If you need some idea of the geography the map opposite shows Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) with Zambia to the north and SA to the south.Frank was the second-last-born of our mother's family. He grew up in the shadow of his elder brother George. I have the impression that their father old man George doted on his son George but had less time for Frank.
Young George was "a real boy" while Frank was quiet and bookish. He had some kind of minor heart condition that stopped him doing much in the way of sport or joining the armed forces. I rather liked him. He gave me some of his boyhood books, ripping yarns about pirates and adventurers, that I can remember to this day. But there remained a sense within the family that he was a bit of a wimp or at least a lame dog. Characteristically, in the picture of our mother's family he is barely visible in the back row behind everyone else.
While George was out fighting the Germans (or in POW camp) Frank worked in some clerical job in the Cape. He had a small, white curly-haired terrier called Henry that late every afternoon would go and wait at the top of the garden at Claremont Villa (the main family home at the time) until Frank came home on the bus. Henry offered Frank uncritical affection. They got on well.
Frank joined the post-war exodus to Rhodesia. He went to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. If you need some idea of the geography the map opposite shows Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) with Zambia to the north and SA to the south.
I know little about Frank's life in N.Rhodesia except that he became employed in government service and sent to Fort Jameson (now Chipata) in the north of the country as Assistant District Officer or some similar colonial administrative post.
One year he decided to spend his summer holidays (generous north of the Limpopo) in Capetown, stopping over with us for a few days in JHB. 
He arrived two days later than expected in a new but battered Morris Minor. What had happened was that he had used his official position to issue himself a driving licence, omitting the formality of a driving test that he would probably not have passed anyway because of ineptitude compounded by heavy drinking.
Shortly after setting out on the (approx 1000 mile) journey to Jo'burg he had run the car off the road into a culvert. It took two days to retrieve and return it to a road-worthy condition. This must have been about 1953.
The next and last time I saw Frank was in 1959 or '60.
At the time the British Government was taking the first steps towards granting the Rhodesias independence under black majority rule. The white settlers were uneasy about this. I happened to be in Cape Town when Frank blew in unexpectedly by train, and I arranged to meet him for a drink.
He explained that he had left Rhodesia in disgust at the British Government's soft treatment of the Africans. The South Africans, with apartheid, knew how to keep the blacks in their place, and he would rather live in SA.
No doubt these were his true political sentiments, but they were not the reason for his hasty departure. It turned out that he had been dipping his fingers into government coffers and that this had finally come to light. So he had fled Northern Rhodesia one step ahead of the law. A few weeks later a member of the NR police arrived in Cape Town to escort him back. He was sentenced to prison (I think 6 months - he was small-time) and deported on his release. He returned to Cape Town where he remained the rest of his life. Frank never married.
After his release from jail many of the family rallied round in true Smith style in spite of their disapproval. Joan gave him a bed in her house in Claremont. Some sent money. At some stage (I'm not sure when) brother George helped him find a job. To begin with he found work doing the books for an hotel. When the Claremont house was sold he found accommodation in the same block of flats that Joan and Bill moved to. (Later Muriel had a flat there as well).
His heart condition which some held had blighted his life was finally successfully treated towards the end of his life. It was so rare and interesting that the specialists at Groote Schuur Hospital (of first transplant fame) treated him free. I seem to remember other surgery to his toe(?), presumably unrelated to his heart.
For the last few years of his life he lived in a hostel for the destitute. I was discouraged from visiting him there in 1979 on the grounds that there was nothing very likeable about him any more. He died sometime in the early '80s, his passage through life having left very little trace.
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