Africa's real brand ambassadors

SEPTEMBER is officially regarded as the Africa Heritage Month in South Africa. South Africa is the youngest and most developed African state whose heritage needs to be understood and appreciated by anyone who claims to have an African identity. This month provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be African, to address the question of who is an African, and what, if any, is Africa’s heritage.
As we celebrate the heritage month we are acutely aware that South Africa inherited a dualistic economy characterised by a developed economy that is comparable to many developed economies co-existing with a second economy in which the majority of South Africans eke a living often in abject poverty.
After 13 years of uhuru, the two economies still co-exist and it is widely accepted that the challenge of bridging the divide between the two worlds is beyond the scope of any government.
In fact, President Mbeki only last week called for the formation of a new movement to address the challenges facing the country and his call is equally valid to all Africans to take ownership of the future of the continent.
This is what President Mbeki had to say: "This leadership of the people of South Africa, in all of its echelons, faces exactly the same challenge: to say what is it that we need to do together to make a success of the country. Why don’t we come together again to address what is common and national challenges?"
To the extent that South Africa has the most sophisticated and developed industrial, financial, mining, tourism, and agricultural infrastructure that white South African can claim to be a direct consequence of their contribution in terms of financing and entrepreneurship, it is important that we appreciate the development model that underpinned the transformation of the country and has resulted in the creation of enduring brand ambassadors for the continent who are not representative of the demographics of the country.
The idea of Africa heritage month as a form of cultural empowerment and emancipation is important if it is buttressed by financial literacy particularly in respect of the construction of a functioning and progressive Africa matching the first economy of the colonial state. It is common cause that Anglo-Saxons were responsible for investing in the intellectual property that has informed the development of South Africa’s first economy with blacks playing a supporting but critical role without any real benefits accruing to them.
We need to begin by defining the term heritage in the context of South Africa’s development in order to better understand the complexity of the African challenge. Heritage refers to property that is or can be inherited i.e. something that is passed down from preceding generations with the status acquired by a person through birth. What South Africa inherited in 1994 in terms of institutions and values principally reflects the investment made by Anglo-Saxons who considered their way of life superior to that of the natives. The construction of the state was based on a notion that Africans were not capable to self-govern let alone exploit the abundant resources endowed to them by God.
The brand ambassadors that are now confidently flying the South African flag trace their origin to the entrepreneurs who controlled the diamond and gold mining industries of South Africa in its pioneer phase from the 1870s up to World War I. This class of entrepreneurs is normally referred to as the Randlords.
A small number of European adventurers and financiers, largely of the same generation, gained control of the diamond industry at Kimberely, Northern Cape. They set up an infrastructure and industrial consolidation which they applied to exploit the discoveries of gold from 1886 in Transvaal at Witwatersrand. Many of these Randlords received baronetcies from Queen Victoria in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of the English heritage. Nothing much has changed in terms of the hegemony by the same club of entrepreneurs and their successors over Africa’s resources.
It is important to note that no single African has been so honoured by the English royal family for contributing to the assertion of African heritage in so far as the ownership and control over its resources. Only last week, I was a guest at a gala dinner hosted by the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs in Johannesburg to honour women in mining. The dinner was sponsored by Anglo American Corporation one of the products of the Randlords and it is not surprising that the country has not been able to produce its own brand champions to sponsor such important nation building projects.
As the first generation of Randlords died or retired, the next generation concentrated on the process of consolidation and corporatisation -- developing the mining companies into integrated quoted companies that are now globally recognisable and respected. However, it must be noted that underpinning all these global companies are African resources that were alienated from the natives using non-market forces. Out of Africa, many Europeans became super rich and none of their indigenous African brothers and sisters can claim the same.
One individual who stands out in the exploitation and subjugation of Africa’s resources and extending the tentacles of the British Empire is the British-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician, Cecil John Rhodes. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers which is still alive today and controls about 40% of the world diamond industry.
Although Rhodes is buried in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, his legacy still lives on. Anyone who buys a diamond today is in a sense celebrating and promoting what Rhodes stood for. No African government has managed to break the umbilical cord connecting Rhodes and all what he stood for from the heritage of Africa.
Rhodes was an ardent believer in colonialism and was the private coloniser of Rhodesia which was named after him. No private person can boast of the same achievement to have a country named after him and for such a country to carry his legacy and name for about 90 years.
