David Gleason The Oppenheimers have made news in South Africa for the best part of a century and Harry Oppenheimer’s death last week was no exception. Indeed, it became an excuse for media excess. Not that any of this was undeserved. On the contrary, Oppenheimer and the mining and industrial combine he fashioned played a role in the making of South Africa at least as vital as that of most of the politicians and the political parties that occupied centre stage during his active life. Nearly everyone this week has had a view to express on Oppenheimer’s part in the South African saga. The fact that his departure was so universally noted and commented upon is indicative of the real or imagined role he occupied.
The Oppenheimer family’s affair with South Africa began inauspiciously enough when Ernest Oppenheimer landed in the country in 1902 with oe50 and a job in Kimberley. That was parlayed eventually into effective control of De Beers and, in 1917, the creation of Anglo American, a latecomer intended to stake a role for the family in the Witwatersrand goldfields. So what was it that Harry Oppenheimer achieved that made him arguably so much more famous than his father? Well, he pulled off the trickiest of all endeavours – he inheri- ted a family fortune and turned it into a much bigger one. It is a signal feature of the Oppenheimer style that they have each recognised their own limitations. Owners usually figure they can do things better and that is perhaps true. But they cannot do it all, and an Oppenheimer policy has always been to recruit and hold on to talent. And Harry Oppenheimer also brought style to Anglo American. It wasn’t just the money (that, too, of course), it was a certain panache, and membership of the Anglo American club came to be synonymous with intellectual capital and commercial success. The extent to which this policy worked is borne out by the men who committed their entire working lives to Anglo and who became, whether through it, in spite of it or with it, legends in their own right. The sternest of the tests that occupied Oppenheimer’s pupillage revolved around the creation of the Free State Goldfields. He was already in his late 30s when the decision to proceed was taken (1946). No one remembers, now that the same mines are reaching the end of their working lives, the extent of the gamble involved. In effect, Anglo American was undertaking a programme of mine expansion that would require an investment something like three times the sum of the group’s market capitalisation. I cannot think, offhand, of any similar project in this country in the past 30 years. It is this boldness, this ability to accept the risks on which great rewards are contingent, that captures the best of the free enterprise system. After Sir Ernest’s death, Harry Oppenheimer withdrew from active politics (as the official opposition’s finance representative he would draw more attention to his response to the annual budget than the finance minister’s speech itself) to concentrate on the business. And it was his good fortune to have lived in interesting times. Under his stewardship, the greater Anglo group managed to surmount many of the obstacles presented by a continent in turmoil, by a country often in despair and by the problems of slow international expansion through decades of exchange control. Inevitably for a group so financially dominant, the role it played in the struggle against apartheid will be put under the microscope repeatedly. Much of the debate will be concerned with whether Anglo did enough and whether it should have done much more to oppose a political system its directors uniformly and regularly said they despised.
This examination is a process that has already begun – and which should be welcomed. The conclusions drawn by historians, politicians and sociologists will differ, of course, depending as they will on their own prejudices and we will all be enlightened or enraged – depending on our own prejudices – by the conclusions. It is a feature of great fathers that their very successes haunt and daunt their sons. Harry Oppenheimer escaped the curse, in large measure because he was his own person, satisfied within himself of his abilities and limitations.
The question everyone poses is how will Nicky Oppenheimer fare as head of this powerful family and enterprise? In his early years at Anglo he was often regarded as something of a dilettante – more interested in cars, helicopters and rifles than in the machinations of corporate government. But all that has long since changed. Indeed, it can be argued that the revolution ushered in at De Beers since he became chair underlines the extent to which he has put his hands firmly around this emotionally most significant part of the Oppenheimer empire. He will certainly have plenty to deal with in the coming years – the relationship between De Beers and Anglo American demands attention, just as does the long-simmering feud with the United States Justice Department. Underlying these will be how he drives De Beers’s own fortunes and whether or not it embraces a retail role it has long avoided.
He has inherited quite a mantle. But then, managing businesses was never easy of success; managing those that are national icons imposes additional burdens. Whoever said it was easy to be born with a silver spoon?