orably opposed to apartheid
and that economic growth was bound to
erode and destroy it; others have charged capitalists with being the real
creators and sustainers of apartheid.f?
Each argument draws attention to
one part of the complex reality. On the one hand, it was white South
African politicians, organized in an ethnic party that excluded most major
capitalists,
who devised and enforced
apartheid.
On the other hand,
though apartheid imposed costs on the different sectors of business, it also
benefited all of them, and although they criticized specific actions of the
government, all sectors accommodated
apartheid before 1978.
The behavior of Harry Oppenheimer, the South African financial giant,
was most ambiguous. In 1957, he succeeded his father as head of the great
global "empire" that included the Anglo American Corporation
and De
Beers Consolidated
Mines. "It controlled forty percent of South Africa's
gold, eighty percent of the world's diamonds, a sixth of the world's copper
and it was the country's largest producer
of coal.">? He subsidized the
Progressive party, which was launched in 1959, recommended the incorpo-
ration of educated
Africans into the political system, and through
the
Urban Foundation, established in I 976, contributed to welfare projects in