Stewarts and Lloyds (South Africa)
Note: This is a sub-section of Stewarts and Lloyds
Notes from a Correspondent 2022.[1]
My father worked for Stewarts and Lloyds for most of his working life. He was sent to the United Kingdom from South Africa in 1937 to gain experience in Birmingham. Inevitably he was involved in the second world war, and joined the Royal Engineers, 8th Army, in 1941. He was involved with the pipeline to Normandy, and in various other places in North Africa, Italy, and Austria.
When he returned to South Africa in 1946, he became manager of the branch of S&L in Durban, which was an important service point for the sugar cane industry, and for imports from the UK, and exports to Mauritius. He was moved to Johannesburg, and then, finally in 1961, to Vereeniging* where S&L occupied a huge works that supplied most of Southern Africa, from Cape Town northwards, including Namibia (South West Africa in those days), Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. S&L provided irrigation equipment, Lister diesel engines for generators and pumps, Climax wind powered well pumps, and was the major importer and manufacturer of these products, including Lister engines, all types of tubing in all metals including welded and seamless tubing in alloys produced on site. I understand that there were around 11,000 people employed across the huge space that Southern Africa presented. In order to cover this space in emergencies, the company had three aircraft.
During the 2nd World War it had concentrated on armaments.
My father retired in 1968.
The chairman of S&L SA was William Menzies-Wilson at the time, who had a long family involvement with the company.
When S&L in the UK was nationalised, S&L SA was sold off, and I think ISCOR took the majority of shares. ISCOR was The Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa, owned by the government, and supplied Stewarts and Lloyds with materials. The UK nationalisation presented ISCOR with the opportunity to buy S&L’s assets in South Africa.
Stewarts and Lloyds of South Africa Ltd had branches in several major cities: Durban, Cape Town, Windhoek (Namibia), Lusaka (Zambia) and Queque (Zimbabwe). These branches carried stock, but as far as I know no major manufacturing other than servicing clients. There were also connections to Mauritius, but I don’t think there was an actual presence there.
- Vereeniging: an Afrikaans name meaning “togetherness”, and is the place where the final peace treaty between the British and the Boers was signed in 1902. This town was also infamous for the random shooting of people in its satellite town of Sharpeville in 1960. It was also represented in parliament by F. W. de Klerk, who is remembered for making some progress in the abandonment of Apartheid. Vereeniging was an industrial town. The name is pronounced Fair-een-iching, with the “ch” pronounced as in loch, the name for an expanse of water in Scotland.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ HM 2022/02/11