Creation and Preservation of Business History: The Selection Trust and Anglo-American Corporation Archives in Zambia’s Copperbelt

Based on original archival research and oral interviews, this article examines archives creation and the preservation of the history of the multinational mining companies of Selection Trust (ST) and Anglo-American Corporation (AAC) in Zambia’s Copperbelt region between 1922 and 2000. The investment of foreign capital by multinational companies in the Copperbelt mines from the 1920s, marked the genesis and formal preservation of business archives in the Copperbelt. This article argues that although the ST and ACC archives were privately owned and strictly preserved for corporate interests and administrative efficiency, these documents eventually became publicly available because of Zambia’s political independence and the nationalisation of the mining industry in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) government nationalised the Zambian mines and merged the two multinational companies to form the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM). Consequently, in 1982, the ST and ACC archives were merged. However, following the complete privatisation of the mining industry in 2000 the identity of mining archives reverted to private entities. This article provides new and significant insights into the power and role of regional and local political-economic shifts in determining the nature and identity of business archives in Zambia.


Introduction
This article examines and historicises the origins, creation and preservation of the Selection Trust (ST) and Anglo-American Corporation (AAC) archives in Zambia's Copperbelt between the 1920s and 2000. The genesis and preservation of the ST and the AAC archives is traced back to these companies' investment of capital at Luanshya, Mufulira, Nchanga and Rhokana mines in the Copperbelt. In the mid-1920s, the ST and AAC received mining licences from the British South Africa Company (BSAC) for mineral explorations in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). The BSAC, which administered Northern Rhodesia between 1895 and 1924, introduced a new mining policy in 1922. This policy only permitted the allocation of exclusive licences over large areas to wellcapitalised multinational companies which had adequate technical expertise to exploit their concessions. 1 As a result, the two multinational companies of ST and AAC became firmly established on the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt.
1. L.J. Butler, Copper Empire, Mining and the Colonial in Northern Rhodesia, c.1930-1964(Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008 The Rhodesian Selection Trust (RST) was established as a holding company for its mining interests at Luanshya and Mufulira mines while the Rhodesia Anglo-American (RAA) group managed the Nchanga and Rhokana mines. 2 Both holding companies established management, technical and operation structures to enhance the effective production of minerals. Nevertheless, in the pursuit of their respective roles, inadvertently these structures became the foundation for the creation of mining business archives, which became the basis for writing the colonial and postcolonial mining, social and economic history of the Copperbelt region. These archives reflect the operations, policies and financial decisions of the mining industry since the 1920s. Individually, the RST and RAA group of companies owned and preserved their archives privately for reference of precedents and administrative efficiency.
However, following the achievement of Zambia's political independence in 1964 and the nationalisation of the mining industry between 1968 and 1970, the state made privately owned archives of the RST and RAA available to the public. The reason for the introduction of the nationalisation policy was that the government realised the low level of participation of the indigenous population in the national economy in general and the mining sector in particular. 3 Thus, in 1968 and1969 the Mulungushi and Matero reforms respectively were announced, which gave 51 per cent ownership and participation to the Zambian government in major industries, including the mining industry. 4 When the government took major control of the mining industry, it became eager to control its archives for reference of precedents in mining operations, policies and management, including financing. The Copperbelt mining industry was the mainstay of Zambia's economy and its archives held important and confidential information which called for state protection and control. Through the mining archives, the Zambian government was provided with models for national development.
In the early years of Zambia's independence, questions about ownership, preservation, and accessibility of mining archives became increasingly topical for the United National Independence Party (UNIP) government. Consequently, in the late 1960s, the Zambian government nationalised the mining industry and in 1982 merged the Roan Consolidate Mines [RCM (former RST)] and Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines [NCCM (former RAA)], two companies in which the state had a controlling interest, to form the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM). Similarly, the NCCM and RCM archives were merged to form the ZCCM Archives which became government property and was made accessible for public use. However, with the change of government from UNIP to the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) in 1991 a decade of privatisation of the mining industry followed, particularly in the period between 1996 and 2000. This saw the reversion of the identity of mining industry archives to private collections entangled in issues of restricted accessibility by the wider public.
Drawing from both archival and oral sources, this article demonstrates how the routine mining activities of the ST and AAC group of companies coincidently created and accumulated business-related archives in Zambia's Copperbelt region. It also examines the power and role of political independence, nationalisation and privatisation policies in shaping the preservation, identity and accessibility of mining business archives in the context of shifting local, political and economic forces in Zambia.
This article begins by contextualising the creation, preservation and accessibility of business archives, through some historiographical representations of Copperbelt mining collections. It then traces the origins of the Copperbelt mining archives through the administrative prospecting and technical operations of the RST in the mid-1920s. This is followed by a discussion of the introduction of formal preservation of RST archives and the development of archival policy in the context of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the 1960s. The article then turns to an in-depth discussion of how Zambia's political independence, the nationalisation of the mining industry and the formation of the ZCCM between the 1960s and 1980s shifted the appreciation and identity of foreign multinational mining companies (RCM and NCCM) archives from private to public collections for a wider access. The paper concludes by examining how the privatisation policy during the period under the MMD government transformed the ownership of archives into private entities and restricted public access between the 1990s and 2000.

