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 Everywhere he walks he sees happy faces of people relaxing over a can of an alcoholic beverage that has now become the country's favourite beer. He knows that St Louis makes brisk business for KBL while he has nothing to show for it. "The beer that you call St.Louis today is my product. Yes, it is my conception," he says half smiling. Instantly, the smile vanishes and in a stone face he relates the evolution of St Louis lager. He still drinks the frothy drink that 'he founded' but every time he drinks it, it is not with the pride of a brewer drinking his own world-beater. Whenever he drinks St Louis, a huge lump develops in his throat. As he puts it, he is wasting in the doldrums while KBL and the South Africans are profiting from an innovation that he claims is his own. So distraught is Nyadza that he has even written to South African Breweries Miller telling them that he is steadfastly resolute that he will not allow 'his little black brain be exploited for mahala-free'. He charges that unlike Charles Glass, the founder of Castle Lager who has been honoured publicly since 1895, he has not received the same treatment while people continue to profit from his innovation. He still remembers the dates and circumstances very well. In his version, it was in 1987 when he was working as the Brewing Manager at KBL that the entire company was seized with what was then a serious threat to the very survival of KBL. Some businessmen, among them Solly Essack of Oasis Motel, and a chain store of restaurants in the country were flooding the Botswana market with South African produced beverages produced at low unit cost, and they were threatening the very survival of KBL.He said even government's efforts to protect infant industries were suffocating from such an onslaught. "At KBL, we were obviously concerned by this new threat and at one of our meetings it was suggested that one way of staving off the threat was to come up with a local product. "We all recognised that Botswana is hot and it was suggested that we could come up with a beer of low alcohol content to suit the hot and dry environment. At the same time it should compete with the tasty beer from outside," Nyadza said. He does not know whether anybody believed that this was a task that could be accomplished but he took it to heart. For months on end, he tried to come up with a formula to save his job and to save KBL from going under. After a series of painstaking trials that involved mixing of this and that chemical and subjecting his tongue to some rigorous taste buds, he at long last felt that he got what he wanted. With glistening eyes, he talks about things technically; what he calls the "packaged product specifications"... the bitterness, sweetness, the tart level, the colour and the body of the brew that he eventually concocted. While doing this involving task, he just relied on his charges to carry out tasks on his instruction. Convinced that he got what he wanted, he said he presented his drink for trials and it passed. "Everybody was happy. I even developed its specifications and the analytical data of what percentages should be put in".Clutching a file containing some signed specifications, he says he still holds on to his specifications and insists that KBL does not have St Louis' specification manual. "I took my intellectual property when I left," he discloses. Nyadza said after his product was accepted, it was named 'Tlou Pilsner'. "There was a competition to name this new beer and one of the employees named it Tlou. We wanted to give it an indigenous name," he says.Why has it changed to St Louis then? "At the time we were told that the South African Breweries Miller which is a partner with KBL, wanted to register St Louis as a SAB Miller brand. I do not mind KBL making business from my idea but now it has been given to South Africans," Nyadza fumes. Nyadza recalled that Lawrence Lekalake was Deputy General Manager at KBL at the time when the St Louis recipe was developed. "I am not a technician. You should ask people at the breweries. I know he worked at the breweries on the brewing side and that is all I can say. If you want me to say whether he is the founder of the brew I will not say yeah or nay," said the current Board Chairperson of KBL, Lawrence Lekalake KBL Communications Chief, Percy Raditladi, said he was more than familiar with Nyadza's claims and he said KBL disputes his claims. According to Raditladi, KBL believes that any innovations made by an employee of a company remains the property of the company and this should be the same principle that applies in Nyadza's case. "Nyadza worked at KBL and he was paid for the services that he rendered and he is therefore not entitled to any claim for any input that he could have made during his tenure as an employee," Raditladi said. In one of the correspondences between Nyadza and KBL attorneys - Armstrongs - they made it clear that under Botswana law," "any claim which you may have had against our client arising out of alleged verbal agreement with our client, has become prescribed. That is, in terms of Botswana law, any claim based on a verbal agreement which is not pursued in the court within a period of three years becomes unenforceable by virtue of the provisions of the prescription Act". On whether Nyadza made the St Louis recipe, Raditladi said they dispute that St Louis recipe is the product of Nyadza."We dispute that," he said. "If this is not my conception, who did it then?" asks Nyadza. Raditladi says like many other employees, Nyadza could have had an input in the conception of St Louis particularly that he was in the brewing section, but we dispute that he is the originator. Raditladi agrees with Nyadza on one thing though. "St. Louis is an indigenous brew. It is brewed in Botswana only,"Raditladi said. He concurs with Nyadza that although St Louis is a local brew, it is now a brand registered and owned by the giant SAB Miller. But unlike Nyadza, he sees nothing wrong with this arrangement and he says it is not out of 'big brother arm-twisting the small KBL'. It is a legal and a very prudent business decision. According to Raditladi, SAB Miller is a technical partner with KBL and their mandate is to manage and to take care of such things as branding and this is contained in the management contract. "SAB Miller is a big internationally acclaimed brewer with the capacity to market our brands to a wider market. This arrangement is not only peculiar to Botswana." Talking about the alleged absence of a specification manual for St Louis, Raditladi laughs this off. "It is a baseless allegation. We have specification manuals. It is only that we cannot show them to members of the public. It is a trade secret. A big brewer such as SAB Miller would not compromise itself in that way. But Nyadza is adamant that KBL does not have the manuals because they are with him. In fact in a letter he wrote to the Managing Director of KBL in March 2005, he told the MD that he still carries a copy of his specifications that he drew up and signed into operation in 1987. "I dare them to show you their copy. My worry as a responsible citizen is that consumers should be protected. The beer they drink should be brewed according to specifications and not through any other means. Without a specification, it is possible that consumers can be given anything other than what has been specified," Nyadza warns.
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