![]() ![]() At one point, his public companies represented more than half of the value of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.ĭuring the 27 year tenure at De Beers,Harry grew the diamond empire in what was at times a very challenging environment. In 1957, following his father's death, Oppenheimer left Parliament to take over the family business empire, lending his political and financial support to the Progressive Party and its sole member of Parliament, Helen Suzman.Īs chairman of Anglo American and De Beers, he built a personal empire that extended beyond precious metals and diamonds that included holdings in banking, real estate, pulp and paper, bricks and pipe, coal and potash, locomotives and beer, becoming one of world's richest people and the most powerful economic figure in South Africa. Oppenheimer supported the creation of trade unions for black workers, played an important role in ending a system that set aside certain jobs for whites only, and developed programs to educate blacks so they could take up positions of responsibility in his group of companies. And it certainly doesn't force the government to change their policy.'' ''I think they have a very serious effect in South Africa, but I think the effect is bad in that it brings pressure to bear on people who are on your side anyhow. ''I'm not one of the people who think that sanctions have no effect,'' he said in an interview in 1987. He also opposed economic sanctions against South Africa as a way to pressure the country to relinquish apartheid, stating that an expanding economy was a better environment for political change than a contracting economy. I believe that apartheid is something that works against the interest of economic development, not for it.'' ''I've never thought that the policy of racial discrimination had been a great benefit to business,'' he said, ''because while it may have had the effect of keeping wages low, it also had the effect of keeping labor exceptionally inefficient. Although his opposition to apartheid was based on humanitarian grounds, he usually argued against it in economic terms. ''I think if you try to insist on having no guarantees for group rights, the effect would be that you won't get any movement at all,'' he said. In an interview quoted in The New York Times, Oppenheimer said that majority rule would have to come in stages, with guarantees for the rights of various groups in the country. There are diverging opinions on Oppenheimer's role in fighting the extreme racial discrimination policies. However, in his political career, it was his stand against apartheid for which he is best remembered. In 1948, he was elected as a member of the minority white liberal opposition, becoming the second "Member for De Beers." He quickly became the leading opposition voice on economic affairs, expressing a liberal position on most matters. They married in 1943, and the following year Oppenheimer resigned his commission and joined Anglo American. In 1940, having transferred to Coastal Command, he met Signals Lieutenant Bridget McCall. ![]() Oppenheimer volunteered for military service early in World War II, joining the 4th South African armored car regiment as a brigade intelligence officer, working with the British Army in North Africa. He then went on to study at Christ Church, Oxford University, where he was tutored by British economist Sir Roy Harrod, graduating in 1931 in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Upon completing his primary schooling in Johannesburg, he was sent to Charterhouse School, a public school in England, and the preferred choice of wealthy "English" South African families at the time. When he married, he entered the Anglican Church, yet remained a staunch supporter of Jewish causes as well as the Israeli diamond industry. ![]() His father primed him from childhood to take over the family's business empire.Īlthough his father, the son of a Jewish cigar maker from Friedberg, Germany, converted to Anglicanism in the 1930s, Harry had a formal Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony) at a synagogue. ![]() Harry Frederick Oppenheimer was born on October 28, 1908, in Kimberley, South Africa, the site of the first African diamond rush, son of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who formed mining giant Anglo American and later took control of De Beers. ![]()
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