy of mock boldness. The creature kept on coming. We closed most of the verandah doors leaving one door ajar as an escape route (for us). We peered apprehensively as the long grass parted and we saw the great lizard amble nonchalantly up the side of the anthill and begin munching our golden and red azaleas.

The dogs went absolutely wild as they carried on the cacophony of howling and barking, each one trying to appear braver than the rest. They had no effect whatever on the reptile as it dined on our beautiful flowers. The creature was a one and a half metre monitor lizard with shoulders like a burly miner and a tail as strong as a crocodile, fairly common in wild areas of the bush and very much at home in the constantly running creek on our property.

He finally lost his temper with the dogs and cast his head towards them shooting his foot-long, bright yellow tongue in their direction like a rocket. I have never seen a pack of dogs lose their bravado so instantly. They shot off as quickly as you like pretending for all the world that they were doing something else and had never seen the monitor lizard. We saw it several times after that and came to enjoy its visits to our flower patch very much.

In order to enjoy the benefits of living in such a lovely paradise one has the duty to earn them, in other words, I had to work. That too was a pleasure in its own way. It was one of those early December days in Zambia when the true rains had not yet started and everyone was sweltering in the unbearable humidity. Jonathan, my Western Province driver, and I were heading south from the lovely copper mining town of Kalalushi to the emerald gemstone field on the banks of the Kafubu stream about fifty kilometres away.

Prospectors and government geologists had found the emeralds only some fifteen years before. The find had very recently been exploited by local and Asian entrepreneurs, some of whom were competent to mine in the soft, mica-sandy soil, many who were not.

“This road is pretty good, Mr Chris,” remarked Jonathan as he skillfully guided the Land Rover along the rutted dirt track and negotiated another ninety degree bend sending the vehicle drifting wildly sideways. “It’s fine now, Jonathan,” I replied without much enthusiasm, “but imagine how much damage the rains will do next month.” It had been a very long and tiring week and this was the last shift before the weekend so I was looking forward to a few quiet days at the farm with Jenny.
I came back to reality as Jonathan skidded to a halt at the paramilitary police barrier. Sergeant Mulenga greeted me in typical Zambian fashion with concerned inquiries about my family’s health and whether or not I had yet eaten today.

“Mr Chris, you have arrived at the right moment,” continued Mulenga, now moving on to the business of the day, “We have just received a report that the strongroom at Gemka Mine was broken into last night, it seems the bandits used explosives so I thought you ought to be informed.”

Not all the police officers on the emerald field were aware that in addition to being an Inspector of Mines I was also an Inspector of Explosives. Sergeant Mulenga, however, had always taken a keen interest in the credentials of any visiting law enforcement officer. “Thank you, Mulenga, I’ll go straight to Gemka,” I said. If you don’t mind, Mr Chris, I would like to accompany you, I may be able to help.”

“I am sure you will, Mulenga, jump in,” I said, glad of the assistance.

We covered the ten kilometres to Gemka Mine in as many minutes, the guard opening the security gate as soon as he recognised my vehicle. I had told the guards scores of times that every person entering the mine should be challenged but today rather than belabour the point I thought it better to get to the strong room as quickly as possible.

On arrival I was met by Ben, a director of Gemka Mine. Israel Ben-Zvi had spent a quarter of a century working in all the major emerald fields in the world and was widely recognised as one of the top three emerald gemologists on the planet.

“How much did they get away with Ben?” I asked a very sanguine Ben-Zvi.
“Thanks for coming so quickly, we have only just finished discussing whether or not to call you. We were not quite sure but we reported it to your office anyway,” Ben explained.
Ben well understood the point that if the explosives proved to be military rather than industrial or mining explosives then I should hand over the investigation to Mr Phiri of the Bomb Disposal Squad in Ndola. The problem with that was that Mr Phiri would take a whole day to arrive, if he came at all.
“I was waiting for you to arrive before we moved anything, so I can’t yet be sure what is missing.” said Ben as we entered the strongroom together and picked our way gingerly through the shards of glass and steel shrapnel that littered the floor. It appeared that there had been two explosions: the first had blasted the main steel door off its hinges and had caused the bulk of the debris around us, the second blast had opened a jagged hole in the door of the safe itself.
The whole operation seemed to have been incompetently carried out by very inexperienced safe breakers indeed. Whoever was responsible had clearly cut himself badly whilst reaching through the hole in the safe to extract the stones. He had bled copiously as witnessed by the streams of drying blood on the safe and on the strongroom floor. Ben opened the safe door with great difficulty as the locking mechanism had been damaged by the explosion.

