Anglo American Corporation had for most of the previous century, since its founding in 1917, dominated the South African economy, first in minerals and then across practically all its sectors.
By the time of writing, Anglo was a fraction of its former size and wealth and was in the process of either being dismembered or disappearing into the folds of one of its competitors. But in Anglo’s heyday, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the time of my entry into South African politics, it was the biggest behemoth — by far. Anglo controlled much of the market cap of the JSE, the local stock exchange, and was at one time, through its Minorco [Minerals and Resources Company] entity, the largest foreign investor in the United States.
I had many encounters with Harry Oppenheimer, whose father, Sir Ernest, had established the company during World War I in Kimberley. HFO — as he was ubiquitously called — was an amalgam of contrasting parts: a man of refined sensibility and culture, with a sharp eye for a business deal. He was politically progressive in the context of his times and a staunch opponent of the apartheid system, and yet intrinsically conservative. His company also profited from the essential conditions put in place by the National Party (NP) and its predecessors — the pass laws, an exploitative migrant labour system and the closing of the local economy to foreign competition. On a personal level, too, there was a contradiction: HFO was born Jewish and converted at some stage with his father to Anglicanism, but to all appearances he looked remarkably like my great-uncle “Chookie” Herman. Yet he was the top WASP in the country and not a single Jew sat in the apex leadership of Anglo.
As the chief funder of the progressive opposition (in the form of the Progressive Party and its successors), HFO was essential to the survival of the liberal opposition project. In May 1994, when I became leader of the DP — at the time the current iteration of the original Progressive Party — I thought I would have more difficulty establishing a rapport with the great man than had my forerunners. After all, I was 50 years younger than him and did not enjoy the same political and personal connections as did my predecessors Colin Eglin, Helen Suzman and Zach de Beer, who had all served alongside him in Parliament in the 1950s.
It was in fact Zach who provided the clue on how to approach Oppenheimer: “HFO — although exquisitely polite — bores easily. Try to tell him something he doesn’t know. He will enjoy political anecdotes and a bit of gossip, in addition to your plans for the party.”
I had met and dined with Oppenheimer a few times before a crunch meeting with him at the Anglo headquarters shortly after my election as party leader. Although officially retired, HFO maintained a corner office — and huge influence — on the first floor.
On entering his impressively but discreetly furnished lair (English period pieces, soft pile carpets, the office dominated by an oil portrait of his father, Sir Ernest, and, aptly, gold nuggets displayed in a glass cabinet), I was struck by his diminutive frame and his frailty — he was 86 at the time. But there was nothing faltering about his emphatic grasp of the new South Africa, its potential and its pitfalls. Forewarned by Zach, I recounted to him such titbits as I could muster. He was most engaging and gently probed our prospects, although he was unwavering about his continued support. We ended the meeting with a firm handshake and the promise of future funding.
A year or two after this meeting, I had dinner with Oppenheimer and his warm but very opinionated wife, Bridget, at the home of my father and stepmother, Jacqueline, in Durban. They were social and bridge-playing acquaintances. I thought the event was purely social and enjoyed regaling the table with some stories from Parliament while Bridget, far more outspoken than HFO, described a “dinner party from hell” at their London home. Apparently, then South African High Commissioner Mendi Msimang had become so drunk at the table “that he slipped right under it”, on Bridget’s version, before being bundled out of the apartment entirely.
After our less liquid Durban dinner, HFO — to my surprise — directly asked me, “How much money would help the party right now?” Since we were running at the time on proverbial fumes, I plucked entirely randomly what I thought to be a very generous sum (R600,000). Oppenheimer nodded and smiled, and we moved on to other topics. A few days later, via intermediaries, that precise sum dropped into the modest coffers of the DP.
In 2021, Mike Cardo interviewed me for his fine biography of Oppenheimer. When I was recounting this story of Oppenheimer’s unsolicited funding question, I speculated in reply, “I wonder what would have happened if I had asked for ten times that amount?” Indeed.
To be invited to the sprawling Oppenheimer estate, Brenthurst, in Parktown, Johannesburg, or to their palatial Durban beachside compound, Milkwood, in La Lucia, was, I guess, a little like a dinner invitation to Buckingham Palace. The Oppenheimer family flew in the stratosphere while other business and social leaders floated far below in the cumulus clouds.
On one such occasion, in Durban, Bridget announced to the table, “I have decided we will, in honour of Tony, have a bottle of Petrus this evening”, (a rare and exquisite French Bordeaux and one of the most expensive wines in the world). But then she added, “Tony, you are not so important that we will open more than one bottle!”
In fact, my last meeting with Harry Oppenheimer was just weeks before his death. On 25 July 2000, the night the Concorde crashed shortly after taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, I was back at Milkwood at a dinner à trois with HFO and Bridget.
