|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||
Cyril takes his place among SA business ... 'War industry' pumped up the economy ... Commitment from employees lifts buoyant ... Cutting off BA's nose to spite tourism... Branson's plans for luxury in the sk... Rush on for Malbak's sell-off... Stals' interest-rate gloom compounds the... Trade surplus picks up as exporters ride... Inflation signals again flashing red... New JSE boss brought round after courtsh... |
Rich rewards for business in supporting apartheid's masters'Harry Oppenheimer never subscribed to the view that apartheid was morally wrong' OUTSIDE the parliamentary sphere, professional institutions and business groupings cast aside their expected indepen dence in order to serve the apartheid state. The scarcity of skilled labour presented real dilemmas for apartheid policymakers and tempted them to agree to the use of black labour. But the deep rooted prevailing social norms were consistent obstacles to an efficiently (and equitably) integrated labour market. The business community, whether of local or foreign origin, was likewise reluctant to rock the profitable boat of apartheid. Indeed, many of them banded together in the 1960s to support the SA Foundation, which they used to promote the allegedly bright side of apartheid to foreign politicians and industrialists. The Foundation's membership included such business luminaries as Harry Oppenheimer of Anglo American, Anton Rupert of the Rembrandt Group and Charles Engelhard. The Foundation was a consistent opponent of anti-apartheid sanctions and also had other unmistakably political views, despite its protestation to the contrary. In 1975, for instance, it insisted that "the pace of advance in abolishing discrimination cannot be speeded beyond what the politicians can get their followers to accept". The Foundation, which remains active in today's South Africa, matched the electorate's complicity with its own. The South African mining and industrial corporations under apartheid exploited the cruel migrant labour system and made unabashed use of apartheid labour, and actively peddled its availability as an advantage to international investors. Today it is gradually becoming possible to count the costs. In July 1994, a commission of enquiry into health and safety standards in SA mines heard that in the past 94 years more than 69 000 workers died on apartheid mines; over one million were injured. For purposes of comparison, throughout the apartheid period 68 political prisoners died in police detention. The mines killed one thousandfold more people than the political torturers did. Yet in a paid advertisement in the Sunday Times of 14 May 1967, LB Gerber, the Director of the SA Foundation, the international mouthpiece of apartheid business, urged that privileged South Africans should stop apologising for apartheid and instead "substitute a tone of confident self-assertion" which publicised "the opportunities" that apartheid offered to international investors. This was the SA Foundation placing its best foot forward, with a deliberate eye on it attracting elements within the international investment community. By 1971, the Foundation could claim that through its propaganda effort it had helped to "stem the tide of ignorance, criticism and misrepresentation against the Republic". The Foundation propagated the view that economic growth would cause apartheid to wither away of its own accord, a view which was highly influential abroad - yet it was demonstrably a hoax. Black wages did not rise to reflect the booming apartheid economy of the 1960s, a period during which South Africa's GDP growth was second only to Japan's. In fact between 1957 and 1967, the percentage increase in average wages for Africans was less that for whites, indicating that the apartheid wealth gap was actually widening. In one investigation, Dr Francis Wilson, the well-known authority on poverty from the University of Cape Town, found that African real wages in the gold mines were no higher in 1966 than they had been in 1911. He found that the white-to-black wage ratio, which was roughly 12:1 in 1911, had widened to roughly 18:1 in 1966. It was only when the disruptive tide of resistance to apartheid rose and threatened profits that the stance of apartheid business began to change. According to his approved biographer, Anthony Hocking, Anglo American conglomerate magnate Harry Oppenheimer, a perceived opponent of certain aspects of apartheid, "never subscribed to the view that apartheid was morally wrong. In his view it was at root an honest attempt to cope with overwhelming racial problems". Oppenheimer's objections to apartheid were practical ones, that it was not really possible to separate blacks and whites, and that the repression necessary in order to enforce separation was stirring up rebellion and endangering profits. "Nationalist policies have made it impossible to make proper use of black labour," he said in October 1978. Oppenheimer advocated a restricted franchise based not on colour but on education and property ownership; these ideas were also for decades the heart of the agenda of the liberal Progressive Party, which he personally financed and which initially could not have survived without him. By 1980 he had given up on the party ever winning the allegiance of the white electorate and had decided to focus on what he called "the reasonable people in the National Party" and their ideas of power-sharing; he acknowledged that this shift in his views would "shut out one man one vote in a unitary state". Upon Oppenheimer's retirement in 1982, his successor Gavin Relly announced himself to be, like Oppenheimer, "not in favour of one-man, one-vote in South Africa" because that "would simply be a formula for unadulterated chaos at this point in time in our history". Anton Rupert, the leading Afrikaner businessman, agreed: "After many African countries became free they got dictatorships like (Idi) Amin's. We have to find a solution that won't end up giving us one man one vote." This fear of black dictatorship was expressed, ironically, in the early 1980s, as the PW Botha dictatorship - intensifying the decades-long white electoral dictatorship over blacks - gathered momentum. The entire ethos of the old closed apartheid system was one of autarchy, claustrophobia and corruption - a state of affairs captured by the familiar phrase "laager mentality". The economic survival of the country, it was felt, required that maximum levels of international trade be maintained in the face of international sanctions, even if this necessitated bribery and corruption. The 1980 National Keypoints Act effectively coopted companies into the militarisation of society by compelling them to take what ever security precautions the government deemed necessary; no information about the measures could be published. A government that actively encouraged and facilitated unlawful commerce, sanctions-busting, and illicit arms trade, and that financed hit squad activity through commercial front companies, was hardly in a position to insist on scrupulous business conduct. Government and business slid down the twin paths of violence and corruption. ¥ (Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid's Criminal Governance; By Kader Asmal, Louise Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts; Published by David Philip and Mayibuye Books)
|