Treason

• EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Oct. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Search Engine Land, the leading search marketing industry publication, recognized Wpromote as the Agency of the Year in the prestigious annual Search Engine Land Awards in two categories, SEO and PPC.
• This week, Wpromote was also named one of Adweek's Fastest Growing Agencies 2023 , a clear indication that the agency's business outcome-focused approach to marketing is translating into continued success with advertisers.
• These wins serve as a strong validation of Wpromote's leadership in the rapidly changing media landscape.
• The winning entry for Agency of the Year – SEO featured Wpromote's work with Peacock, NBCU's streaming service.

• Based on a remarkable depth of research, it is written in an elegant style which makes for a delightfully easy read.
• It is rendered the more impressive by the author’s deep conversance with the debates over the relationships between mining capital, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid.
• Cardo’s reckoning is that Oppenheimer transcended his country’s parochial political arena to become a significant figure on the world stage.

The man behind the money

• Yet Oppenheimer emerges from this study not as a “malevolent monster” (p.1) but as a personally likeable individual, intensely loyal to his friends.
• One who was highly cultured and sophisticated, with a deep love of art, literature, old books and antiques for their own sake, rather than for opulent display.
• His devotion to his Anglican faith was deep and real, underlying his perhaps too-convenient conviction that wealth and power could be combined with “doing good”.
• His father, Ernest, was the founder of the Oppenheimer empire, but Harry would become its consolidator (p.18).

The conservative liberal

• He served as the party’s financial spokesman and was touted as a future leader.
• Later, when liberals formed the Progressive Party, he lent them his firm support.
• Cardo characterises Oppenheimer’s liberalism as “pragmatic”, opposing the idea of a universal franchise.
• Regarding himself heir to British colonialist and businessman Cecil Rhodes, he deplored the threat to civilisation represented by “primitive tribesmen”.

The influential magnate

• He exercised all the soft power at his disposal, through Anglo and his personal contacts with politicians locally and internationally.
• His advice to prime minister and president PW Botha to inaugurate multiracial negotiations was ignored.
• But when Botha’s notorious “Rubicon” speech in August 1985 prompted a massive outflow of capital, he urged US companies to resist the disinvestment drive.
• All these efforts were capped by Gavin Relly, who had succeeded Oppenheimer as chairman of Anglo, meeting with the ANC in exile.
• Oppenheimer and Anglo now reached out to leading figures in the ANC to reshape their ideas on the economy.
• This book does not offer a radical re-interpretation of either the Oppenheimers or the Anglo-American empire.