Bloemfontein for the arrival of the Ox-wagon Trek on his birthday in 1938. In later life he often pointed out that a man of the cloth, Kestell, had motivated him to embark on a business career, starting out with virtually nothing. In certain respects the Reddingsdaad campaign and the spirit it embodied foreshadowed the Black Economic Empowerment movement of post-1994 South Africa, though the earlier movement was not based on the transfer of capital with favourable financing schemes or share options.
A year after the Great Trek centenary, in October 1939, the Eerste Ekonomiese Volkskongres (First National Economic Congress) was held at the initiative of the Economic Institute of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverenigings (Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations, FAK, the cultural front of the Afrikaner Broederbond, AB). The overriding goal was to rouse the impoverished, demoralised people to take on the challenges of entrepreneurship. But, like both Rupert and Hertzog with their first venture, they would need capital.
Capital and capitalism had been a bone of contention among Afrikaner intellectuals for some time. Early in the century Gen. Smuts, in A century of wrong, had thrown down the gauntlet to tyrannical international capital, which British imperialism in South Africa represented at the time. By the 1930s pent-up resistance to British imperialism was still rife among Afrikaners, alongside an aversion to hated excrescences of capitalism, as expressed through DC Boonzaier’s cartoon character, the arch-exploiter Hoggenheimer, who featured regularly in the Afrikaans daily Die Burger. But by 1939 Hitler’s national socialism and Stalin’s communism − both epitomising the totalitarian state − were looming as a counter threat. The Afrikaner intellectuals who were spearheading the economic struggle did not reject capitalism outright, but instead advocated a variant that became known as volkskapitalisme (national capitalism). Prof. Wicus du Plessis stated at the congress that the new economic movement had as its aim ‘no longer to tolerate the Afrikaner nation being devastated in an effort to adapt itself to a foreign capitalist system, but to mobilise the nation to conquer this foreign system in order to transform it and adapt it to our national character.’
One after another prominent Afrikaans intellectuals made a case for the mobilisation of capital to launch Afrikaner businesses that were capable of achieving that aim. One outcome of the congress was the founding of Federale Volksbeleggings (Federal National Investments, FVB), which would do just that. The other – the answer to Ds Kestell’s appeals over the years for the economic upliftment of Afrikaners – was the establishment on 8 December 1939 of the Reddingsdaadbond (RDB). Its task would be to dispense funds to suitable applicants who wanted to venture into business.
This was the organisation that finally lured Rupert away from academia. Various people had been prodding him to join it and in the end he was invited by his partner Dr Nic Diederichs himself, by then at the helm of the RDB. At the end of 1940 Rupert resigned from his post at the University of Pretoria. He abandoned his studies − the doctorate in chemistry and his legal and commercial courses − and stepped out into the world outside the ivory tower. At the age of 24 he found himself heading the small-business section of the RDB at its headquarters next to the railway station in Johannesburg on the bustling Highveld, the centre of South Africa’s industrial heartland.
In this decisive period of his life Rupert acquired an intimate knowledge of the needs of small-business entrepreneurs. His mentor was Dr AJ Stals, another remarkable man who would have a lasting influence on his life. Rupert had a deep respect for Stals, the kind of Afrikaner he would probably typify as a member of the Afrikaner aristocracy. He relates that Stals, the son of a tenant farmer at Tulbagh in the Western Cape who obtained doctorates in medicine and law at the universities of Berlin and Dublin, did not hesitate to scrub floors for his widowed mother during holidays at home. After 1948 he became a member of Malan’s cabinet, but died within three years. Stals’s political views were moderate – according to his wife he walked out of a National Party congress where unfavourable decisions were being taken about the rights of coloured people. In this respect, too, he influenced Rupert, who said in later life that if Stals had lived long enough after 1948, coloureds would never have been removed from the common voters’ roll. When a close friend of Stals once commented that he was not a good politician because he was too fair to indulge in nepotism, Rupert’s response was, ‘If fairness makes you a bad politician, I don’t belong in politics. My father was therefore right to turn down political positions.’ In fact, he came to believe that Afrikaners managed to build their economic muscle for the very reason that in times of crisis, like during the Second World War, they channelled their energies into non-political fields.2
In the early 1940s Stals was a director of Volkskas Bank and Voortrekker Press, two of the rather few sizeable Afrikaner businesses at the time. Twice a week he travelled from Pretoria as financial adviser to help Rupert vet loan applications from prospective entrepreneurs, who could be granted loans up to £500. A top economist, Stals trained Rupert in his new job of helping beginners find their feet. One of the success stories was DW Pienaar, who for many years ran a barber’s shop in the Groote Kerk building in Cape Town, where several parliamentarians came for their haircuts. But many fledgling Afrikaans enterprises folded − in Johannesburg alone at least 50 of them.3
Nonetheless, at the RDB’s second official congress in Bloemfontein on 14 July 1943, Dr Eben Dönges could maintain with some justice that the organisation − acting as the ‘fieldworker’ of the FAK’s Economic Institute − was breaking down Afrikaner prejudice against capital investment in business enterprises, especially Afrikaans ones. In due course the Afrikaans universities (Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Orange Free State and Potchefstroom) would also play a role in cultivating business leaders by producing growing numbers of commerce graduates. In 1945, five years after its inception, the RDB had close on 400 branches countrywide and some 70 000 members. Numerous Afrikaans enterprises had been assisted with loans. Thousands of job opportunities had been created and hundreds of people had received counselling or been helped with the financing of their studies by the RDB, which later linked up with the Helpmekaar study fund.
By the time the RDB was dissolved in 1957, Rupert had left the organisation. But his involvement with small business had made him aware of tantalising possibilities. Besides, he was itching to try his hand at manufacture, for, as he saw it, ‘chemistry and industry are first cousins’. His choice of a branch of industry stemmed from his experience as a child of the Depression: he came to the conclusion that an entrepreneur keen on entering the business world should concentrate on products that would sell even during a depression. And if any two products were depression proof, they were liquor and tobacco.
As early as 1941, while Rupert was still involved with the RDB, he heard about an insolvent tobacco company that was for sale. He himself could raise only £10, but as in the case of Chemiese Reinigers he found willing partners: Dr Nic Diederichs and his mentor Dr Stals. The new venture received loans of £2 500 each from FVB and Kopersbond, a big wholesale concern, and the new company was launched with a starting capital of £5 000. A week before Rupert’s wedding, on 21 September, Voorbrand Tabakmaatskappy4 was formally established and was registered the next day, 22 September 1941 − the official founding date of the Rembrandt Group. On the 23rd the directors held their first meeting.
Voorbrand was established at a time when the South African business world was dominated by English speakers. In trade, industry, finance and mining the turnover of Afrikaner enterprises comprised only five percent of the total in 1938-1939; in industry, only three percent. The few established Afrikaans companies included the insurance companies Sanlam and Santam, the media companies Nasionale Pers (later Naspers) in the south and Voortrekkerpers in the north, the undertaker Avbob and Volkskas, the first Afrikaans commercial bank, founded in 1934.
Two other pioneer entrepreneurs who were creating empowerment and job opportunities for Afrikaners in parastatal institutions were the chemical engineer Dr Hendrix van Eck and the equally brilliant electrotechnical engineer Dr Hendrik van der Bijl. Van der Bijl, chairman of Escom and thereafter of Iscor, realised his ideal of supplying inexpensive electricity and steel as the basis for industrial development. The industrial town of Vanderbijlpark was named after him. His successor as chairman at
