Kwame Nkrumah 1965
BIGGEST octopus in the Oppenheimer sea of operations is probably the Anglo American Corporation Ltd. Its investments are on a threefold scale, and their list of the main ones convey but the barest idea of their very considerable range. These are more or less direct participations and do not include the more intricate holdings held through or in common with subsidiaries and others in a more far-reaching extension of interests. Principally in mining, they nevertheless branch out into processing, transport and communications, landholdings and estate, forestry and timber, industry, as well as into hydro-electrical power schemes like that of the Rhodesia Congo Border Power Corporation.
Gold, uranium, iron, asbestos and coal mines are among the corporation’s most notable undertakings in South Africa, forming the solid foundation on which the Oppenheimer empire stands. Copper mining is its principal occupation in the Rhodesias, though it exploits also lead, zinc and cadmium, and has the distinction of being the only producer of coal in Rhodesia, where it controls the Wankie Colliery. Through associated companies, its interests spread out into Tanganyika, Uganda, the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, West Africa, and even the Sahara and North Africa, as can be seen by this list of direct investments:
African & European Investment Co. Ltd.
African Loans & Investment Ltd.
Anglo American Investment Trust Ltd.
Anglo American Rhodesian Development Corporation Ltd.
Central Reserves (Pty) Ltd.
Central Reserves Rhodesia (Pty) Ltd.
Consolidated Mines (Investment) Ltd.
Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd.
Consolidated Mines Selection (Johannesburg) Ltd.
De Beers Holdings Ltd.
De Beers Investment Trust Ltd.
De Beers Rhodesia Investments Ltd.
Epoch Investments Ltd.
Jameson Mining Holdings (Pty) Ltd.
Lydenburg Estates Ltd.
Orange Free State Investment Ltd.
New Central Witwatersrand Areas Ltd.
New Era Consolidated Ltd.
Overseas & Rhodesian Investment Co. Ltd.
Rand American Investments (Pty) Ltd.
Rand Selection Corporation Ltd.
Rhodesian Acceptances Ltd.
Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd.
Rhodes Investments Ltd.
South Africa Mines Selection Ltd.
South African Townships, Mining & Finance Corporation Ltd.
Transvaal Vanadium Holdings Ltd.
Vereeniging Estates Ltd.
Western Ultra Deep Levels Ltd.
West Rand Investment Trust Ltd.
South West Africa Co. Ltd.
De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd.
Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa Ltd.
New Jagersfontein Mining & Exploration Co. Ltd.
Diamond Abrasive Products Ltd.
Diamond Development Co. of South Africa (Pty) Ltd.
Philmond (Pty) Ltd.
Premier (Transvaal) Diamond Mining Co. Ltd.
Williamson Diamonds Ltd.
Amalgamated Collieries of South Africa Ltd.
Bleebok Colliery Ltd.
Coronation Collieries Ltd.
Natal Coal Exploration Ltd.
Natal Coal Exploration Co. Ltd.
New Largo Colliery Ltd.
South African Coal Estates (Witbank) Ltd.
Springbok Colliery Ltd.
New Schoongezicht Colliery.
Cornelia Colliery Ltd.
Springfield Collieries Ltd.
Transvaal Coal Corporation Ltd.
Vierfontein Coal Holdings Ltd.
Vierfontein Colliery Ltd.
Vryheid Coronation Ltd.
Wankie Colliery Co. Ltd.
Witbank Coal Holdings Ltd.
Bancroft Mines Ltd.
Kansanshi Copper Mining Co. Ltd.
Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd.
Rhodesia Copper Refineries Ltd.
Rhokana Corporation Ltd.
Brakpan Mines Ltd.
Daggafontein Mines Ltd.
East Daggafontein Mines Ltd.
Free State Geduld Mines Ltd.
Jeannett Gold Mines Ltd.
President Brand Gold Mining Co. Ltd.
South African Land & Exploration Co. Ltd.
Spring Mines Ltd.
Vaal Reefs Exploration & Mining Co. Ltd.
Welkom Gold Mining Co. Ltd.
Western Deep Levels Ltd.
Western Holdings Ltd.
Western Reefs Exploration & Development Co. Ltd.
President Steyn Gold Mining Co. Ltd.
Free State Saiplaas Gold Mining Co. Ltd.
Highveld Development Co. Ltd.
Iron Duke Mining Co. Ltd.
King Edward (Cuperiferous) Pyrite.
Monasite & Mineral Ventures Ltd. (rare earths).
Munnik Myburgh Chrysotile Asbestos Ltd.
Rhochrome Ltd.
Rhodesia Broken Hill Development Co. Ltd.
Transvaal Manganese (Pty) Ltd.
Transvaal Vanadium Co. (Pty) Ltd.
Umgababa Minerals Ltd. (Ilmenite, rutile and zircon).
Vereeniging Brick & Tile Co. Ltd.
Anglo American Prospecting Co. Ltd.
Anglo American Rhodesian Mineral Exploration Ltd.
Border Exploration & Development Co. (Pty) Ltd.
De Beers Prospecting (Rhodesian Areas) Ltd.
Kaffrarian Metal Holdings (Pty) Ltd.