Understanding the creation and preservation of business archives in a historiographical context
The earliest histories of mining business archives in Zambia's Copperbelt have not given sufficient insight into their historical creation, preservation, accessibility and shifting identity. The narrative, which only begins with reference to the 1970s, and is usually represented by professional archivists in the context of archival institutions, focuses mainly on a description of the organisation, preservation and management of mining archives. This small corpus of available literature has ignored regional and local political-economic forces as well as the historical settings that led to the creation and preservation of mining business archives in Zambia. The narrative also disregards the aspect of transformation in the custody, preservation, identity and accessibility of these archives.
In the late 1970s, archivists attached to the ST and the ACC group of companies -such as Alistair Tough, Jim Moore and Joseph Chuubi -left an invaluable account of the preservation and management practices of archives in the Copperbelt mining industry. Writing from his experience, Moore offered an account of the development of the ST archives policy and preservation procedures in the Copperbelt. 5 Tough, in turn, drew attention to the classes of archives generated by the ACC mining divisions that operated in Zambia's Copperbelt. 6 Remaining silent and perhaps disinterested in the historical processes through which mining archives of the Copperbelt came to be created and shaped, Chuubi focused on the potential of mining archives in economic development. 7 Generally, in southern Africa the safeguarding of business archives points to a concern for the promotion of histories of particular businesses. For example, the 1960s witnessed the preservation of archives by mining companies such as Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, based in Johannesburg and De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, Kimberley, among others, for the purposes of stimulating interest in their institution's business history. 8 Meanwhile, broader and regional histories of business archives have further highlighted the preservation of business records as significant sources for corporate experience and history. Helen L. Davidson, for instance, highlights the indispensability of business archives within corporations. 9 She argues that company records such as memoranda, correspondence, reports, plans and charts are permanently preserved by individual firms for corporate research interests.
As this article shows, Zambian mining archives witnessed a turning point in the 2000s but the role of shifting external and internal historical, political and economic forces in the creation and preservation of regional archival records has remained largely overlooked. This is unfortunate because mining archives have been invaluable to many recent studies of national, regional and community economic, social, environmental and political phenomena. 10 Academic historians, for instance, Miles Larmer, Hyden Munene and Duncan Money, who conducted empirical studies and published works based on their analysis of, and experience in, the archives of the mining industry, have only emphasised the potential of the mining archives for the production of history as well as noting their limitations. 11 Even so, Larmer does acknowledge that the Copperbelt mining archives contain historical information on economic development, urbanisation and labour relations from the 1930s, and Munene outlines the mining archives that are valuable in compiling Zambia's colonial and post-colonial mining history. Most recently, Money discussed the making of the Mineworkers Union of Zambia archive in the context of a digitisation project. Yet, to a large extent, mining archives have been regarded as sources of history without being acknowledged as historical subjects of study which have their roots in the broader and regional political-economic forces through the operations of the mining companies of RCM, NCCM and ZCCM.

