Education.
When he arrived she did not mince words. ‘Anton, why are you throwing away your future like this?’
Surprised, he asked what she meant.
‘Why do you mix with the likes of Oswald Pirow?’
Bewildered, he told her he didn’t understand. She replied: ‘We’re grooming you as leader in our party.’
He was shocked to hear a sister speak about her brother in such terms. That evening he told Huberte: ‘If that’s what politics is like, I want nothing to do with it. I’m through with politics.’
Rupert’s decision to steer clear of politics differed from that taken by Harry Oppenheimer, heir to an earlier South African family fortune, at about the same time. In 1947 he was elected a United Party MP. After the death of his father, Sir Ernest, in 1958 he became chairman of Anglo American and left politics, no doubt because he sensed a conflict of interests which the dual role as politician and head of a mighty gold, diamond and mineral empire would have entailed.
Dirk Hertzog in his turn received advice that turned him away from politics from his uncle Gen. Hertzog, whom he often visited at Waterval, although he did stand for election once. In his memoirs he records that when he questioned Hertzog about Stephen Leacock’s view of politics, the old man replied: ‘Yes, my boy, Leacock’s right. Smuts and I entered politics with the prestige we had gained over three years during the Anglo-Boer War. We could still achieve something on occasion. But if you have to start from the bottom, you have to kiss so many hands to get to the top that by the time you do, you are powerless. Besides, it’s always difficult to decide whether you should do the popular thing − and it’s never hard to tell what that is − or rather do what your own knowledge and experience tell you is in the public’s long-term interest. If you choose to do what you believe to be right, you must accept that you may become unpopular. And if you want to be popular, you must accept that you will have to act against your own judgment, if not your conscience.’
Rupert retained great respect for Gen. Hertzog, whose stature grew after his death. And he considers the international statesman Gen. Jan Smuts, prime minister from 1939 to 1948, and the poet and naturalist Eugène Marais to have been the two real geniuses that South Africa produced.9
His decision to shun politics was indeed life-changing. Most of his university friends believed he was destined for a political career. Dr Colijn van Bergen expressed a firm view in this regard: ‘If Anton had become prime minister instead of Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa would have been a totally different world.’
During the war years the relationship between Rupert and Huberte was formalised. Rupert duly approached Huberte’s stepfather, Piet Wessels, to ask for her hand in marriage. His future father-in-law responded: ‘I know you can’t support her, but I’m sure you will manage in the end.’
Although far from the war arena, South Africa felt the reverberations. Strict rationing and other wartime measures were introduced and towards the end of the war 200 000 South Africans in uniform took part in the war effort. In the midst of this comparative austerity the young couple were blissfully in love. They went to buy an engagement ring at the Amsterdam Diamond Cutting Works in Johannesburg. The counter staff made such a fuss of them that they quite forgot to pay for the ring. They were nearing Pretoria when Huberte realised the oversight. Horrified, she remembered that they had even been told that when they came for the wedding ring, it would be a present. When they hastened back the next day to settle the bill the staff were unfazed. ‘They said they knew we would come back to pay them, can you believe it?’ Huberte related in 2001.
They announced their engagement on Kruger Day, 10 October 1940. Their photograph appeared prominently on the social page of Die Transvaler, with the caption stating that the engagement was bound to ‘arouse general interest in republican circles’. The same issue contained an article on the heroines of the Anglo-Boer War, with a long quotation from a letter Gen. Smuts wrote to Pres. MT Steyn in 1901, describing the devastation of the country and the abuse of women and children. The article made a lasting impression on Huberte because the quoted letter included a reference praising her great-grandmother Lenie Riekert.10
A year later, on Saturday, 27 September 1941, the couple were married in the Gereformeerde church in Krugersdorp. (Rupert was Dutch Reformed, but Huberte belonged to the smaller sister church popularly known as the Dopperkerk.) The wedding, a major social event in the close-knit Afrikaner community, was covered in great detail in Die Transvaler.
After the reception the couple drove off in Rupert’s battered little DKW, registration number TK 714. The canvas roof leaked so that when it rained Huberte had to open an umbrella to keep dry. They were embarking on a life in which she was to be a constant support at Rupert’s side, having taken to heart the advice given to her before the wedding by Sen. Martin Vermeulen, father of her student friend and bridesmaid Theresa Vermeulen: ‘You are going to marry a leader of people, a man of whom we expect much. Decide early on that you want to be his helpmate. Someone must keep the home fires burning.’
PART III
BUSINESSMAN
Chapter 5
Small beginnings in business
Rupert’s change of direction, his entry into the business world, was small and modest, but it was to be like the mustard seed from which a giant tree would grow.
His business career started on a modest scale while he was still lecturing at the UP. Rupert, his student friend Dirk Hertzog, then an articled clerk at a Pretoria law firm, and Dr Nic Diederichs, later minister of finance and state president, decided to open a dry-cleaning business. This was consonant with a conviction that Afrikaners had to fight their way out of national obscurity, if not inferiority, by non-political means. Hertzog shared the view that too few Afrikaners were involved in commerce – for many years they had restricted themselves to agriculture and the professions. The choice of dry cleaning was based on sound reasoning: wartime austerity meant that new clothes were hard to come by and dear, so people had to wear what they had − and have it cleaned regularly. Besides, with his training in chemistry Rupert felt he was cut out for the business.
The dry-cleaning business, Chemiese Reinigers Edms Beperk (Chemical Cleansers Pty Ltd), was situated at 535 Voortrekker Road, Pretoria. Four partners each contributed £100 to the starting capital of £400: Rupert borrowed his £100, repayable with interest, from the fourth director, Hertzog’s half-brother Dawid de Waal Meyer, then South African trade commissioner in Canada.
The name itself tells a story. Their advertisement in Ons Reddingsdaad (Our Act of Rescue), a brochure published by the head office of the Reddingsdaadbond (RDB) in 1941, appealed directly to Afrikaner nationalist sentiment and shows how these new entrants into the commercial world initially saw their market:
Always support the True Afrikaans CHEMIESE REINIGERS (like you, we prefer this name to the erroneous, anglicised word: Dry-cleaners).
We undertake chemical cleansing (dry-cleaning) of every kind of garment, carpets, etc., as well as refurbishing of hats.
Our equipment is the latest and the best. Our workers are specialists.
A BETTER, FASTER AND EXCLUSIVELY AFRIKAANS BUSINESS. Ask your Dealers to send your clothes to us.
Directors: Dirk Hertzog, BA, LLB; Anton Rupert, MSc. [Our translation.]
Their advertising provided an early lesson to an entrepreneur who would later gain international renown for his sophisticated marketing techniques. In retrospect Rupert himself admitted that the word ‘chemical’ was an unfortunate choice − after all, dry-cleaning was meant to obviate the use of chemicals. And the focus on an exclusively Afrikaans clientele narrowed their market considerably. An appeal to sentiment was not a winning recipe, as some of his tobacco products would also later prove. Rupert noticed that the competitors to whom they later sold the business focused on serving a wider market comprising both language groups.
The new business also faced other problems. It was wartime and the benzine for the cleaning process had to be used and reused. Their German manager did not replace the filters of