Black Economic Empowerment

• 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.