“There’s a hell of a mess in here, Chris,” he said “but I don’t think they got away with much.”
A number of white hessian sacks had burst open and hundreds of the beautiful deep green stones lay scattered on the floor and shelves of the safe. “It looks like you will have to sort and weigh that lot again, Ben,” I remarked, “meanwhile I will see what I can find outside. Mulenga, you had best come along with me.” So, leaving Ben to his tedious task of re-weighing, re-sorting and re-packing the emeralds, Mulenga and I began to look around the outside of the strong room.

It immediately became apparent just how badly the thief had been cut. A clear trail of blood lay on the ground in front of us. In a state of high excitement Mulenga and I set off in pursuit of our quarry.

The trail of blood droplets and occasional castaway makeshift dressings of hessian cloth led us down the hillside along a rough track to the Kafubu river. I was fearful that the thief would have crossed the stream at some point and would thus have been lost to us. Fortunately this was not the case. The trail continued along the river bank for about two kilometres before turning up the hillside again, this time winding its way through dense woodland. At the crest of the hillside the forest opened out into a clearing which I immediately recognised as the Gemka Paramilitary Police camp. These were the huts occupied by the very people who were charged with the protection of the company’s emeralds!

I approached a group of three untidy soldiers armed with standard issue Kalashnikov AK 47 assault rifles and asked who the officer in charge was. The tallest of them explained that Inspector Chama was in command but that he had not been seen since the previous night.

“That’s his hut there,” said another soldier indicating the very shack to which the trail of blood had led us - it was empty. Without another word Mulenga and I quickly returned to the strong room where Ben had managed to restore some order to the chaos.

The ensuing twelve hours will forever remain a painful memory for me. I never imagined that I would grow tired of looking at and handling such a beautiful gemstone as an emerald. But I did. Ben and I laboured to sort and weigh and pack four months production of emerald from the largest emerald mine on the African continent and the deepest open pit emerald mine in the world.

In total the stones weighed in at 65 kg of gem quality emerald and 210 kg of beryl. The beryl, although not high grade has a ready market in India and the Far East for the manufacture of less expensive jewellery.

At the end of this back-breaking and eye-wearying exercise, Ben suggested that we double the Paramilitary guard for the night. I took him to one side and explained my fears about the integrity of the Paramilitary Police Force. Ben was shocked and readily agreed to my suggestion to move the stones to town without delay. The time was now eleven p.m. and the tropical night had long since fallen, the cicadas chirruping deafeningly in the surrounding bush.

Ever fearful of an ambush we drove at breakneck speed in a convoy consisting of two of Gemka’s Land Cruisers and my trusty Land Rover and covered the 70 kilometres to Kitwe in under an hour - no mean feat on such primitive roads at night.

I’m afraid we hit more than a few nightjars on the way - they seem to love sitting in the middle of the road and taking flight just before a vehicle hits them, sometimes these beautiful creatures don’t quite make it.

On reaching Kitwe at midnight and finding the Police station closed we decided to store the three million dollars worth of emeralds at my farm overnight. Imagine Jenny’s surprise when I turned up with a phalanx of armed police, six miners and a fortune in gems in the small hours. Much to everyone’s relief the night passed without incident and the gems were deposited at the bank next morning. I then went to the office to make a comprehensive report to the Permanent Secretaries of the Ministry of Mines and the Department of Home Affairs.

As for Mr Phiri and his Bomb Disposal Squad, they didn’t show up to investigate, in spite of the fact that I had informed him that the explosives seemed to be from the military. Inspector Chama went absent without leave and neither he nor my report was ever seen again. Until now!