Kalindini Exploration Ltd.
Kasempa Minerals Ltd.
Lunga Exploration Ltd.
Prospecting & Mineral Interests Ltd.
Swaziland Rift Exploration Co. Ltd.
Western Rift Exploration Co. Ltd.
Anglo American (Rhodesia Services) Ltd.
Anglo Collieries Recruiting Organisation (Pty) Ltd.
Boart & Hard Metal Products (Rhodesia) Ltd.
Boart & Hard Metal Products S.A. Ltd.
Clay Products Ltd.
Easan Electrical (Pty) Ltd.
Electro Chemical Industries Ltd.
Forest Industries & Veneers Ltd.
Hansens Native Labour Organisation (Pty) Ltd.
Hard Metals Ltd.
Inter-Mine Services O.F.S (Pty) Ltd.
Lourenço Marques Forwarding Co. Ltd.
Northern Rhodesia Aviation Services Ltd.
Peak Timbers Ltd.
Pearlman Veneers (S.A.) Ltd.
Rhoanglo Mine Services Ltd.
Rhodesia Congo Border Power Corporation Ltd.
Rhodesia Copper Products Ltd.
Rhodesian Steel Developments (Pty) Ltd.
Stone & Allied Industries (O.F.S.) Ltd.
Veneered Plywoods Ltd.
Zinc Products Ltd.
Anglo American (O.F.S.) Housing Co. Ltd.
Anmercosa Land & Estates Ltd.
Cecilia Park (Pty) Ltd.
Falcon Investments Ltd.
Orange Free State Land & Estate Co. (Pty) Ltd.
Prestin (Pty) Ltd.
Welkom Township Co.
It is interesting to note among the companies two that are engaged in the enlistment of ‘native labour’, namely, Anglo Collieries Recruiting Organisation (Pty) Ltd. and Hansens Native Labour Organisation (Pty) Ltd. Recruiting labour for the South African mines has always been an absorbing problem in connection with which there long ago grew up an efficient organisation for importing workers not only from the reserves of South Africa itself, but also from the protectorates, the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. There are long-standing arrangements with the authorities of the Portuguese colonies, particularly Mozambique, for the recruitment of African labour for work in the mines of South Africa.
Enforcement of apartheid through the establishment of Bantustans, such as that recently gone through in the Transkei, will force the chiefs, under inducement, to supply increasing numbers of local men for the mines. There is now a plan to stop the employment of workers from Zambia, Rhodesia and Malawi, and even from the protectorates. It may well be thought that these people will be infected with the ‘disease’ of nationalism and hence add fuel to the fire of unrest that has been lit in South Africa itself. It is significant that Mozambique Africans are still to be allowed the privilege of enriching South Africa’s mine owners by their toil, not least among them Anglo American Corporation.
This company was incorporated in 1917 to draw together a number of mining, investment and industrial companies already controlled by Mr Harry Oppenheimer, and to bring them into tighter organisation with such other interests as Mr C. W. Engelhard, chairman of Rand Mines, Kennecott Copper Corporation, and other associates. As the guardian of these interests, Anglo American acts as technical manager and secretary to an extensive number of mining and investment companies falling within its wide perimeter. In its executive, administrative and secretarial capacities, it also arranges the financial life of the many enterprises coming under its care.
The list given indicates only the barest bones of Anglo American’s multifarious interests, and if we were to examine them in detail we should find ourselves reaching into a most tangled complex of arteries and sinews. Many of the undertakings are not only important in themselves but have involvements which weave together the mining, industrial and financial world of Africa with that of the rest of the world. Such organisations as the Rand Selection Corporation, Union Corporation, Rhokana Corporation Ltd., and certain others, participate in a self-perpetuating and exclusive ensemble. Inter-action and inter-penetration of interests is a predominant feature emphasising the monopolistic nature of the African mining industry, whose leaders are the powerful arbiters of the continent’s industrial growth, especially south of the Sahara. It is not difficult to understand how, from this position, they and their European and American associates and financial backers wield a preponderant influence upon the policies of their governments in relation to the African scene.
A look, for instance, at Rand Selection Corporation Ltd. brings us at once upon one of the principal arms of Anglo American Corporation in the working of its vast empire. Rand immediately brings to mind the vision of fevered diamond and gold rushes that followed in the wake of the young Cecil Rhodes and his brother adventurers in the late eighteen-seventies. Rhodes’ quarrel with the Boers was over the fight to penetrate the interior to get at the gold of the Witwatersrand. His political leadership was assumed to make himself king of the mining wealth that had been discovered. It was, according to a committee set up in the Cape to examine Rhodes’ part in the famous Jameson raid, ‘in his capacity as controller of the three great joint-stock companies, the British South Africa Company, the De Beers Consolidated Mines, and the Gold Fields of South Africa, he directed and controlled the combination which rendered such a proceeding as the Jameson raid possible’.
The Jameson Raid finished Rhodes politically in South Africa. It was then he turned to what is now Rhodesia, where he made the British South Africa Company the power in the land that it has been ever since. Nor has the control of political affairs by all the great mining combines abated in any way since then. Rather has it intensified until they are the powers which control and direct affairs, not in Africa alone, but by their integration with other formidable combinations in Europe and America, they exercise great influence in these continents also and hence internationally.