Creation of the Selection Trust mining archives on the Copperbelt
The earliest history of archives creation about the Copperbelt mining industry is linked closely to the imperatives of copper production in Zambia. This shaped the nature of the archives and their processes of creation and preservation by the initial multinational mining companies on the Copperbelt. The London-based ST was a pioneer and frontrunner in the formal creation and preservation of archives in the Copperbelt. The process of creating archives started in the early 1920s, when the ST secured a mining licence to prospect at Roan Antelope (now Luanshya) and Mufulira mines. The ST's investment of capital in these Copperbelt mines was made possible through the BSAC new mining policy which targeted well capitalised companies for commercial mining. 12 In 1922 the BSAC preferred granting large-scale mining licences to major commercial mining companies such as the ST, which had adequate capital and technical expertise. The latest concessionary policy ended the speculative nature of mining and it also coincided with the post-war increase in world demand for copper, associated particularly with the growth of the automobile and electrical industries during the 1920s. Consequently, all this attracted foreign corporate capital in Northern Rhodesia's Copperbelt mines and eventually led to the establishment of a foundation for the creation of mining business archives.
Waste and Environmental Thought on the Central African Copperbelt, 1950-2000', Environment andHistory, 28, 2 (20220, 259-284. 11 In 1925, the founder and owner of ST (Sir Alfred Chester Beatty) engaged engineer Russell J. Parker of Bwana Mkubwa Company to conduct geological and site assessment activities at Roan Antelope and Mufulira. 13 This marked the beginning of the creation of archives with information about the early development of mining activities in the Copperbelt. Following the examination of the Roan and Rietbok deposits in Luanshya the engineer produced a collection of geological reports with information on the specific locations of copper. 14 The engineer' s optimistic geological findings led to the actual drilling of copper deposits, a new technique in the mining development. Its results were cabled from the Copperbelt to Britain. Ronald L. Prain, who would become a prominent figure within the ST, documented the results on charts that made a new addition to the geological archives. 15 Another factor in the accumulation of archives was the long distance between the ST head office in Britain and the Copperbelt mines in Zambia. Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, together with the board of directors were based in London, far from the Copperbelt. It was therefore difficult for them to conduct on-site supervision. Because of the distance between them, the mining engineers and managers had to communicate through written reports and letters. All this was made possible by the use of cablegrams between the Copperbelt and Britain. 16 J.G. Philips observes that Selection Trust archival collections -held in London at locations such as the London School of Economic and Political Science, and the Rio Tinto Zinc archives, but also available at the Beatty Library, Dublin and Rhodes House in Oxford -include material ranging from reports, board minutes and company correspondence with its subsidiaries in southern Africa and elsewhere. 17 The late 1920s saw the growth of ST investments in the Copperbelt mining industry and an increased accumulation of company archives. As a way of consolidating its mining business enterprises in Zambia, the ST's holding company (RST) reorganised the corporate administrative structures into two system, one based in Britain and the other in Zambia. 18 However, the head office remained in London, because this was an epicentre of the mining activity in the British empire. It also housed the London Metal Exchange, the most important venue for copper in Europe. 19 Consequently, the geographic distance between the central administration in London and local management in the Copperbelt continued as a conduit through which mining archives were created. The reason for this was that the ST organised its mining operations along functional lines -a practice which required the local management of its holding company, the RST, to report to the board of directors at the corporate headquarters. 20 The ST's macro-management style generated archives highlighting an administrative relationship of the parent company (ST) and its subsidiary (RST) on aspects of financial transactions, policies and decisions made about the Copperbelt mining business. Betty Joseph also notes that the distance between the metropole and colonies led to the systematic circulation of texts that allowed remote management from Britain. 21 Accordingly, archives of the RST were distributed in both Britain and Zambia. For future Zambian researchers who found these documents important, this meant the serious burden of having to travel long distances to access the necessary information.
Although there is a disinclination to mix the history of Francophone and Anglophone Africa on the basis that the two histories do not provide a good chronological or comparative fit, 22 there is a similar trend in the distribution pattern of mining archives between the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) and Zambia. Like the Copperbelt region, Katanga was also transformed by the onset of industrial mining. However, there is a key discrepancy in the timelines of the two regions. The copper mining archives in Katanga, the Congo's region (where most of the copper deposits are located) began to be generated before the First World War, whereas in Northern Rhodesia, mining archives only really gained traction in the late 1920s. The Mining Union of the Upper Katanga (Union Minière du Haut Katanga), which was founded in 1906 and granted exclusive rights to mine copper in Katanga became a vast corporate enterprise in the Congo. 23

19.
For Thus, in the pursuit of its mining business, the Mining Union of the Upper Katanga generated archives primarily relating to the administration of the company and these include a reasonably comprehensive record of general meetings, minutes from various committees, records of the administrative departments and legal documents. Archival material on the production process includes technical, geological, and statistical information. These archives are held principally in Brussels, Belgium and in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where corporate structures were housed -a stark reminder of the unequal power relations under colonial rule. This means that researchers of the Copperbelt region, as a geological zone of copper deposits covering some 450 km in length and 260 km in width in the Republic of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 24 have experienced significant inconvenience in searching for mining archives dispersed in different countries.
Apart from the core business of mining copper and making profits, the RST company also had social responsibilities to fulfil. This led to the accumulation of material depicting the 'everyday life' of the Copperbelt communities in the colonial period. From the beginning of its mining business in the late 1920s, the company became responsible for the welfare of the communities of Luanshya and Mufulira, by providing orderly compounds to house employees, supplying weekly food rations and establishing hospitals. 25 These social responsibilities emerged because the Northern Rhodesia government discouraged long-term African labour settlement in the mining towns and the RST mines had to depend on migrant labour.
According to Alistair Fraser and John Lungu, by 1929, the RST company management had already adopted a paternalistic system and became responsible for the welfare of the Copperbelt mining communities. 26 In this regard, the executors of corporate responsibilities such as company managers and supervisors compiled reports for the information of various boards of directors indicating financial transactions and social services that were provided. Joseph Chuubi, a former archivist of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, acknowledged that company archives presently under the custody of the mining industry repository in the Copperbelt, Ndola, include personnel and welfare records in the form of reports by African residence managers on hospitals, housing, including food provisions. 27

