One of the great characters of Africa who I met when working there many years ago as a journalist and foreign correspondent, was an eccentric White settler in Northern Rhodesia who literally saved an entire tribe from debilitating tropical diseases and eventually became a king-maker.
He was Stewart Gore-Brown D.S.O., a staunch believer in there being a harmonious place for all White and Black people throughout the continent, even after Independence was won and declared.
Stewart was born in England in 1893 and went out to Northern Rhodesia after seeing action during the First World War and winning a Distinguished Service Order for multiple acts of extreme bravery while facing the enemy. His only other claim to fame was the fact he was closely related to the Hugh Lockie-King family who owned Brooklands Estate in the U.K. where they started and sponsored the historic and classic Brooklands’ International motor racing events.
After being demobilised from the British Army, Stewart adventured around Africa before settling in Northern Rhodesia on Bemba tribal lands.
A mutual friend of “Grogs” Grogan — my old drinking buddy in Kenya who is still the only man known to have walked the entire length of the African continent — Stewart became a farmer and community builder while politically befriending his Bemba neighbours from intrusion by the State Government.
One of Stewart’s outstanding early achievements was to singlehandedly build a castle-like and part-Tuscan home — named as Shiva House — in what was possibly the most undeveloped part of Northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia.
This magnificent 23,000-acre property was close to the ‘Lake of royal crocodiles,’ one of the most dangerous wildlife places in Africa. Shiva must also have been the world’s most isolated traditional manor house anywhere in the true European tradition.
Not long later, he married a lady, Ethyl, the daughter of the then Governor of New Zealand. She assisted him with the use of his own hard-earned money to construct a special hospital on their extensive property to look after the many Bemba tribal people suffering from deadly tropical diseases and facing almost eventual tribal extinction through their loss of numbers, even at an early age.
I first visited Shiva House, its two remote living occupants and their ever-overcrowded non-fee-paying hospital in the 1950s and was accommodated in a special British traditional gatehouse near the entrance to the property.
As my temporary home was surrounded by all the wild animals of Africa, I had to be fetched for dinner at night by someone carrying a lantern and a handy shotgun in case of an unexpected attack by a marauding crocodile, lions or hyenas.
After eventually being returned to my posh ‘digs,’ sleep was not always an option as the night airs carried the haunting screeches and cries of the nocturnal wild in search of mates or a meal.
As a man, Stewart was a friendly and adventurous eccentric who wore a monocle and was someone to remember, like a character out of an old-time Oscar Wilde novel.
When reading to me his many letters to authority on behalf of his Bemba people, I saw him as an inspirational man of honour who had helped thousands of Bemba with employment and a desire to keep them healthy.
I soon realised his ire on behalf of his tribal neighbours was first raised when he heard that the Northern Rhodesia Government was planning to open up the Bemba tribal lands to modern agricultural and other development.
Not long later, it was reinforced when the three governments of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland decided to form a new Central African Federation and industrialise this vast area spanning Central Africa. This idea included encouraging more foreign migrants to the federation as large-scale farmers and manufacturers using low-paid African workers.
So annoyed did Stewart become over this that he took on winning a seat as a Parliamentary politician and succeeded, with relatively little outside help, to defeat the plan originally devised by the British in Whitehall and partly by the Southern Rhodesian Government.
Interestingly, for his work with the Bemba and for his overall success as a politician, Stewart was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth. This did not, however, encourage him to retire back to Shiva House or deter him from further persuasive political work.
After Northern Rhodesia eventually won independence from Britain, this man of Africa affectionately known as ‘Gor Blimey’, as a play on his name, turned to help Kenneth Kaunda to be the country’s first president.
It is said he schooled Kaunda into becoming the most effective Black leader of the time when ordinary African tribal men were faced with having to adopt the cudgels of Democracy to run a newly born State.
Sir Stewart Gore-Brown is revered in African political history for basically turning a former tribesman into a worldly statesman, as Kaunda was compared to some other newly- appointed African presidents.
After Stewart’s death in 1967 at 74 years of age, Kaunda dubbed his mentor as ‘Chipembele,’ meaning he had always supported the African people as a man of peace and goodwill — and an inspiration to all.