The purpose of the dinner was to explain to one of our major donors the recently announced merger of the liberal DP with its historical nemesis, the NNP [New National Party]. A political take-off of a different sort to help unify the opposition, which also had an early crash.
I approached the evening with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety: HFO always gave wise counsel and support, and Bridget combined warmth and grand hosting together with a vivid view of the world shorn of any political correctness.
My nervousness was occasioned by the deep antipathy with which Oppenheimer — during his near decade in Parliament in the 1950s and after — had been treated by the Nats. And his long-voiced opposition to them. After all, Jan Smuts had proposed the toast at Oppenheimer’s 21st. Following the defeat of Smuts’ United Party at the hands of the NP in 1948, Oppenheimer, by word and financial deed, became a leading member of the parliamentary opposition. Even after his retirement from Parliament, he remained an outspoken critic of the NP government’s policies.
Oppenheimer listened carefully as I spluttered out the proposal for the Democratic Alliance to tackle the hegemony of the mighty ANC. After I concluded, he cocked his ear to one side and said in his measured manner, “I might not understand this fully [in reality, he got the point immediately], but it seems to me what you are saying is that after this merger is completed, we will be much bigger than before … a jolly good thing too, I think.” He died just weeks later, on 19 August 2000.
In South African and even in global terms, the Anglo American Corporation built by Oppenheimer père et fils bore some resemblance to the graphic description offered of Goldman Sachs, the international investment banking giant: “A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
One of the corporations into which Anglo had jammed its “blood funnel” was South African Breweries (SAB), in which it held a big stake. Doubtless, SAB CEO (and later chairman) Meyer Kahn often met with Oppenheimer, and they both inhabited the small ecosystem of Johannesburg’s business elite. Yet, in almost every other respect, the two offered a study of deep contrasts.
On Kahn’s death in June 2022, he was described by a close friend and business colleague as “an ordinary man possessed of quite extraordinary abilities”. Indeed, under his stewardship, he and Graham Mackay piloted Breweries (later SABMiller and now merged into AB InBev) to global heights. In Kahn’s time, SAB ranked as one of the last industrial giants in South Africa and across the world.
By contrast to Oppenheimer’s gilded upbringing, much of it spent at top private schools in England and then at Oxford, Kahn grew up in the hardscrabble Transvaal town of Brits (today part of North West province), northwest of Pretoria. From here came the appellation, which Kahn relished, “the boytjie from Brits”.
He had no dynasty to inherit or expand, but instead, with business acuity, earthy wit and sheer ability, he propelled himself from a junior management post at OK Bazaars eventually to the top positions at SAB.
In the mid-1990s I visited Kahn, then chairman of SAB, at the group’s iconic headquarters at 2 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein. Aside from providing some much-needed cash (a pittance by the demands of today and the amounts solicited and spent) for my political cause, Kahn would invariably impart some wisdom, offered with a warm slap on the back and peppered with a string of expletives. He was splendidly politically incorrect to boot. The first visit was the start of a series of get-togethers, usually held outside the main building in the forecourt, allowing Kahn to puff away on his ubiquitous Benson & Hedges cigarettes.
Kahn, who was outspoken in the demand for both more economic freedom and greater law and order, said then: “You know, Tony, the Nats did their best to fuck up our economy and they failed; the ANC seems equally determined, and they will fail too.”
However, decades later, I never asked Kahn if he still held that opinion. Not on the earnest attempts of both parties (and governments) to blow up their economies, but whether in fact the ANC had not in fact outperformed the Nats not in moral terms, but in toppling over what was once the industrial powerhouse of Africa and emerging markets everywhere.
Ironically, though, it was Meyer Kahn who, in 1997, hand-picked Cyril Ramaphosa for a seat on SAB’s main board. For more than a dozen years, his director’s fees, share allocations and flow of dividends made Ramaphosa a very rich man.
In the run-up to the 2004 election, I again answered a summons from Kahn to present myself for receipt of the election contribution from SAB, approved by the board on which, of course, Ramaphosa sat.
Kahn had a brilliant way of rationalising the unpalatable. The board, doubtless nudged by Ramaphosa and other ANC sympathisers on it, had decided on a rationale for funding political parties. It would be on the basis of a formula “aligned to the levels of support enjoyed by the party at the last election”.
This meant that, of the total SAB pot, the DP/DA (around ten per cent in the 1999 election) would get R1 million, while the ANC (66 per cent) would receive around R5 million. Lesser amounts would be doled out to all the other parties, provided they supported the Constitution.
While welcoming the donation, I pointed out to Kahn that this simply froze the status quo, and in any event the smaller parties needed the most resources. “Ha,” he responded, “but the difference is that I know that when I give you this cheque, the full amount will be deposited into your party’s bank account, and it will be properly spent for election expenses.
“But with the ANC, when they come around to get the cheque, if they actually pitch at all, some of the amount will either be stolen or pissed against the wall, so their apparent funding advantage will disappear!”
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