24.
Guene In as much as the RST company provided social services to its employees, there is also evidence that discriminatory actions, especially against African miners, were typical of the colonial regime. This scenario became the driver of notable strikes in the 1940s and 1950s and was also a basis for the creation of company labour relations records in the Copperbelt mining industry. Ian Phimister notes that employment conditions enjoyed by white workers in the Copperbelt mines were excessively generous. White workers, primarily from South Africa and Britain, entrenched their position during the war in terms of a job colour bar by companies keen to avoid interruptions to production. 28 Thus, strike action and unrest against the company mine management became the main tool for demanding improvement in employment conditions and wage increases. 29 The hostile work environment led to the formation of trade unions by African mineworkers in 1948. This development was achieved with the assistance of a British trade unionist sent by the British Government to foster moderate unions that would engage in collective bargaining without resorting to strike action or becoming too involved in politics. 30 Collective bargaining as an approach for conflict resolution was adopted and this required generating documents outlining terms of agreements between the company management and employees. This points to the significant role of local economic forces in the production of business knowledge.
Although the labour records made a new addition to the already existing collections of finance, policy, welfare and prospecting archives, trade unions' records are nowhere to be found. The records of the Mines African Staff Association were apparently lost without a trace but those of the white mineworkers' union were destroyed following its ban in the 1960s. 31 According to Miles Larmer, the extent of mine workers' records were uneven because of social upheaval and economic decline. 32 The mine workers staged violent strikes in demands for improved wages, social, health and housing conditions from the mining companies which witnessed the burning of offices and destruction of records. 33

Shifting from functional to permanent preservation of RST Archives
Even though the creation of the RST company archives began in the late 1920s, arrangements for their preservation on archival professional lines were only made in the 1960s. This was about seven years after the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953, a political shift and environment which exposed the RST company to professional archiving. 34 Initially, the documents created in the course of company administrative activities were kept for the information of those who were responsible for specific transactions, namely the management personnel and their successors within the RST. 35 The idea of shifting from records management to proper archiving of information for permanent preservation suggests a change in the perception of company archives, a shift from regarding them as mere functional records to permanent entities situated in their historical and reference significance.
In 1961, Bill Garlic, an American who worked as a consulting geologist for the RST, started the idea of centralising company records. This was a way of safeguarding important information, especially geological records, for administrative and reference purposes. 36 Geological archives were accorded a high priority value for preservation because they provided important information on orebodies and deposits that would remain economically workable even as world or local demand changed. 37 Garlic's suggestion to centralise the preservation of RST archives might have been influenced by his American background. In the United States of America, professional archiving of business archives began in the early 1940s. For example, in 1943, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company became the first company in the US to hire an archivist and to begin a comprehensive archives programme. 38 The archival process involved the appraisal of all records and those documents considered valuable and useful to the needs of the company were preserved permanently for future reference and consultation.

34.
In 1953 Importantly, the influence of Sir Ronald Prain, the then chairperson of the RST was key in driving the innovation of preserving company archives. According to Tough, Prain was the first archivist of the Anglo-American Corporation group archives in the Copperbelt and he was interested in preserving company history to memorialise key figures such as Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, founder of Selection Trust. 39 Subsequently, the RST Board of Directors appointed a company archivist and established a records centre in Salisbury (Harare), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), in 1962. Southern Rhodesia hosted the first RST records repository because earlier in 1955, the company moved its headquarters from Lusaka in Zambia, to Salisbury. 40 The move was politically motivated, mainly targeted towards developing cordial relations with the federal government. Nonetheless, the change of company domicile and the formation of the federation turned out to become an important advantage that would shape the professional preservation of the RST archives.
The existence of the National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia, became a model upon which the RST established its archiving system. Even though the federal archival institution was strictly a public entity, Peter Muzikana suggests that it was a 'cradle' that also nurtured and provided training for personnel in the private sector. 41 This is because the National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was the first archival institution to exist in Central Africa. Its history traces from the 1930s when it was first established. 42 The RST's decision to migrate from keeping records for administrative reference to permanent preservation of company history was not very different from that of the Barlow Rand Mines Limited, in South Africa. The Rand Mines also established an archival institution in the early 1960s and started the preservation of its textual records. 43 However, at Rand Mines the push factor for the preservation of its archives was the company's decision to write a history commemorating the 75th anniversary of its mining business. The preservation of Rand Mines records was also an important part of the company's agenda to promote research and interest in South African business history. In a way, this was also reflective of business archives as significant sources in the writing of economic histories.
In the early 1960s, the RST company framed an archives policy that would define the specific information needed for permanent preservation. This was preceded by the formation of a 'records committee' composed of an archivist,