De Beers and Gold Fields remain. The intervening years have, naturally, seen an extension of the opening up of mines and their exploitation, accompanied by a constant adaptation of their financial arrangements. Gold Fields heads a vast organisation of its own. De Beers has come within the periphery of Rand Selection Corporation but still controls within its own group of companies the output and distribution of most of the world’s diamonds.
In its own right, Rand Selection owns around 14,890 acres of freehold property in some of the richest mining areas of South Africa. A number of townships have been laid out by the company, in which it has leasehold rights of a high value. Certain of its rights are secured by a 92 per cent interest in South African Townships, Mining & Finance Corporation LTd. and its wholly owned subsidiaries, African Gold & Base Metals Holdings Ltd., Cecilia Park (Pty) Ltd. and Dewhurst Farms Ltd.
Rand Selection is, however, a subsidiary of Anglo American, under whose direction its scope was enlarged at the close of 1960 to enable it to participate in any new business undertaken by Anglo American up to 1 October 1970 on an increased percentage basis. The enlargement of Rand Selection was accomplished by the contributing of shares, loans and cash to De Beers Investment Trust by Anglo American, subsidiaries of British South Africa Co., Central Mining & Investment Corporation Ltd. De Beers Consolidated Mines., and Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd., who have been joined by the American-controlled South African company, Engelhard Hanovia Inc., and International Nickel Co. of Canada Ltd. controlled by the American Rockefeller-Morgan groups. Rand Selection then acquired all the issued capital of De Beers Investment Trust in return for the issue of shares of its own to the Investment Trust’s shareholders.
Under the arrangement, De Beers Investment has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Rand Selection. Yet at the same time by the acquisition of its holdings in Rand Selection, De Beers is now the majority holder of Rand’s 33,085,365 shares issued and fully paid up of the 35 million authorised to comprise its capital of £8,270,000. It is perfectly obvious that the loans and cash advanced to De Beers by the above-listed companies were in order to enable it to facilitate its own and Rand’s enlargement.
As a result of the 1962 implementation of the agreed rearrangement, De Beers Investment is now known as Randsel Investments Ltd. Its three wholly owned subsidiaries, Rand American Investments (Pty) Ltd., Rhodes Investments Ltd. and Jameson Mining Holdings (Pty) Ltd., are now consolidated within the Rand Selection organisation. The two holding companies, Rand Selection and Randsel, shared also in 1962 in the enlargement of another Anglo American creation, Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd., registered in the United Kingdom in 1897, whose interests cover the major mining activities of Southern Africa.
The assets of Consolidated Mines were jerked up to £15 million by the acquisition from companies within the Anglo American Sphere of holdings worth over £10,500,000 in the British South Africa Co., Central Mining & Investment Corporation Ltd., Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Corporation Ltd. and Selection Trust Ltd., as well as by smaller holdings in Bay Hall Trust Ltd. and Rhodesian Anglo American Ltd. In return for ceding their shares, the participating companies have acquired shares in Consolidated Mines Selection Co. Ltd.
At the same time, Rand Selection took up, in association with Anglo American, Consolidated Mines Selection and affiliated companies, an option on the purchase of 400,000 shares in Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting Co. Ltd., one of the three leading copper-gold mining companies of Canada, controlled by United States finance. Exercise of this option was made possible by loans raised in America, probably from the same interests behind Hudson Bay Mining.
Rand Selection’s operations also coincide with those of Anglo American in the very important Swaziland Iron Ore Development Co. Ltd., which has concluded contracts with two major Japanese steel producers, Yawata Iron & Steel Co. Ltd. and Fuji Iron & Steel Co. Ltd., as well as with General Ore International Corporation, for the sale to them of 12 million tons of iron ore over a period of approximately ten years.
Anglo American has enabled Rand Selection to participate in the purchase from British Coated Board & Paper Mills Ltd., a United Kingdom firm, of a large holding in South African Board Mills Ltd. ‘This’, stated Mr H. F. Oppenheimer, in his report to the 71st annual general meeting of Rand Selection Corporation Ltd., in Johannesburg, on 26 February 1963, ‘is one of the leading growth companies in South Africa, and is managed by Stafford Mayer & Co., with whom the Anglo American Corporation has long been associated in the coal industry’.
Contractual arrangements with Anglo American have secured Rand Selection participation in a number of property developments in central Johannesburg. The two have also gone hand in hand in Anglo American’s widespread prospecting activities and in certain development projects. Among them are explorations into the feasibility of the bushveld igneous complex of South Africa.
Here, indeed, in Anglo American, is the most ramified industrial and financial structure in Africa, powerful and commanding, the organisation that governs the fate of millions on this continent and stretches out its influence overseas. Like all monopolies, Anglo American is never content with the existing boundaries of its empire, but is ever seeking extensions, partly because it cannot afford to be overtaken. Hence it is continually conducting a comprehensive prospecting programme in many parts of Africa and elsewhere, in order to find untapped sources of mineral wealth that can be profitably exploited.