Oppenheimer, a pioneer of reconciliation in S. Africa

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, AUG. 22. The death of Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, former Chairman of Anglo American Corporation and De Beers Consolidated Mines, has evoked a near unanimous adulatory response across the board in South Africa. The Government and the Opposition leaders joined business leaders in acknowledging the seminal contribution of Mr. Oppenheimer to the building of modern South Africa.

Mr. Oppenheimer (91) died at his residence in Johannesburg on Saturday after a short illness. He is survived among others by his son, Mr. Nicky Oppenheimer, currently Chairman of De Beers. Mr. Harry Oppenheimer himself succeeded his father, Ernest Oppenheimer, founder of Anglo American, as Chairman of both Anglo American and De Beers in 1957, on his father's death.

The company that Ernest Oppenheimer founded dominates in one way or other virtually every walk of South Africa's economic, political and social life. Its history is intimately related to the history of the modern South African state.

The President, Mr. Thabo Mbeki, and the former President, Mr. Nelson Mandela, were among those who paid fulsome tribute to the memory and achievements of Mr. Harry Oppenheimer. Describing him as ``ever the gentleman and a man of deep conviction and compassion'', Mr. Mbeki said among his legacies was an ``industrial empire spanning the width and breadth of Africa and the world''.

Mr. Nelson Mandela said that Mr. Oppenheimer was `one of the pioneers of reconciliation' in South Africa. He also acknowledged Mr. Oppenheimer's `contribution to building a partnership between big business and the new democratic government'. The African National Congress and some union leaders also acknowledged his contribution, noting in particular that he was the first businessman to have openly and publicly said `as early as in 1984' that no political solution was possible in South Africa without the involvement of the ANC - a truth one would have imagined was self-evident since much earlier.

Such praise is perhaps natural, even without the rather hypocritical convention that requires that nothing ill should be said of a person who is dead. The fact, however, is that it is the living, being still vulnerable, that require such compassion; the dead are not vulnerable. Thus, it was an ordinary resident of a township in Kimberly who noted, in a call this morning to the popular morning radio talk show hosted by Mr. Tim Modise, that for her, the legacy of Mr. Oppenheimer and indeed of the corporations and companies that he headed was the `Big Hole' in the heart of the city, the world's biggest man-made hole and a memorial to the diamonds dug out of the soil of Kimberly. She also noted, as is evident to the most casual visitor to the city whose life and culture are far harsher and more menacing than the roughest areas of Johannesburg, the despairing alcoholism that virtually defines the lives of the black people in the city's townships.

It is not surprising that the tributes have barely touched upon the question of the linkages between apartheid and capitalism and whether South African capital benefited from apartheid. The standard view expressed by the more enlightened leaders of business is that while capitalism did make profits from apartheid, without apartheid it would have made greater profits.

This reluctance to see causal links between apartheid and capitalism, too, is natural, and is just another indication of the prevailing dominance of the ideology of liberalism and the deep antipathy to socialist ideas. Ernest Oppenheimer himself was actively involved in politics, serving as a United Party MP in the apartheid `Parliament' for 10 years (1948-58) and, as a profile notes, was a founder and substantial funder of the Progressive Party, the ideological progenitor of the Democratic Party, currently the largest party in Opposition.

The common line running through all these mutations is a concern on the part of big South African capital as represented by the Anglo American about the `communist dominance' of the liberation movement and, in particular, of the ANC.

In this perspective, it was necessary to detach the movement from not so much its vaunted commitment to socialism as articulated in the Freedom Charter - which big capital has always been shrewd enough to know is merely a general statement of intent and very far from being a detailed and worked out programme - but from its close links with the South African Communist Party and, by extension, with the `evil' Soviet Empire. It is interesting that even with the demise of the so-called evil empire, this objective remains at the centre of the agenda of so many political forces in South Africa, not all of them outside of or opposed to the African National Congress.

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Section  : International
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