39.
Interview department and office managers, all considered to have a better understanding of the value of company records. 44 The Records Committee compiled procedures and principles for the selection of archives for either permanent preservation or destruction. a notable feature that was no different from archives' policies designed for public records in the federal government territories of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. 45 This was indicative of the extent to which the National Archives of Rhodesia influenced the preservation practices of the RST.
Parallel to those of the National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the retention schedules for the RST outlined 'preservation periods' for all classes of records that were generated by the company. Records eligible for permanent destruction were those with information that was adequately covered in other documents such as weekly and monthly reports as well as supporting documents which included vouchers and receipts. 46 On the other hand, the defining principle for permanent preservation considered records that were in existence for ten years or more, holding information of policy, technical, historical, legal, fiscal, administrative and statistical value to the company. In this case, the basis of assembling an archive resonates with Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook's argument that archives are social constructs since their origins lie in the information needs and social values of rulers, governments, associations and individuals who create them. 47 Certainly, the guidelines in the RST archives policy only provided a broad indication of what had to be preserved or destroyed and it did not place a limitation on the discretion of the records committee.
Even though company archives policy was helpful to a comprehensive preservation programme at the records centre in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, safeguarding of company documents in the Copperbelt, Northern Rhodesia, lagged far behind. At the Salisbury Records Centre, the existence of a records repository and a full-time, trained archivist, facilitated the proper preservation of archival documents which had important information on the company's origins, finances, policy, technical and operational functions as well as labour relations. 48  staff had discarded many documents to control the accumulation of records. 49 This setting was indicative of how inconsistencies in the implementation of archives policy within a multinational company, shaped business information differently.
The Copperbelt mines did not have a trained archivist to safeguard its archives. In the 1960s, it was difficult to secure trained archivists within the colonial states of Central Africa which had no established institutions for such a profession. Even the well-established National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, for example, experienced challenges in recruiting sufficient trained archivists from Britain which by this time had several training facilities for archivists. 50 The entire RST company merely managed to employ a single archivist to process company records at the head office in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Consequently, RST company archives created between the early 1950s and 1960s at the Salisbury head office are well documented as compared to those generated at the respective mines of Mufulira, Luanshya and Chibuluma covering the same period.

The impact of Zambia's independence in the preservation of RST Archives
The attainment of Zambia's independence in 1964, marked the beginning of an improved system of archives preservation in the Copperbelt mining industry. Subsequent to Zambia's independence, RST renamed its company Roan Copper Mines (RCM) and relocated its head offices from Southern Rhodesia to Zambia. The company archives were immediately transferred to the Copperbelt, where a repository was improvised at Mpelembe House in Ndola. The instant transfer of company archives shows how the RCM appreciated its history for administrative efficiency. In this view, Dennis F. Morgan and Maryanne Nawoczenski acknowledged that business companies depend on their own records and information systems to provide management with incisive documentation upon which to base decisions. 51 Accordingly, an archivist was now employed and this meant full implementation of the RST company archives policy in the Copperbelt mining industry. The professional procedures of records appraisal, organisation and classification began. mines were now only kept for a period of ten years in their offices of origin. Thereafter, the archivist appraised the records and decided which would be discarded and those that should be retained permanently. The records which were judged worthy of permanent preservation and acquired 'archive' status were placed under the custody of a company archivist, who controlled their accessibility. As Anne van Camp observed, very few business archives had formal access policies because most were still maintained strictly for internal use and access decisions were left to the discretion of the archivists. 52 Generally, policies of restriction enhanced the preservation of business confidentiality but also proved a disadvantage in the compilation of comprehensive business histories.
In principle, the archives of the RCM remained closed to non-company officials. However, the company archives policy did not invalidate management's discretion to assist genuine scholars by providing information on specific questions unlikely to compromise the company's interest and confidentiality. For example, geological records were completely off limits for public consultation because they included confidential business information on the location of ore-bodies and deposits. For this reason, RCM had a stringent policy in place that required serious scholars to make application to the heads of departments through the company archivist and the records committee. 53 Since the RCM was a private company, concealment was more often the aim and this represented the importance of safeguarding the economic interests of private enterprises.
On the contrary, accessing mining related archives at the public archival institution of the National Archives of Zambia (NAZ) was less problematic. The NAZ has custody of archival documents such as geological survey reports, mines department reports and correspondence generated through official engagement between the foreign multinational mining companies and the colonial state between the 1930s and early 1960s. 54 Although the mining enterprise was in private hands, the colonial state still conversed with the RCM on aspects of labour recruitment and the welfare of mine workers among other matters in Northern Rhodesia. The mining archives at NAZ were more publicly accessible because, in the early years of independence, the archival institution continued to operate under the National Archives Act (1958) of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The Act authorised public access to archives under the custody of government archival institution, especially those that had been preserved for thirty years or more. 55  intention of making these archives publicly available, they had no control over their accessibility because they were under the custody of government departments. These documents were a result of an official link between the mining companies, Northern Rhodesia and Zambian governments on matters of mining operations.
Following the introduction of the nationalisation policy in the early 1960s and its completion in 1970, the archives of the RCM became publicly available. In 1968 the process of nationalising the mining industry in the Copperbelt was begun. The Zambian government under UNIP negotiated for a private-state joint venture, in which the state owned 51 per cent of the shares in the mining industry. 56 This resulted in the Zambian government becoming a participant in the creation and ownership of mining archives. However, since the mining industry was the mainstay of Zambia's economy, its documents provided important precedents for national development.
In 1975, the state took over the control and custody of archives through the Statutory Instrument No. 130. The statutory instrument declared Mpelembe House, a property belonging to RCM in Ndola, as the place to deposit all mining archives in Zambia. 57 The statutory instrument also included archives of the Anglo-American Corporation group of companies now organised under the NCCM, after Zambia's independence. On behalf of the Zambian government, NAZ was mandated to control and supervise the preservation and management of mining archives in the Copperbelt. In the 1970s, the Zambian government encouraged the creation of institution archives as a way of ensuring safe custody and preservation of the nation's documentary resources for future references and precedents. Similarly, on 3 March 1977, the Minister of Home Affairs (then Aaron Milner) issued Statutory Instrument No. 51 which declared that the ground floor of Freedom House was the place of deposit for public records relating to the United National Independence Party and all parties which have existed in the republic. 58

