Climbing rock faces and mountains or walking in the African bush and a bit in the English countryside was where my knowledge of Arthur developed. But most of his life he was engaged in business of which others no doubt have a much better insight; I observed only from a distance. Nevertheless, I offer these observations in the hope that others will contribute their own reflections on aspects of Arthur Aylen, his character and his achievements. A memorial event by email perhaps?
Arth was, like most of his best climbing friends, a leader; not an outwardly forceful one but a man with a clear sense of where he was headed and how he proposed to get there. He could carry others with him, I think, but didn’t push that very much – if you weren’t with him he would go without you. The alpine assault was perhaps more his style than campaign management.
The Aylen intellectual approach was interesting. He was sufficiently intelligent not to let academia get in the way, but, when faced with life’s big new issues, like jumping out of a plane, having a child or dealing with an illness, he would set about becoming an expert with the dedication of a post doc. There was no question that he could apply himself mentally to almost any issue!
Determination was also never in doubt, even to the end, as Sue will testify – and so will all of us who have followed him up tricky rock faces; dogged form of determination. I wonder, can one have too much of it for the business environment, or do you need to know when to quit? When in doubt, the Aylen instinct would be to battle on. Show him a rock face and he would assume there was a way up it.
The one ingredient Arthur was short of was sufficient money to fully fund his ventures, yet his business activities took bravely entrepreneurial forms. The question in my mind is why he chose not to scale the greasy pole of industrial management, which he could have done almost anywhere in the world he chose to go, but instead to battle away in his own private enterprise. As a middle manager in a large tea business where he ran an estate, I recall a problem with his boss. The firm was Tanganda so Chris probably has some insight but Pepsi says Arth had actually changed his own commanding officer in the army, so he wasn’t a man to flee from a difficult superior. Some of us might live with the problem of a bad boss, knowing that bosses come and go and, if the company is good, it should find and weed out its poor managers in time. ‘Should’ is the key word here and not one Arth seemed willing to rely on. Perhaps this experience is what led him to paddle his own canoe.
At the time he chose to go it alone, the rose farm looked like a good way to make a living and by the time the first rose bloomed at Cidumu Arth had, in his usual way, amassed a large part of what there is to know about this division of horticulture. This is a business that requires great attention to detail but the problem was less the management of the farm but more the management of the Zimbabwean economy which made life for all legitimate business in Zimbabwe extremely difficult. Exporting to Europe from a labour-intensive operation was just what Zimbabwe needed. However, in their efforts to stay in power, the government encouraged obstructive trade-unionism and the occupation, not to say theft, of white-owned farms. Year after year the expectation was that the government would be replaced and a more business-friendly environment would return. It wasn’t to be, and assembling a chain of rural stores seemed a logical response. If the nation would not let you earn a living by creating jobs and revenue then you might as well earn a crust by selling them whatever they desire; hence Aylen retailing was born, the Manicaland Tecso in the making.
Now retail is not a business that farmers are renowned for but Arth used this exposure to the needs and wants of the people to come up with yet another innovation – hooch or more properly called Teku-Teku. Not a refreshing and flavoursome ale but a mind bending beverage of ethyl alcohol sweetened with large amounts of sugar and set at just right price point. Brilliant! I thought this an inspired move, one which would finally make the Aylens rich for their retirement; a delicious retribution on the people that had rejected his many more worthy efforts. Remember, not only did Arth’s earlier endeavours attempt (in a modest way) to enrich the nation but, importantly, his approach was always a liberal one with due regard for all fellow Zimbabweans; so my hope was that this would provide his just desserts.
Sadly the business environment never did improve and time ran out but I admire the way Arth managed his business career, with much personal integrity and often on the edge of the precipice, much as his recreations had been.