A man of Africa. The political thought of Harry Oppenheimer
Editor: Kalim Rajab
Publisher: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9781776092116
Monopoly capital is in the air as present-day South Africa stumbles through the most doggy of its post-apartheid dog days. It has become an enemy of the National Democratic Revolution / Jacob Zuma Stage. Depending on who you are, the beast of monopoly capital is either white in complexion or colourless in class.
Noisy public debate over the position and condition of mining, too, is to be heard in the land. The appearance of a book on Harry Oppenheimer, the global twentieth century South African tycoon who embodied perfectly the union between the power of capitalist monopoly and the wealth of mining, could hardly be more timely.
As is obvious from this volume’s subtitle, The political thought of Harry Oppenheimer, it is not a biography, although there are illuminating flashes of biographical information, such as the fact that Oppenheimer served on the board of Anglo American for 36 years, and was its chairman for a quarter of a century. It is no wonder that he so personified the ravenous empire that he owned. That said, A man of Africa skips over Harry Oppenheimer brooding over the company balance sheet, and concentrates squarely on his political instincts and the ideological views that he expressed – in short, it examines what it was that he stood for, and what his legacy can be said to have come to represent.
To throw light on this, the book’s perfectly fashioned editor, Kalim Rajab (Oxford, De Beers, Helen Suzman Foundation), has assembled a fat handful of prominent contributors to ponder and weigh up an interesting range of Oppenheimer’s views. Several of the writers assembled here are individuals who might be seen – not unreasonably, perhaps – as the usual suspects, predictable Anglo American business notables such as Bobby Godsell and Clem Sunter. Equally, as this is a sober and measured evaluation of its subject’s thinking, some of the other contributors to A man of Africa are less tame. They include such ANC worthies as Albie Sachs, Kgalema Motlanthe and the incendiary sociologist Xolela Mangcu, who uses Harry Oppenheimer’s connections with the University of Cape Town mostly as a peg upon which to hang his personal denunciation of that infamous institution’s poisonous white liberalism and suffocating racism.
Generally, though, this book’s tone is sober and restrained. Avoiding polemic, its writers are more inclined merely to wrinkle their noses over the less rosy features of Harry Oppenheimer’s prosperous English South African world – the deep conservatism, profound contradictions and glaring hypocrisy of its lukewarm liberalism.
As with many compilations of this kind, a book with 15 individual contributors is virtually bound to be a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to quality. In addition, in the case of A man of Africa, the nature of the contributions is also variable. While a few of these are substantial, many more are brief snapshots of an aspect of Oppenheimer: a couple of pages on the basis of his opposition to anti-apartheid economic sanctions, for instance, or on his weighty family role as a benefactor of education and development. While it is useful to have explorations that are concise, occasionally they may be a little too concise.
Lastly, given the key Harry Oppenheimer leitmotif – either the principled, moderate reformer, or the dubious exploiter of African labour – there is, unavoidably, considerable repetition of the conundrum posed by his big and complicated life, that of how to balance Harry the good against Harry the bad.
That said, both well edited and well written, A man of Africa is a thoroughly enjoyable read, if more studiously informative than particularly entertaining. One of its real merits is the characteristic distinctiveness of one or two of its voices. You can read the veteran journalist, Denis Beckett, justifying his “pro-Harry bias”, while simultaneously acknowledging that he was no saint and “could have made the differential between his wealth and his workers’ much squarer”. Or, you can turn to the eminent academic, Heribert Adam, for a view of how his addiction to “business as usual” confined him to “only symbolic opposition to apartheid”.
The editor’s device of presenting extracts from Oppenheimer’s speeches around which to frame a series of appraisals provides a good set of wheels upon which to turn the book’s unfolding assessment. One particularly captivating speech, “The case against Rhodes”, delivered in 1970, is reproduced in full. In it, as if suddenly mindful of a mirror, Oppenheimer notes that even in his lifetime Rhodes was deplored “for a certain coarseness of moral fibre and a lack of scrupulousness in his dealings”. Equally, the reality of his imperialist vision of South Africa’s future as a “great modern industrialized state” is that it could never be realised on the basis of “tribal attitudes within its borders, whether the tribes be black or white”. In a strange and timely way, it captures something of the messy tragedy which remains the South African condition.
Kalim Rajab’s collection is a readable and even-handed account of Harry Oppenheimer as a reticent philosopher-capitalist, leading readers to view him within the limits and possibilities of his time, and to appreciate in hindsight the flawed nature of his legacy. In that respect, it is to the credit of this volume that it does not whitewash its subject. Unlike classically benign British capitalists like Joseph Rowntree, remembered in history for paternalism, philanthropy and Kit Kat chocolate, Oppenheimer, for all his reforming impulses and good doings, is forever associated with the blight of cheap migrant labour, squalid mine compounds and ruthlessly exploitative wages for Anglo American’s African mineworkers. Still, as we are reminded by A man of Africa, Harry Oppenheimer’s mind was not imprisoned completely by the clatter of the company cash register. The paradoxes of the man whose thinking we encounter here can be seen in his views on apartheid, liberalism, the franchise, socialism, trade unions, education and much else besides. Why would you want to waste time reading about what this country’s current crop of corporate pygmies think, when you can reflect on the ironies of Harry Oppenheimer?
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