The role of the nationalisation policy in preservation of the NCCM Archives
In the late 1920s the Anglo-American group of companies was initially organised under the RAA. Later, in 1937 the Anglo-American mining companies were reorganised under the Nchanga Consolidated Copper mines (NCCM). 59 Similar to the RST, the RAA started creating archives in the 1920s and preserved them strictly for official use and reference purposes. The RAA archives were generated from the official responsibilities of the company's corporate structure, administration and technical systems that were dispersed in London, Johannesburg and the Copperbelt. For example, the marketing offices were situated in London, where archives dealing with financing, accounting and sales of the Copperbelt mining industry were created. Other documents were the minutes of the board of directors, and executive and technical committees generated from both London and Johannesburg covering the period between the 1920s and 1951.
Another collection emerged from the correspondence between the head offices in London and in Johannesburg and the management units in the Copperbelt. While these are mainly informative about the RAA and NCCM mining administration, technical operations and the daily life of workers in the Copperbelt communities, they are also a pointer to the role of private enterprises in shaping the nature of business archives in Zambia.
Even though the Anglo-American group of companies' archives were created as early as the 1920s, their formal preservation on professional archival lines only occurred in the 1970s. Previously, archival documents were widely dispersed in offices of origin at Rhokana, Chingola and Konkola mines in the Copperbelt. The introduction of the nationalisation policy in Zambia's mining industry changed this scenario and encouraged the urgency to consider the preservation of the NCCM archives in a central repository. The NCCM perceived government's participation in the mining industry and control of archives through the 1975 statutory instrument as a threat to the company's authority over its documentary resources. According to the provisions of the statutory instrument, all records generated by the NCCM were required to be transferred to the RST repository. As such, the RST would be responsible for the preservation, custody, control and disposal of the entire NCCM archives collection. Yet, these were important documents which provided precedents and created a sense of stability and continuity for the NCCM. In order to maintain custody and control of its archives, the NCCM sought authority from the NAZ to establish a repository at Nchanga House in Kitwe. By the stipulations of the Archives Act, NAZ was the sole custodian of all public archives in Zambia. And its director had legal authority to recommend any space with suitable facilities for the safe-keeping and preservation of public or private records of national interest to the Minister of Home Affairs. 60 59.
In 1937 Although the NCCM failed to meet the requirement of the National Archives Act (1969) to provide suitable storage facilities, it managed to centralise its archives in 1977. The NCCM was fortunate in that the 1975 statutory instrument remained unexecuted owing to practical concerns of inadequate space and trained archivists at the RCM repository in Mpelembe House. The repository was congested with its own archival documents and could not accommodate additional archival material. Accordingly, the NCCM recruited an archivist from the United Kingdom who appraised the records scattered at Chingola, Rhokana and Konkola mines. 61 This meant that important information dating back to the 1920s, such as minutes of board meetings and committees, and annual departmental and project reports were permanently preserved. 62 Notably, the Anglo-American group invested generously in the mining operations but financing the safeguarding of its documentary resources was given less attention even when these documents formed an indispensable foundation for company operations by providing precedents. This tendency was also evident during the British South Africa Company administration , which paid no attention at all to establishing archival institutions or professional records management systems for its archives. 63 Similar to NCCM, the British South Africa Company's system of keeping records was haphazard to say the least and depended on unskilled administrative officials. Hence, for the most part, records management was governed by expediency.
In as much as the NCCM succeeded in preserving company archives in Zambia on specialised archival lines, the rest of the documentary resource has remained dispersed in South Africa and Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia). This shows how regional politics played a role in determining the archiving and preservation patterns of the Copperbelt mining industry. By 1977, the earliest company minutes books created before the 1950s were being held at the library of the Anglo-American offices in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Anglo-American Corporation was willing to transfer the archives to the Copperbelt, but this was hindered by the political sensitivities of the apartheid system. 64 Other documents of interest were consulting engineers' and consulting geologists' records which have remained in Zimbabwe. It is important to note that after the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953), NCCM moved its offices to Salisbury (Harare), the then federal capital. Salisbury also became the headquarters of the NCCM company's consulting geologists and consulting engineers between the 1950s and 1970s. Unfortunately, the  65 and thereby creating a break in the NCCM archive.

