Oppenheimer legacy shows more graciousness is needed in understanding our past

Interpreting the ambivalent legacy of businessman and politician Harry Oppenheimer requires nuance and balance, writes Kalim Rajab

In South Africa today, the notions of opposition to apartheid, of patriotism - indeed of the very concept of nation-building - are in flux.

While this is perhaps as it should be, as South Africans we find ourselves living in an indignant world, one intolerant of complexity when viewing our history and eager for simple characterisations of good and bad.

Assessing Harry Oppenheimer unfortunately requires greater skill.

It requires imagining how our economic development as a modern industrial country, Africa's most sophisticated, might have looked without him. Socioeconomically, the business community is yet to throw up a unifying leader of international importance who understands the positive role business can play in the formation of social justice - virtues that Oppenheimer certainly displayed.

He was a leader who transcended the business world through a quest to understand the public good.

Here was a man who engaged critically with the concept of what a good and just society in Africa should look like.

Crucially, as part of this, he wrestled with the idea of how to achieve a nonracial order in an African society uncommon in its heterogeneity - something General Jan Smuts had earlier deferred.

As such, the creed Oppenheimer's father, Sir Ernest, and he espoused in 1954 that "the purpose of large corporations such as Anglo American was to make profits for its shareholders, but to do so in a way as to make a real contribution to the welfare of the communities where it operated" is an idea just as relevant today as when they said it.

Of course, Oppenheimer was able to do this in large part because he was an enlightened owner-manager, not having to constantly report to intrusive shareholders. This enabled him to think of business in a broader context.

If South Africa is to become a serious economic player again and make the required strides in achieving social justice, one senses that it not only needs world-class companies and leaders, but also this concept of active shareholders to be refashioned.

This is perhaps his greatest socioeconomic legacy.

But in terms of his progressive political-economic thought and action, his legacy is more strained and should not be whitewashed.

On the one hand, he was key in influencing the huge practical steps that delegitimised apartheid: the recognition of nonracial trade unions, the forcing of government's hand on job reservations that kept black workers unskilled, and becoming a key non-state actor in improving the quality of life of urban blacks.

He was also the main benefactor of a political party (the Progressive Party and its successors) that fought a courageous crusade against apartheid, and which, while not the chief fashioner of the democratic era, still played an important role in pushing for the elements of liberalism that have become the hallmarks of South Africa's constitutional democracy: the triumvirate of the rule of law, an independent judiciary and the primacy of a powerful constitution.

Today, during these increasingly troubling times, it is these elements more than any other that have proven a beachhead against a frightening assault on the country's post-apartheid freedoms.

On the other hand, while his liberalism may have been progressive for its day, it was still etched with broad shades of conservatism.

For all his nuance and deep understanding of the human condition, his writings lack a certain human touch towards people whose cultural affinities were not tuned towards a Western European orbit.

A large part of his work was written, after all, during the times of Martin Luther King jnr, Robert Kennedy, Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko and, later, Desmond Tutu.

It is unfortunate that his writings and speeches do not provide a proper sense of the individuality or personality of black people, nor of their private pain and suffering - some of which were perpetuated in his mines.

And he seldom articulates an appreciation that even with a move towards freedoms and economic opportunities for all in South Africa - the "simple justice" that Helen Suzman spoke of - a legacy effect would still need to be acknowledged and would, in all probability, hold back the social development of the country for a long period of time.

As the country's tortuous journey to racial reconciliation has shown, the legacy effect of 300 years of black marginalisation has not been easy to overcome. Nor should it realistically have been.

In the first decades of democracy, this legacy continues to impose a residual effect, not only economically, but also educationally and psychologically, on previous victims of white supremacy.

In other words, the "illusory advantages" that Oppenheimer spoke of were not as temporary as he would have believed, but have actually lingered for a longer period, even in an economy opened up for all.

And so one can conclude that the political-economic legacy of Harry Oppenheimer is less certain than he might have hoped.

It is something that even he seemed to admit; his private papers, written a few years before his death, admit the "failure" of many of his political thoughts and actions.

Without contradiction, though, one can simultaneously argue that for a South African society to be as reconciled as its founding fathers would have liked, we ultimately need room for greater magnanimity and to allow greater space for graciousness in our understanding of the past.

It is certainly what Mandela seemed to strive for.

We need to understand and be sympathetic to the profound strangeness of those times where nothing was inevitable - the delicate eggshell dance that all actors had to perform to overcome the impasse - and remember just how close we came to falling into the abyss.

If we can remember this, we will be closer to assessing Oppenheimer for what he was: a passionate builder, a flawed reformer; in equal measures idealistic and shrewd; a man driven by self-interest and profit as well as an abiding patriotism.

Surely, given the extraordinary depth of the country, along with its capacity for possibilities, these dichotomies are understandable.

I believe that his considerable achievements and love for the land of his birth should not be overlooked.

I also believe that his faults - looming large, and damning as they were, particularly in the areas of the compound system and the health and safety record at the mines - should not be glossed over either.

Taken all in all, he was a man of Africa, as impressive and wide and imperfect as that catholic statement allows.

Assessing Harry Oppenheimer requires nuance, appreciation and generosity. Let us hope future generations possess it.

• Rajab, a businessman who worked as Nicky Oppenheimer's personal assistant, is a trustee of the Helen Suzman Foundation

• "A Man of Africa" is published by Penguin Random House South Africa, R250