first business school in the world after that of Harvard University. Under Van Eck’s chairmanship of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) important parastatal institutions such as Sasol, Foskor, Safmarine and Alusaf were established and financed. Michael O’Dowd, a director of Anglo American, wrote about these institutions: ‘The primary credit (for the policy) belongs to the Afrikaners, and it was in effect opposed by many, if not all, English-speaking South Africans.’
As a result of the calls for economic mobilisation in the 1940s many new enterprises in the private sector sprung up among Afrikaners, most of which failed. Ultimately, out of the initiatives of those years two private-sector enterprises in particular were to grow and flourish. The one was Rupert’s Rembrandt, which developed out of Voorbrand. The other was Veka, subsequently known as Veka/Bertish, a clothing manufacturing company established by Albert Wessels. Wessels would later make his greatest strides after acquiring the South African trading rights of the Japanese vehicle manufacturer Toyota.
After the establishment of Voorbrand, Rupert continued at the RDB in a supervisory capacity for the time being. In fact, his honeymoon was spent touring the country to publicise and promote the organisation. Well-meaning friends thought it quixotic to take on a formidable industry − 90%-dominated by the giant United Tobacco Company (UTC) − with just £10 to his name. Some travelled from far afield to persuade him to abandon the plan. People like the journalist Willie Muller from Port Elizabeth, a fellow student in Pretoria, wanted to know ‘what on earth he thought he was doing’.5
Rupert himself could only contribute £10 in cash, but ultimately this £10 was to become an investment from which a multibillion rand global business empire would grow.
He had been approached by Stals to undertake the new task at the insistence of Jan de Kock, general manager of the Magaliesberg Tobacco Growers’ Society (MTKV), which he had built up into a model cooperative. De Kock had been a key figure in the establishment of the Tobacco Control Board, which sought to regulate the market in the best interests of tobacco producers and consumers, and headed an umbrella body of ten tobacco cooperatives. This dynamic leader thought so highly of Rupert that he wanted to do business with no one but the young UP lecturer at Voorbrand. He knew it would take brains and stamina to make even a dent in UTC’s virtual monopoly and he thought Rupert had the character and perseverance required for the task – if he failed to get a grip on the tobacco industry, other Afrikaners would not follow. De Kock and Rupert became close friends after the latter had taken over the management responsibilities at Voorbrand. De Kock also made a grader from the MTKV available to help Voorbrand with the manufacturing of pipe tobacco.
De Kock’s prescience was shared by others. Not long after the establishment of Voorbrand one of its directors tried to entice Rupert to join Kopersbond, at a higher salary. He turned down the offer.
The new company embarked on their task with a number of directors who would make their mark in South African business life. The calibre of the people involved also indicated a tendency that would characterise later, also foreign boards of directors of the Rembrandt Group: Rupert could draw together able associates around him.
The first chairman of Voorbrand’s board was Dr Stals, who served as minister of education, health and social welfare in the Malan government from 1948 to his death in 1951. One of the first directors of Voorbrand was Dr Diederichs, later minister of finance and eventually state president, who would succeed Stals as chairman of Rembrandt after the latter’s appointment to the cabinet. Kopersbond was represented by two directors, BJ Pienaar, at one time South African consul in Milan, and JJ Fouché. Other directors were the Afrikaans cultural figure Ivan Makepeace Lombard, who thought up the name Voorbrand; WB Coetzer, the chartered accountant who was later chairman of Federale Mynbou (Federal Mining) and Gencor as well as a director of up to 60 companies; Dr Etienne Rousseau, later chairman of Sasol, which became a world leader in the large-scale manufacture of oil from coal; and CC (Oupa) Kriel of Wol Groeiers Afslaers (WGA, Woolgrowers’ Auctioneers).
Rupert’s salary at Voorbrand was £500 per annum, £41.13 per month. He was also allocated two shares in the company. The factory occupied rented premises at 200 Commissioner Street, close to His Majesty’s Theatre and the radio corporation in those days, hence not far from the present Carlton Centre in the city centre. At this early stage Voorbrand was joined by an associate with whom Rupert was to travel a long road: the accountant Daan Hoogenhout. Hoogenhout, a B.Com. graduate from UP and a ‘child of the depression’ like Rupert and Huberte, was a grandson of CP Hoogenhout, a campaigner for Afrikaans in the late 19th century.6 Rupert and Hoogenhout shared a room at the entrance to the building. They partitioned it into two tiny offices, each barely big enough for a desk with a chair on either side. The ceiling rained dust on everything. One day when Hoogenhout climbed up there to clean the mess, he fell straight through the ceiling onto his desk.
The hallway was big enough to accommodate another desk. Within a few months it was occupied by Huberte, who became the unpaid clerk, typist, telephonist, secretary and messenger. Her typing was rudimentary − she used only four fingers − but she made up for it in other ways. Rupert soon also charged Huberte, according to her own description the ‘only female being’ at Voorbrand, with managerial duties. Among other things, she studied the Companies Act so she could draft notices of board meetings, letters to interested parties and other documents for the expanding company. She attributes their good working relationship to the good understanding between them. ‘While the speed of my typing wasn’t up to scratch, the accuracy of the data was good,’ she remembers. In effect, she was the Rembrandt Group’s first company secretary.
Adjoining the front offices was a room where six women, the first employees, sat around a block moulding containers for Voorbrand’s sole product − pipe tobacco − by hand. At the back was a workshop with a few machines taken over from their insolvent predecessor. Of these they used only the tobacco-cutting machine. Carl Langenstrass was the foreman in charge of this small domain.
For quite a while the new enterprise struggled to keep going, sometimes finding it difficult to pay the employees’ weekly wages on Friday afternoons. Once when a bank clerk from Volkskas refused to give Hoogenhout the amount of £25 needed for the wages because there was not enough money in Voorbrand’s account, Hoogenhout had to telephone Dr Stals, then a director of Volkskas. Stals deposited a personal cheque in Voorbrand’s account and requested the bank manager to pay out the amount. On another occasion Voorbrand was unable to pay its auditors, Meyernel, for their services. The auditors were obliged to write off the £5 they were owed. Rupert never forgot this, and after his move to Stellenbosch Meyernel, a precursor of PricewaterhouseCoopers, remained the auditors of the Rembrandt Group despite the difficulties caused by distance.
Without money or equipment they were unable to produce the big money-spinner, cigarettes. Besides, the wartime currency and import restrictions prohibited importation of the necessary machinery and packaging material.
At the early stage of Rupert’s entry into the tobacco industry there were already four other cigarette companies in the South African tobacco market, which yielded an annual profit of £2 million, but in which some 60 cigarette brands were vying for a market share. Tobacco farmers complained that they were being crippled by price fixing, while the net profit UTC transferred to its overseas parent company, British-American Tobacco, exceeded the gross annual income of everybody engaged in the local industry, including the − mainly Afrikaner − farmers. It was a situation calling for stronger competition, and Anton Rupert saw this as an opportunity.
He started studying companies that were depression-proof and found that, worldwide, tobacco companies were among the most successful. These included the major companies in the USA, such as RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, American Tobacco and Liggett & Myers. He also studied companies in Spain, Italy, Japan and China. In France, the state monopoly Seita owned famous brands such as Gauloises and Gitanes. Tobacco companies in the United Kingdom included Player, British-American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco, whose chairman, Lord Winterstoke, head of the Wills family,
