The Z-Factor: A Zambian Episode

Written in 1979 by James Lee-Potter, The Z-Factor is a humorous and revealing memoir of the life and times of an English expatriate and his family, living and working on Zambia’s Copperbelt between 1959 and 1978. Documenting the good times and the bad, these memoirs reveal the attitudes of the time and yet look to the future, anticipating the coming challenges confronting Africa in the 21^st Century. James’ memoirs are endearingly sympathetic to the plight of the Zambians who experienced at first hand the exploitative and extractive nature of development at the hands of white-controlled corporations. However, this work is primarily personal in nature and will be of interest to all those families, of many nationalities, who lived and worked together on the Copperbelt between 1950 and 1980, and to whom the refrain ＂One Zambia, One Nation!＂ will be so familiar.

Dedication: To our wonderful parents. Thank you for giving the three of us such wonderful childhood memories. How lucky we were to have had each other, and to have seen and loved Zambia and the wider extraordinary planet with you both. In 1979 after 20 years in Zambia we all left Africa for good and travelled ’home’ to Cornwall in the UK. Dad, you then committed these memoirs to paper, and there they lay dormant on one of your impeccably organised shelves, waiting for something to happen. In 2022 we decided to bring The Z-Factor back to life: Guy was project manager, proof-read the copy and created the line drawings. Barry re-keyed it all into digital format during the COVID-19 lockdown, fact-checking along the way; and Beccy was our map-maker and chief designer. We hope you like it. 29 October 2022.