An unconvincing thug
From William Foster Sir: Robert Oakeshott says that Kenneth Kaunda was often thought of as a 'holy fool' (Books. 11 October). I can vouch for the 'fool' part, but saw little evidence of holiness when I saw him catapulted into the charge office one night. He had been arrested in Mucha, the African compound outside Broken Hill, with a number of his heavies for attempting to extort money with menaces from an African not thirsting for independence. The African had thumped him and then gone to the police. How like K.K.: he wasn't even a convincing thug. The next morning, the magistrate set bail at £5, which of course K.K. didn't have, thanks to his incompetence as a fundraiser. I have always been easy to bribe, and my quarrel with K.K. lies in the fact that he approached a colleague and not me with the offer of the post of attorney-general upon independence in exchange for his bail money.
William Foster
Wigmore, Herefordshire
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