Oppenheimer

The head of the Oppenheimer dynasty during most of the apartheid era was Harry F. Oppenheimer. He became a Member of Parliament for the United Party when that party was the main opposition to the Nationalists. When anti-Nationalist veterans founded the militant Torch Commando in 1950, Oppenheimer provided the funding.[14] When the Progressive Party was formed by a breakaway from the United Party in 1959, Oppenheimer became its financial patron. When the Progressives first contested the Coloured seats in 1965, he funded all the campaigns then and subsequently, with 40,000 Rand annually. In 1966 he funded the Progressive general election campaign with 50,000 Rand.[15]

Something of Oppenheimer’s motives can be discerned from his statement on the formation of the liberal think tank, the South Africa Foundation, in 1960:
In effect the advent of the South Africa Foundation reflects the return of big business to active politics. Picture the industrial revolution that will take place in Africa if the Black Man’s economic fetters are struck from him! Think of the millions of skilled men who will enter the labour market. Think of the vast new consuming public! I think I can claim the main credit for this exciting vision of the new Africa, yet all that I have done really is to allow myself to be guided by the best interests of Anglo-American.[16]

Nearly two decades later Oppenheimer was explaining: ‘Nationalist politics have made it impossible to make use of Black labour.’[17] Perhaps the good and the righteous should contemplate that, the next time they pontificate about how they ‘marched against apartheid’?

Up until the assassination of South African Prime Minister Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd on 6 September 1966, the Nationalists remained acutely aware of the identity of their real adversaries, Prime Minister Daniel F. Malan stating: ‘What we have against us is money power, principally under the leadership of Oppenheimer.’[18]

Dr. Verwoerd, regarded as the ‘architect of apartheid,’ and a statesman of immense stature who had the respect of Black Africa, provided the philosophical basis for separate development and the defence of the European in Africa.[19] After his assassination in 1966 his successors lacked the ideological coherence and a comprehension of the forces working against them, and adopted a defensive and inadequate—even apologetic—position.

In 1953 even Nelson Mandela stated of the Oppenheimer empire: ‘Rather than attempt the costly, dubious and dangerous task of crushing the non-European mass movements by force, they would seek to divert it with fine words and promises and divide it by giving concessions and bribes to a privileged minority.’[20] Yet when Oppenheimer died in 2000 Mandela eulogised:

‘His contribution to building a partnership between Big Business and the new democratic government in the first period of democratic rule can never be appreciated too much.’[21]

Predictably, Saint Nelson had prostituted himself to plutocracy, and has received the worshipful accolades of the world ever since, his conviction as a key member of a terrorist plot having been put down the memory hole. It was the pattern that was followed all over post-colonial Africa, where a cosmopolitan, oligarchic neo-colonialism, with the backing of the U.S. military, arose over the ruins of the European empires.

Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party

While the Afrikaners fought the ANC and Spear of the Nation terrorists, the Progressive Party assumed the Parliamentary opposition in the political jungle. Founded in 1959 by Helen Suzman, who was its sole MP for 13 years, Oppenheimer became the primary source of funds for the Progressive Party. After the betrayal of the Afrikaners by their compromising leaders, Suzman and her colleagues redirected their efforts to the inauguration of a post-apartheid South Africa that would be opened up to globalism, a direction, as will be seen below, that has from the start been followed by the ANC regime. For this purpose, Suzman et al. established the Helen Suzman Foundation in 1993 to promote ‘liberal democratic values,’[22] a euphemism for globalisation and privatisation.

The character of the ‘liberal democratic’ South Africa for which she worked can be discerned from the Trustees of the Foundation which, like other such think tanks around the world, combine business with academia in refashioning society according to business interests. Among the trustees are: Doug Band, a board director of companies such as Standard Bank Group, and Bidvest Group; Temba Nolutshungu, director of the Free Market Foundation; Krishna Patel, Chief Executive of Global Private Banking; Gary Ralfe, who served for most of his career with the Anglo-American and De Beers corporations; Richard Steyn, currently a director of Editors Inc., and formerly director of corporate affairs and communications at Standard Bank; David Unterhalter, chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization.[23] The director of the Foundation is Francis Antonie, who was senior economist at Standard Bank (1996–2006) and founder of Strauss & Co.[24]
The financial patrons of the Foundation include Oppenheimer, Soros, and Rothschild interests. Among them are:

German-based Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, founded in 1991, focusing on ‘advocating liberal reform concepts that further the democratic and economic development of countries’ in Black Africa, training public officials and political party leaders.[25]

Open Society Foundation for South Africa, founded in 1993 as part of the global revolutionary network of currency speculator George Soros.[26]
Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.
HSBC global investment bank.
Investec ‘specialist bank and asset manager.’
Hollard, insurance and finance.
Webber Wentzel, corporate and commercial law firm.
E. Oppenheimer & Son.
ABSA Bank.
Standard Bank South Africa, an international bank and one of South Africa’s largest. This bank was established in 1862 as a subsidiary of Standard Bank in Britain. In 2002, Standard Bank acquired 90 per cent of Uganda Commercial Bank, the new bank being called Stanbic Bank (Uganda) Limited, Uganda’s largest commercial bank. In 2007 Standard Bank Group acquired controlling interest in IBTC Chartered Bank forming, StanbicIBTC Bank Nigeria Limited. It is indicative of the global economic nexus that now welds power over post-colonial Black Africa. The Standard Bank has particularly close relations with China.
Deloitte, global financial consultants.
N. M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd.[27]

What the ‘Progressives’ fought for, with Big Business backing, was a post-apartheid South Africa which could more readily utilise and create a vast Black labour and consumer market. Again, the mental gymnastics of doublethink are required to enable the anti-apartheid zealot to believe that in opposing the Afrikaner he was ‘fighting capitalism.’

[14]   David Pallister, Sarah Stewart, and Ian Lepper, South Africa Inc.: The Oppenheimer Empire (London: Corgi Books, 1988), 78–80.[15]   Ibid., p. 91.
[16]   H. F. Oppenheimer, Africa South (1960), cited by Ivor Benson, Behind Communism in Africa (Pinetown, South Africa: Dolphin Press, 1975), 14.
[17]   Harry F. Oppenheimer interviewed by Brian Hackland, Johannesburg, 30 October 1978, cited in Pallister et al., 87.
[18]   Pallister et al., 80.[19]   For example, read: H. F. Verwoerd, ‘The Rights of the White Man in Africa,’ Parliamentary speech, 9 March 1960, reprinted in A Salute to Dr Hendrik Verwoerd & the Boer Folk, 18–24.
[20]   N. R. Mandela, ‘The Shifting Sands of Illusion,’ Liberation, June 1953, http://www.africawithin.com/mandela/shifting_sands_0653.htm.
[21]   N. R. Mandela, ‘Eulogy: Harry Oppenheimer,’ 4 September 2000, Time, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997869,00.html.
[22]   Helen Suzman Foundation, ‘What We Do,’ http://www.hsf.org.za/what-we-do/what-we-do.
[23]   Helen Suzman Foundation, ‘Trustees,’ http://www.hsf.org.za/about-us/trustees.[24]   Helen Suzman Foundation, ‘Staff,’ http://www.hsf.org.za/about-us/staff.
[25]   Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, http://www.africa.fnst-freiheit.org/overview/.
[26]   Open Society Foundation of South Africa, http://osf.org.za/.
[27]   Helen Suzman Foundation, Donors, http://www.hsf.org.za/about-us/partners.

Kerry Bolton
Babel, Inc.
Multiculturalism, Globalisation, and the New World Order