‘We South Africans now enjoy the rare opportunity to shape our own future. There is every reason to believe that, working together in a spirit of pragmatism, we can reach our common goal.’
These words have a marked resonance in late 2023, with only months to go before what will surely be democratic South Africa’s most important election to date – when so much, and the well-being of so many millions, rides on the outcome, and the willingness of a new administration to confront the national crisis.
Yet, this evocation of South Africa’s ‘rare opportunity’, and the confidence in its national ‘spirit of pragmatism’, was crafted more than three decades ago, and nearly four years before the first democratic elections.
Its author was Julian Ogilvie Thompson, whose death on 11 August has been widely acknowledged in tributes to a life of signal achievement.
At the time, he was chairman of the Anglo American Corporation, South Africa’s largest by far.
On their own, his words of conviction in and certainty about South Africa’s potential as it prepared to embark on its transition to democracy were neither especially rare nor remarkable for the time.
Many South Africans, three decades ago, were perfectly willing to express much the same sort of warm-hearted view of their society, a society that was, after all, confident in its prospects of reinvention, revelling in global congratulation, and grateful to have such figures as Nelson Mandela and F W de Klerk symbolising their highest hopes.
But what is striking about Ogilvie Thompson’s appraisal in the Spring of 1990 – contained in an essay of slightly more than a thousand words in the Journal of Democracy (published that year by Johns Hopkins University Press) – is that what accompanied the optimism was the measured certainty of his argument for a free society defined by universal suffrage, protected by effective democratic institutions, and guaranteed by an open economy and fundamental commitments to property, enterprise and non-racialism.
Each and every point remains vividly relevant today.
Ogilvie Thompson asserted the fundamentals: all South Africans having ‘equal rights and the freedom to pursue their own political and economic interests without regard to race or colour’ via a universal franchise, and – to ‘prevent the abuse of power, which political philosophers over the centuries have warned is the greatest threat to maintaining real democracy’ – measures such as ‘a bill of rights, enforced by an independent judiciary, that guarantees individuals their fundamental civil liberties’.
Most notably for the contemporary reader – especially in an environment overshadowed by ANC and government commitments to expropriation without compensation – he emphasised property rights.
The protection extended by a Bill of Rights, he wrote, ‘must also extend to the right to own private property’.
He went on: ‘Far from being the bastion of privilege, as some would have us believe, this right is actually the foundation of political and economic liberty. For if citizens lack the right to mobilise independent resources with which to promote their own interests, all their other rights become meaningless in practice.’
His observations about economic imperatives were salutary, too.
‘In a future South Africa, we hope to see an economic system that is open, competitive, and capable of generating growth on the order of at least 5 percent a year, which will be required if the country is to meet the social needs of its growing population.’
He noted that international experience, confirmed in then-recent events in Eastern Europe, ‘shows that only a strong market economy can create opportunities that will allow greater numbers of South Africans to share in the wealth of an increasingly prosperous country, thereby securing the economic foundation for the maintenance of real democracy’.
‘Our goal should be a mixed economy with a dynamic private sector operating within a framework of macroeconomic policies designed to encourage growth, enterprise, and investment. Such policies would include a non-punitive and broadly based tax system, prudent management of the money supply, and sound fiscal policies.’
He argued for ‘a flexible and open system that can anticipate and adapt to changing global economic demands and, patterns of trade’.
‘We will also need enterprises that can compete internationally and manage the capital, technology, and manpower required for large and difficult ventures such as those needed to develop South Africa’s varied metal and mineral resources.’
He added: ‘But big business also needs small and medium-sized businesses, and there must always be room in a free market economy for the individual entrepreneur.
‘Deregulation will help encourage the entrepreneurial ethic, and represents one important way in which racial imbalances in the distribution of wealth can be tackled.’
It would be necessary, he wrote, to ‘extend the market to give meaningful opportunities for wealth creation and employment to those whom apartheid prevented from enjoying all the benefits of participation in a market economy’.
This steadfast attention to essentials that so many others were willing to discount, or put aside at the time out of expedience, marked JOT – as he was widely and affectionately known – as a principled liberal of note, and a South African of singular loyalty.
His was not a sentimentalist’s vision: he understood that the vigour of a yet undesigned South African democracy would depend on the vigour of its constituents – and, very largely, the scope they would be granted to act freely, in their own interest, without undue interference or threat from the centres of power.
This underscores JOT’s considerable intellectual and material support for the liberal cause, and in particular the work of the Institute of Race Relations; it was born of his commitment not just to making the case for a better, fairer South Africa, but a future built on a dependable foundation on which future generations could confidently rely in becoming the agents of their own ambitions and dreams.
What is notable in 2023 is that Julian Ogilvie Thompson grasped three decades ago the basics that remain the core challenge in a democratic South Africa of whose pragmatic spirit he was a lifetime example, and a tireless champion.
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Julian Ogilvie Thompson was born in Cape Town in 1934. His father, Newton Ogilvie Thompson, was a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Ogilvie Thompson studied at Diocesan College (Bishops) in Cape Town, and the University of Cape Town, before going to Oxford (Worcester College) as a Rhodes Scholar. He began his long career with Anglo American when he joined its London office in 1956, the same year in which he married the Honourable Tessa Mary Brand, daughter of Thomas Brand, 4th Viscount Hampden. A year later, he became personal assistant to Harry Oppenheimer. He was subsequently promoted to various executive positions in the group. He succeeded Oppenheimer as chairman of Minorco in 1982 and as chairman of De Beers in 1985. He succeeded Gavin Relly as chairman of Anglo American in 1990 and retired as chairman of De Beers in 1997 to become non-executive deputy chairman. After leading the 1999 merger of Anglo American and Minorco, Ogilvie Thompson became its chairman and CEO, and on being succeeded by Tony Trahar, continued as non-executive chairman. Ogilvie Thompson was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, and leading figure in the organisation’s early years.. His wife, Tessa, died in 2020. They are survived by four children, twelve grandchildren and one great grandson.
[Image: https://www.mandelarhodes.org]
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