Africa: Another Side of the Coin. Northern Rhodesia's Final Years and Zambia's Nationhood

Abstract

MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY Andrew Sardanis. Africa: Another Side of the Coin. Northern Rhodesia's Final Years and Zambia's Nationhood. London/New York: I.B. Taurus, 2003. Distributed by Palgrave. ix + 340 pp. Photographs. Map. Appendix. Selected Bibliography. Index. $39.50. Cloth. When the Financial Times cared about the copper mines of central Africa, it labeled Andrew Sardanis as Zambia's economic overlord. By the late 1960s, he directed Zambia's collection of parastatals called Indeco, in addition to being permanent secretary to the minister of commerce and industry. In Africa: Another Side of the Coin, he tells how the son of a Cypriot school-teacher became an influential businessmen and advisor to Zambia's post-colonial elite. On occasion the story strays into ex post facto justifications for his actions, and some might find fault with several unsubstantiated claims or insinuations. At times, too, the narrative is interrupted by unnecessarily long passages from past speeches, correspondence, and memoranda. However, if readers treat his book as autobiography rather than scholarly tract, Sardanis's lively mind and remarkable story will captivate those interested in Zambia's recent history and the history of business-state relations in Africa in general. Sardanis left British-ruled Cyprus for Northern Rhodesia in search of a job that would earn him sufficient funds to go to university. Instead, he became an agent and then part owner of a transport and retail company. His sympathy for the anticolonial movement spearheaded by Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence party (UNIP) grew out of his own nationalist Cypriot sentiments. He detested the European settlers with whom he was supposed to ally himself, and he ran as a candidate for UNIP in the 1962 elections. He didn't win, but in 1965 the newly elected president, Kenneth Kaunda, appointed him chief executive of Indeco. Sardanis describes his role as the head of Indeco with what is perhaps a tinge of hubris: He built up a viable group of parastatals, tried to block disbursement of loans to the party faithful, prevented at least some white elephant development projects supported by politicians and unscrupulous international financiers, and backed Zambianization while trying to curb its excesses. However, by 1970 political pressures so compromised his mission to ensure that state businesses would run along profitable lines that he resigned and relocated to London, where he joined Tiny Rowland's Lornho operation for a few months. Rowland's leadership proved too stifling and his business ventures too shady, and Sardanis left to establish Sardanis Associates. …

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