The emergence of the ZCCM Archives
In 1982 the nationalised RCM and NCCM were merged to form the ZCCM for the purpose of promoting a more co-ordinated planning and prospecting in the mining industry in Zambia. Correspondingly, the distinct archives of the RCM and NCCM were combined and became public properties. 66 This demonstrated the power of political and economic changes in the perception and identity of business archives in Zambia. These archives were preserved under the same repository at Mpelembe House, and this caused congestion, an acute shortage of storage space and a deterioration of some documents, particularly those of the Anglo-American group with a history of poor preservation. 67 Additional space was secured in an off-site storage in Ndola but this remedial action exposed these archival documents to theft, 68 a situation which perhaps explains some silences in the NCCM archive.
The formation of ZCCM brought about archive collections similar to those of the predecessor NCCM and RCM mining companies. The difference is that archives generated by ZCCM highlighted a post-colonial phase of a private-state partnership in the administration and operation of the mining industry. ZCCM classes of archives include administration, accounts, personnel, purchasing and metal sales, medical, secretarial, estates and technical -covering the period between 1982 and 2000, after its formation and privatisation. The ZCCM completely transformed the identity and accessibility of mining business by the introduction of the principle of liberal access. The archival holdings of the Copperbelt mining industry were now not only meant to serve beyond the interests of the company officials but also academic and nonacademic research.
The basic uniform policy of longer closed periods for all the mining business records was abandoned for a more flexible policy. The new policy departed from the earlier stipulation of keeping records for a period of ten years before they could be accessed by the public to a shorter term of three years. 69 This also meant that noncurrent records created in the past three years were recommended for transfer to a central repository in Ndola, where they would be accessed by a wider public. The wider accessibility has attracted numerous researchers from throughout the world and from different disciplines such as Anthropology and History, among the others. 70

The impact of the privatisation in the preservation and accessibility of archives
With the change of government from a one-party state system to a multi-party state, under the Movement of Multiparty Democracy (MMD), the Copperbelt mining industry was privatised. The decline in performance of the mining industry led to the privatisation of the ZCCM. The MMD government realised that revitalisation of the mining sector could only be achieved through private investments. Thus, in 1996, the privatisation of ZCCM mining assets was started with a view to restructuring the Zambian economy, developing the private sector and encouraging investment into the country as required by the World Bank. 71 While the ZCCM mining properties were privatised, the company's archives including those previously generated by NCCM and RCM were retained by the state under the custody of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment Holdings (ZCCM-IH). ZCCM-IH was formed for the purposes of holding and controlling government shares in the mining industry. 72 Despite offers of purchase by private companies such as the Vulcan Treat Zambia Limited, the state insisted on maintaining the custody of mining archives. The Zambian government was cognisant of the importance of the social, economic and political information held in mining archival documents for national development. The mining archives were a vital research source with historical information on local and foreign leases, tax-legislation, mineral and income taxes, for future policy formulation and decisions encompassing both the colonial and post-colonial contexts. 73 In a nutshell, privatising the archives would have meant the loss of control over important information for national development.
The new mining companies were also cognisant of the economic value of the ZCCM Archives to their business operations. 74 This realisation made retrieval of archives from former ZCCM mining divisions and offices contentious. Soon after the commencement of the privatisation process in 1996, ZCCM-IH began to recover the documents held at the former ZCCM divisions at Chibuluma, Mufulira, Nchanga, Nkana, Kalulushi Kansanshi and Konkola. The main aim was to preserve a comprehensive economic and social history of the Copperbelt mining industry. Unfortunately, this was partly hampered by resistance and intransigence from some of the new private mining companies. 75 The new mine owners also needed the documents to facilitate their administration. As Linda Edgerly pointed out, company records provide a rich source of information that constitutes corporate experience and not just history, thus maintenance of significant archival resources provide information which substitutes for first-hand experience which individuals are increasingly unlikely to possess. 76 The persistence by some private mining companies to retain certain ZCCM documentation means that some records have remained uncollected and may still be held by privatised entities. 77 This may well have proved a distinct disadvantage to some of the academic and non-academic research being undertaken on the mining industry, because private mining companies are not under any legal obligation to deposit their archives with the ZCCM-IH Archives in Ndola. In fact, all records generated after the privatisation period became categorised as private collections and are thus off limits for public access.
Furthermore, the transition period from nationalisation to privatisation, especially between 1996 and 2000, has contributed to the ZCCM archive being incomplete. For example, some of the documents that were left in the custody of certain private mining companies have been destroyed due to poor storage facilities. Soon after the new mining companies took over the operation of respective mines, the majority embarked on renovations of their buildings. Records were removed from the offices to derelict buildings where they deteriorated. The situation was worsened because the ZCCM mines were simply sold off and it became very challenging for the ZCCM-IH Archives management to intervene in redeeming the documents from deterioration. 78

