‘Niggers can’t fucking drive,’ he said. ‘Lost three people this year on that road, but the management won’t accept what I tell them. Come on up to my office. We’ll get white drivers one day – but only when they make them pay nigger drivers the same.’ He grinned. ‘You got many niggers in England?’

‘One or two,’ I said, following him up the stairs to a small office with a large fan.

‘You’re lucky; they’re all over the fucking place out here.’ He pointed me into a chair, and sat down himself.

‘I guess it was their land once.’

‘And America belonged to the Indians. So what are they going to do – kick everyone out of New York, paint the Empire State Building up like a fucking totem pole, and fill the place with Indians? Everyone wants to go back, no one wants to go fucking forwards. Let the whites bust their guts to develop this country, get it all going well, then give it back to the fucking niggers. Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’

He handed me a Chesterfield, shoved one in his mouth and produced a flame from somewhere within his hand. ‘So your company is interested in buying some mining rights out here?’

‘Well, this is a very exploratory visit.’

‘Take my advice and go someplace else. Going to be a lot of problems here soon, lots of fucking problems.’

If there were many more like him around, I wasn’t surprised. Although, judging from what was reported in the press from time to time about the strong-arm business tactics of Sir Donald Loewe-Congleton’s empire, this particular example was probably one of the more kind-hearted employees.

‘What problems do you get at the moment?’

‘All sorts of problems, Rates of Pay in the mines; conditions in the mines; land ownership. There’s a lot of change in the wind, and it’s not blowing any good for the white man.’

‘What exactly do you mean by conditions in the mines?’

‘Health and safety; hours of work; length of years a man is permitted to work; monitoring it all, checking it all – we got ten miles of files out the back, it’s a pain in the ass and it costs a lot of money.’

‘Do you get many health problems?’

Smed looked at me slightly curiously. ‘Sure you do. We don’t get so much now they’re wearing the masks and we’re monitoring the air-dust levels – but then we don’t get so much work done, either. We even have a full-time doctor now.’

‘What kind of health problems do you get?’

‘The normal ones for uranium miners – respiratory, mainly.’

‘Lung cancer?’

‘Pretty high rate in the past; it should come down now.’

‘Have SWAPO put much pressure on you?’