Tucked away at the end of the sleepy up-market street of Extension 27 in Gaborone is a modest office chocking behind a thicket of trees with a nameplate that reads “Bayford and Associates.” When newspaper publishers decided to take up arms against the Mass Media Legislation, they made a bee line for the law firm. For a man itching to fight government, the anti-establishment aura associated with this office must have seemed irresistible. A few weeks before his death, Louis Nchindo brought a stack of legal files to Bayford and Associates.
Nchindo along with other accused persons are facing 36 counts of corruption. About P6 million later, we are seated with Nchindo and his co-accused Jacob Sesinyi, assessing the damage. “It just doesn’t make sense.
Why employ so many advocates just to face up with two junior government lawyers. I need someone who can kick the system off its butt and get this whole case going. That is why I am talking to Bayford”, he said.
The corruption case and the P6 millions pula he has so far spent going round the bottom of the legal mountain however, were the least of Nchindo’s worries. It was his life he feared for.
It is a story with implausible characters and plot twists. There is an alleged scorned South African cabinet minister and his wife. There is a treasure trove of information that it is feared if leaked could bring down the Botswana government. There is the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services and a prominent lawyer who are determined to ensure that that the information does not leak. And at the heart of it all, there was Louis Nchindo.
How the plot went awry and ending with part of Nchindo’s corpse rotting somewhere in the wilderness of the Chobe District may end up as fodder for propaganda and conspiracy theories.
The 69 year old has spent most of his career in the murky world of secret political funding. He was an establishment man: A product of an era that produced the likes of Ponatshego Kedikilwe, Festus Mogae, David Magang and Ben Makobole.
He was educated at Oxford University. At 25 he was a trainee Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble, Venezuela, South America. At 30 he was Marketing Manager of Vick Chemicals in Jamaica and at 32 he was Administration Manager for Anglo American Corporation Botswana, rubbing shoulders with world business luminaries like Harry Oppenheimer and Julian Ogilvy-Thompson.
At 38, he landed the pound seat as Chief Executive Officer at De Beers Botswana (as Debswana was previously known) where he established himself as the power behind the scenes who allegedly directed millions of Pula in De Beers money to Botswana leaders, the puppet master who pulled strings of officials in key places, a power broker who built a huge social capital in high places.
It’s no coincidence that today De Beers projects Nchindo as the central figure in what could easily become Botswana’s biggest political funding scandal. A reconstruction of Nchindo’s rise and fall shows that he was an ingenious dealmaker who hatched interlocking schemes that exploited the weaknesses in both De Beers and government of Botswana – sometimes for clients to help political leaders and more often to build a sphere of influence among the country’s political leadership. He was a generous man who sponsored a good number of ministers and members of parliament, including from opposition from his pocket.
For a time, all things seemed possible.
Even as his brash and swaggering style often clashed with the conservative government enclave, many people were still drawn to Nchindo’s moxie and money. Lawmakers and their aides packed his office and lobbied him for positions in cabinet. Struggling businessmen groveled at his feet begging for bailouts.
With a ruthless and witty determination he pushed his favorites for top and strategic positions in both government and the private sector.
Not without justification there is a strong argument that were it not for him, both Festus Mogae and Ian Khama would never have made it to the State House.
Preferring a life and career outside of regular politics he was always ready with political solutions when career politicians were at wit ends.
Unraveling the riddle of Louis Nchindo is not easy. But enough fragments emerge to build a picture of a complex character, part power player, part businessman, a political character who despised politics, a generous philanthropist who used his sizeable wealth to win friends, a political benefactor who saw nothing wrong donating his personal money to both ruling party and opposition activists, a high street mover and shaker who had dirt on everyone and allegedly used it for control before coming unstuck when he overplayed his hand.
One friend said of him: “He is a humane man, but an adventurer. He is tremendously good company.”
Those closest to him say the outside tough character concealed an inner soft being who was forever too eager to share his money (and that of Debswana) with the less privileged.
What happened next suggests that the adventurer did not fully grasp how easily things can go wrong, – it is rumored that Nchindo threatened both De Beers and government that if corruption charges against him were not dropped – he would spill the beans, a claim he has since denied.
One version is that Nchindo fell out with a cabinet friend in South Africa who was determined to pull all stops to bring the Botswana power broker down. He allegedly found willing partners in the intelligence services and their local lawyer friend who were determined to stop Nchindo from spilling the beans.
The alliance allegedly spearheaded a smear campaign against Nchindo to discredit him before he started singing. Before he died, Nchindo told Sunday Standard that some friend in the South African intelligence had gathered information linking the DIS and their lawyer friend to a sex scandal published in the South African Sunday World last month. The intelligence officers allegedly claimed that they had a dossier detailing communication between DIS, the lawyer friend and the two girls who told the Sunday World that Nchindo had impregnated them and then forced them to commit abortion.
South African operatives claimed that DIS was tailing Nchindo and warned him that his life could be in danger.
Nchindo however was determined to fight back on all fronts. Shortly before he left for Kasane, he said he was expecting a story in the Sunday Times of South Africa detailing how the DIS was conspiring with the South African minister and their lawyer associate to bring him down.
He also told Sunday Standard that he would be instructing Dick Bayford to take over his corruption case.
The whole government enclave was rattled when the Sunday Standard broke the story on how De Beers and Debswana had been secretly funding the BDP and its leaders. Most suspected that the story was leaked by Nchindo, a claim he has since denied. Reports that he was putting finishing touches to his autobiography which he had said he would serialize in the Sunday Standard did not help the situation.
Roping in Bayford as his lawyer meant that he was likely to expose the party and government’s dirty secrets to an anti-establishment lawyer who would be too happy to air them in public. When everyone was waiting for the end-game, Nchindo was reported missing. Part of his body was later found rotting in the wilderness of Pandamatenga farms, not very far from where some years ago he towed Debswana into ploughing millions of Pula as part of his economic diversification programmes that he passionately implemented when he was Managing Director.
