In a conversation with Benjamin Pogrund, Harry Oppenheimer reflects on his life in business and defends his companies’ stance on apartheid
HARRY OPPENHEIMER carries his 88 years lightly. “I feel well and I enjoy life so I’m very lucky at my age,” he says. He’s a bit stooped and says his hearing is not what it was, although there is no sign of difficulty during conversation. Walking is his chief exercise. He reads a lot and enjoys biographies and Victorian novels, especially Trollope.
He comes to his office at Anglo American’s headquarters at 44 Main Street most days of the week but usually stays for only a short time: “I read the papers, I talk to my friends and they treat me kindly, and they even ask my views from time to time.”
Oppenheimer is upbeat about South Africa. He is “immensely pleased at what has taken place” and praises Nelson Mandela “who is extraordinarily good in having prevented violence and promoting goodwill”.
He also believes the government is “making a serious effort” and is “doing quite well” to build the economy – the answer to meeting the aspirations of the have-nots before their rage boils over.
His praises are tempered by criticism of the government’s performance. He also acknowledges that Anglo American Corporation, of which he was chairman until his retirement at the end of 1982, did less than it could have done to buck apartheid.
His criticisms of the government are voiced as mildly and carefully as his praises: “I don’t think this government so far has shown enormous ability at national administration,” he says. “On the other hand what could you expect? It could have been a great deal worse – and I’m not certain that it isn’t just as good as the last government.”
Crime is his greatest anxiety for the future. “It results in a feeling of agitation in the country, it results in lots of people leaving the country, and I think it’s a major factor in preventing the degree of foreign investment which we hope for.
“All of us know people who have been hijacked or whose car has been stolen, and they’re very lucky if they haven’t been shot.”
He is worried, too, about possible moves towards one-party rule: “I think there is a tendency, in the African way of looking at things, not to scorn democracy, but to see democracy in a different way. I wonder very much whether many of our masters in the political field really think in terms of parties and an opposition party which one day will come into power and then in turn lose power.
“I am not sure that they think like that, I hope that eventually they will. Some people do.”
There has to be affirmative action, he says, but cautions that “you’ve got to be jolly careful with it. I find certainly in this office that some of the black people – nowadays we have many more in senior jobs than we used to – are not very keen on affirmative action.”
He is cautious, too, about South Africa’s attempts to influence the world. “I know that we have prestige, which has largely again been given to us by Mandela, but I don’t think we are a country which can really change the world very easily outside our own borders. I hope we can set an example for other countries which have the same set of problems but I very much doubt that we can send troops about the place.”
He says that his support for the Progressives in their various forms over the years continues through the Democratic Party: “It’s the only party I really could support. Much as I admire the African National Congress it’s not for me, I don’t feel it’s my party. I can’t imagine myself voting for the Nationalists: I am afraid their past is such that I really couldn’t bring myself to do that, certainly not in their present form.
“I think that the DP talks a lot of sense and I think Tony Leon talks a lot of sense. I do not know how far they will succeed, how far they will get people to vote for them and how far they can get black support, which is vital in South Africa as it is now, but nevertheless it’s the only party that I feel really happy voting for.”
Looking back at his life he believes his greatest contribution is that he has been “a reasonably successful businessman in the sense of carrying on in a sensible way from what my father built and doing it, naturally, in my own way, not in his, because you can’t try to be exactly the same.
“I think that I’ve tried, though not always as successfully and energetically as I should, to run businesses in a way which really did help to build a better sort of society and a better sort of country.”
But did the many industrial, mining and commercial companies controlled or influenced by Anglo American do much to buck apartheid? They could, for example, have recognised trade unions for blacks even if the law did not recognise them, and could have focused on training blacks and paying better salaries. On the gold mines, no one made full use of the government concession allowing married quarters for up to 3% of workers. If his companies had taken a lead in these industrial and mining matters couldn’t that have profoundly influenced South Africa?
“There is much in what you say,” says Oppenheimer. “I think we did some of these things. I agree that we didn’t do as much as we should have done. On the other hand, to take a defensive line about our group I think we can honestly say that in the major business organisations we were always in the lead. We were, if not rushing along with the angels, we were following on to them, in a cautious way.
“About housing on the mines: we aimed at and had elaborate schemes for housing 10% [of the total labour force]. We were stopped from doing this by Dr Hendrik Verwoerd [minister of Native Affairs and then prime minister] and I think it is fair to say, and fair criticism, that having been stopped, we didn’t go on fighting as hard as we should have done. We tended to hide behind the fact that we were prevented from doing all that we wanted to.
At the political level he believes that he might have supported the notion of a qualified franchise – the policy pursued by the Progressives – for too long. But he does not regret that he did support it.
“I think it was Jefferson – I may have got the name wrong – who said that it is really impossible to have a democracy in an uneducated country. I felt that.
“I still feel that one of the great pieces of damage which the National Party did in the country was that they prevented what had to happen from happening over a period. It would have been better for all of us, black and white, if the present position where you have a complete democracy, in theory anyhow, had been reached more gradually.
`That would, in the opinions I had then – and I am not entirely prepared to run away from them – have been arrived at by having an educational qualification for the vote.
“I may have gone on too long because it became impractical. I think it was made impractical largely by liberal-minded people rather than the right-wing people in the sense that they always went for one man, one vote and they thought that anything else was wrong and somewhat immoral. I don’t think that, but of course it would have reached the same point – the same result would have been reached – and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wouldn’t have been reached at about the same time. You would have had movement gradually over a period.”
With the benefit of hindsight, could more have been done to counter the trend over some four decades in which election after election more and more whites voted for the Nationalists?
Oppenheimer: “I certainly think we tried pretty hard. I am afraid they went that way because they were frightened.”
He turns away questions about his wealth and media comparisons between him and the Sultan of Brunei, said to be the richest man in the world, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. “I’m lucky enough to have money but I’m not in the same ballgame as those sort of people,” he says.
“The fact that you are in a country where there aren’t vast numbers of people who have great fortunes as they have in America means you stand out more than other people do. Also, because diamonds are sort of romantic and excite people, people imagine that the whole thing is much bigger than it is.”
And finally, what would he most like to be remembered for?
“You certainly want to be remembered for being better than you really were. I would like to be thought of as having lived a life which on the whole gave proof of a certain degree of wisdom. Whether I would justify such a recollection is for other people to judge.
“But I would find it nice if that is the way people thought of me.”