Rhodes, like many of the Randlords, profited greatly by exploiting Southern Africa’s natural resources, proceeds of which founded the Rhodes Scholarship (now Rhodes-Mandela Scholarship) upon his death. Rhodes is famous for having declared: “All of these stars… these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets.”
Cecil Rhodes’ first round of diamond mine consolidation with De Beers Consolidated Mines was continued by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer (1880-1957) who created his own dynasty that is now in its fourth generation. Oppenheimer was a German-born industrialist, financier, and one of the most successful leaders in the mining industry (not in Europe) in South Africa and Rhodesia. He formed Anglo American mining company in 1917 that many Africans today are proud to be its brand ambassadors but would not be prepared to invest in new brands. Anglo’s gold interests are now held by AngloGold Ashanti.
Other Johannesburg mining houses formed on the basis of other corporate mining giants include Prges & Eckstein’s “Corner House” that is now known as Randgold; Rhodes’ Consolidated Gold Fields that is now Gold Fields Limited; George and Leopold Albu’s General Mining and Finance Corporation that became Gencor and is now part of BHP Billiton, Barney Barnato’s Johannesburg Investment Company or Johnnies became JCI Limited and has now been unbundled as part of a failed BEE transaction.
The Randlords came largely from humble European backgrounds and many used their fortunes generated in Africa to enhance their position not only in Africa but globally. Many of them were knighted on the back of African blood and sweat. They managed to gain entry to the English establishment and without Africa’s contribution; such men would never have been recognised by the Royal family.
The architectural patronage of the Randlords has left a legacy across South Africa and England. The successors of this unique breed of entrepreneurs are now more African than many indigenous people and have become recognised as the spokesmen for the continent. Even fifty years after independence, the gold and diamond ambassadors for Africa are still not indigenous.
The real ambassadors for Africa were created by individuals whose perspectives on Africans may not be any different from the architects of apartheid and those who continue to argue that natives cannot be trusted to be custodians of their own resources. A new term has been invented in South Africa for assimilating natives in the mainstream economy as black economic empowerment partners. Rhodes never saw the need for sharing the loot but many progressive Africans still believe that transformation can occur through a trickle down mechanism controlled by successors of the Randlords.
Listed below are some of the notable Randlords whose efforts have defined the African story that needs to be told to all Africans in the hope that one day they will rise up and take ownership of their resources in the same manner that Arabs and Asians have done in the last 60 years. For how long can Africa celebrate the heritage month without its own ambassadors? Maybe in our lifetime, African pioneers in the construction of capital will be celebrated by their own people.
The future of Africa can only be as secure as we make decision today that help define who we are and what we stand for. The investment by the Randlords has paid off in Africa a million times and their successors continue to dominate the economic space long after the political democratisation of Africa.
Over the last fifty years, Africa has failed to produce its own Randlords with a feeling of duty to believe in the African cause, to make a stand, to support and defend it. Our appetites are still fed by people who despise us and yet we have not seen the wisdom of using our enormous spent to create our own institutions and our own brand ambassadors.

1. Sir George Albu, 1st Bt (1857-1935)
2. Leopold Albu (1861-1938)
3. Sir Abraham Bailey (1864-1940)
4. Barney Barnato (1852-1897)
5. Sir Alfred Beit (1853-1906)
6. Sir Otto Beit, 1st Bt (1865-1930)
7. Hermann Luwig Eckstein (1847-1893)
8. Friedrich Gustav Jonathan Eckstein (1857-1930)
9. Sir George Herbert Farrar (1859-1915)
10. Adolf Goerz (1857-1931)
11. John Hays Hammond (1855-1936)
12. Sir David Harris (1852-1942)
13. Solomon Joel (1865-1931)
14. Woolf Joel (1863-1898)
15. John Dale Lace (1859-1937)
16. Isaac Lewis (1849-1927)
17. Samuel Marks (1843-1920)
18. Sir Carl Meyer
19. Maximilian Michealis (1852-1932)
20. Sigismund Neumann (1857-1916)
21. Sir Lionel Phillips, 1st Bt (1855-1936)
22. Jules Porges (1838-1921)
23. Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902)
24. Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, 1st Bt (1840-1929)
25. Charles Ernest Rube (1852-1914)
26. Charles Dunell Rudd (1844-1916)
27. Ji, B Taylor28. Sir Julius Wernher, 1st Bt (1850-1912)