74.
Some Furthermore, some of the records that were retrieved successfully from the new mining companies were destroyed because of huge backlogs and limited staffing at the ZCCM-IH Archives in Ndola. In the late 1990s, which was a critical phase of the privatisation process, the ZCCM-IH Archives department was not given adequate time to survey and appraise the documents held at ex-ZCCM mine offices. The government's main focus was the sale of major mining assets and this led to the unprofessional organisation of documents without any prior listing in a chronological order by subject or periodisation. Hired casual workers without any professional experience in archiving were engaged to collect and classify these records. 79 The ZCCM-IH experienced a drastic reduction in staffing levels following the sale of mines to private companies. Fraser Lungu notes that as part of the process of preparing the mines for privatisation, the Zambian government implemented a significant retrenchment programme which saw a reduction in employment levels. 80 This also explains the present unsystematic subject and period classification of archives in the indexes and catalogues of the ZCCM-IH. The chaotic preservation of archives has made it problematic for researchers to access information and demonstrates the extent to which privatisation policies have had a debilitating effect on Zambia's Copperbelt archives.
The transition period further exposed the ZCCM Archives to the ravages of theft. Redundancy and reduced economic status among the Copperbelt population, as well as the effects of privatisation, have positioned the archives as 'merchandise for sale' for the sake of survival. Patience Mususa points out that the sale of the mines resulted in massive job losses for workers, those who were employed directly by the mines as well as those employed as part of the mining economy. 81 Some of those who were retrenched, waiting for their terminal benefits and having no other avenue for a stable income, resorted to theft and crime. For example, records created by the ZCCM insurance department that were held temporarily at Mutondo House, Kitwe, pending their transfer to the Ndola repository, were stolen (casual workers were suspected) and sold at Wusakile and Chisokone markets as packaging material. 82 Indirectly, therefore, the privatisation policy is responsible for the information gap being experienced in the ZCCM, especially for the period from the late 1990s onwards.

Conclusion
Investment of foreign capital in Zambia's Copperbelt mines by the Selection Trust and Anglo-American corporations was crucial in the creation and preservation of significant business archives for the country. While the main agenda of heavy investment by these foreign multinational companies hinged on mineral prospecting and exploration for profits, their mining operations turned out as a major source of important archives depicting a history of mining and the Copperbelt in particular. For purposes of effective mining operations, the Selection Trust and Anglo-American's group of companies established corporate and administrative structures hosted in Britain, South Africa and Northern Rhodesia. Unknowingly, these structures became channels of archives production from the 1920s onwards. Through the pursuit of their routine roles, these structures eventually generated archives that reflect the multinationals mining policies, functions, decisions, financial transactions, labour relation and social welfare pertaining to the Copperbelt mining industry and communities, respectively. Although the nature of these archives was shaped by internal factors such as administration operations and a strict preserve of company officials, there were also external political and economic forces at play which affected how they came to be shaped, accessed, preserved and identified.
External economic and political factors have not had a major impact on the content of the mining industry archives but they have shaped the way in which documents were preserved and accessed. Important political contexts such as that of the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1953 were key in introducing and exposing the multinational companies like the Rhodesia Select Trust to the professional ways of preserving their archives. The multinational companies re-located their head offices from Northern Rhodesia to the federal capital in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia which also housed a regional archival institution, namely the National Archives of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This move enabled the RST to adopt the idea of professional archiving from the National Archives, an institution which facilitated the formulation of a company's archival policy and proper preservation strategies for its archives. The federation was also a factor in contributing to the incomplete nature of the mining industry archive. Following its dissolution in 1963, some of the archives remained uncollected in Southern Rhodesia because of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence which the Zambian government refused to recognise. This led to a marked decline as far as the completeness of the mining industry archive is concerned when the borders between the two countries were closed, hindering the transfer of these archives.
However, the attainment of Zambia's independence in the 1960s and the nationalisation of the mining industry in 1970 and privatisation by 2000, strongly influenced how the mining industry archives came to be conceived. The attainment of Zambia's independence and the nationalisation policy changed the perception of archives and they were made available for use by a wider public. This was based on their value to national development. However, the policy of privatisation saw the transformation of the identity of the mining archives and these became private collections unavailable for public use. This is likely to cause a serious information gap, one that has not previously been experienced in the history of the mining archives of the region.