The company that controlled half of South Africa

At its peak in the late 1980s, the Anglo American Corporation controlled over 50% of the companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. 

When combined with the Rupert’s Rembrandt Group, 83% of the listings on the JSE were controlled by two companies.

The corporation was founded in 1917 by Harry’s father, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, with funding from JP Morgan and some British banks – giving it the name of Anglo American to honour the source of the initial financing. 

Sir Ernest set up shop in Kimberley, then the heart of diamond mining, and began buying stakes in various mines in the area to build up a stockpile he could sell to cutters in Europe and the US. 

The most lucrative of these would prove to be De Beers Consolidated Mines, which Anglo bought in 1926 and kicked off the century-long partnership between the companies. 

De Beers would provide Anglo with the cash to create a commercial empire that would straddle nearly every sector of the South African economy. 

Through the creation of the Centralised Selling Organisation (CSO), Anglo and De Beers would have a stranglehold on the global diamond trade. By the 1980s, De Beers would have a stake in every single pipe diamond mine worldwide. 

Diamonds would remain the Oppenheimer family’s obsession, with Sir Ernest’s son Harry reading up on the stones while serving South Africa in WWII. 

Despite this obsession, Harry would transform Anglo from a mining company centred on the diamond trade into a sprawling megacorporation. 

This would begin with the company’s development of gold fields in the Free State in the 1940s and extend into investment banking and paper milling. 

The Free State mines would prove crucial, and the simultaneous construction of seven major mines was unprecedented and extremely lucrative for Anglo. 

At the same time, the company entered coal mining by acquiring Coal Estates. Young Harry gradually worked his way up the corporate ladder at Anglo, which was still very much run as a family business. 

Both Sir Ernest and Harry would create very close-knit groups of extremely capable individuals to run Anglo American, De Beers, and their personal investments. 

In 1957, Anglo would lose its founder, Sir Ernest. Harry took the reins of an already substantial company which had its eyes set on an American expansion and a deeper dive into Africa. 

“I chose my father with discretion,” Harry said, according to Michael Cardo’s biography of him. “And, like the Bible says, I have sought to do my duty in the station in which it pleases the Lord.”

Propelled by a sense of manifest destiny, Harry took the mantle of Anglo’s chairman and would inject fresh urgency into the company. 

Cardo said Harry’s ambitions turned out to be even more imperial than Sir Ernest’s, driven by the desire to not only protect his inheritance but develop Southern Africa. 

To do so, Harry would have to expand Anglo’s interest into sectors outside of mining. As chair of Anglo, he wanted to drive the industrialisation of South Africa and its neighbours. 

The corporation would make several significant moves under Harry, piling into manufacturing, construction, property, and finance during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Some of South Africa’s largest companies would be created in the process, such as Highveld Steel and Mondi. 

Oppenheimer would also invest in companies throughout the South African economy, even going so far as to try to rival Rockefeller Centre in New York with the creation of the Carlton Centre in downtown Johannesburg. 

By the time he retired from the chairmanship of Anglo in 1982, Harry had created an international conglomerate with assets worth an estimated $15 billion at the time. 

Anglo was the largest producer of gold, platinum, and vanadium. It had operations in the US, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. 

Beyond mining in South Africa, Anglo would have a diversified investment portfolio ranging from chemicals and explosives to pulp and paper, beer and bricks, banks and insurance houses. 

It also owned hotels, commercial offices, automotive manufacturers and distributors and have investments in some of the country’s largest retailers. 

Even before Anglo started snapping up the assets of foreign companies divesting from Apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s, the company controlled over 50% of all the companies listed on the JSE. 

Anglo American alone was responsible for 60% of the JSE’s entire market capitalisation. It also held a 32% stake in South African Breweries, one of the largest local companies at the time. 

In the late 1980s, Anglo would buy up Ford and Barclay’s Bank in South Africa as Western companies were pressured to divest from South Africa. 

Its reach would extend to wine farms, with Anglo buying up Boschendal and Vergelegen. After restoring it, Anglo sold Boschendal to a non-profit trust to manage the farm. It still owns Vergelegen. 

Under Harry’s 15-year chairmanship, Anglo generated profits of R13.3 billion, paid R7.1 billion in dividends to shareholders and paid over R5.4 billion in taxes. 

De Beers, during this time, would produce 21.4 million carats of diamonds, generating R1.7 billion in revenue per annum. 

As Cardo said, “Harry Oppenheimer not only maintained the family’s fortune, he grew it exponentially.” 

Harry was listed among the world’s ten wealthiest people in 1968, and the Oppenheimers became the first South African family to be listed on Fortune’s list of dollar billionaires in 1990. 

Today, the Oppenheimers no longer hold any stakes in Anglo American or De Beers, with Harry’s son Nicky leading the family’s sale of its $5.1 billion holding in the diamond miner in 2011. 

Nicky would never succeed his father as Anglo’s chairman, only rising so far as the position of deputy. The local press dubbed him ‘Not-yet Nicky’ throughout his time at the company. 

Harry viewed him as too young to take over Anglo and thought the company had become too large to be managed as a family enterprise. 

Instead, Harry would hand-select a group of highly capable individuals, usually having studied at Oxford, to serve as his personal assistants and rapidly promote them through the ranks at Anglo. 

This cabal would eventually run the company, with its leading members Gavin Relly and Julian Ogilvie Thompson rising to chairman after Harry retired. 

Anglo today is a far cry from the giant the Oppenheimers created. The company was severely hamstrung by Apartheid-era regulations that prevented it from investing heavily in the growing mining industries of South America and Australia. 

Being the subject of a failed takeover from Australian giant BHP, Anglo is looking to sell De Beers and end the 107-year partnership between the companies. 

Current CEO Duncan Wanblad has also initiated the unbundling of Anglo American Platinum to reinvent the conglomerate into a future-fit mining company focused on copper and the materials necessary for the green transition. 

Now headquartered in London, Anglo retains offices in Rosebank and has a secondary listing on the JSE. 

The company remains committed to South Africa, having led various initiatives to help capacitate municipalities while working with the national government to tackle load-shedding and the water crisis.

Harry Oppenheimer’s ambitions to lead the industrialisation of Southern Africa have been replaced by a need to avoid being swallowed by foreign mining giants quicker to adapt to the changing landscape.