Quill Hermans - Realising Seretse's Dream

These were the early years when mining began to take off and when enormously difficult negotiations and arrangements had to be made and carried through by the Ministry of Finance and Development and by Quill as its Permanent Secretary to bring the Selebi-Phikwe mine project into being.

I remember chatting with a close friend from Cambridge days who was here for some of those early negotiations, probably representing the UK's Standard Chartered Bank. He expressed surprise that 'you people' (so flattering!) were able to mount a team, which was so poorly equipped to deal with negotiations of such magnitude.
The fact is that somehow that negotiating team grew very fast in its understanding, judgments and self-confidence and pulled off what was described at the time as the most complex mining agreement ever put together.