Stals trained Rupert in his new job of helping beginners find their feet. One of the success stories was DW Pienaar, who for many years ran a barber’s shop in the Groote Kerk building in Cape Town, where several parliamentarians came for their haircuts. But many fledgling Afrikaans enterprises folded − in Johannesburg alone at least 50 of them.3
Nonetheless, at the RDB’s second official congress in Bloemfontein on 14 July 1943, Dr Eben Dönges could maintain with some justice that the organisation − acting as the ‘fieldworker’ of the FAK’s Economic Institute − was breaking down Afrikaner prejudice against capital investment in business enterprises, especially Afrikaans ones. In due course the Afrikaans universities (Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Orange Free State and Potchefstroom) would also play a role in cultivating business leaders by producing growing numbers of commerce graduates. In 1945, five years after its inception, the RDB had close on 400 branches countrywide and some 70 000 members. Numerous Afrikaans enterprises had been assisted with loans. Thousands of job opportunities had been created and hundreds of people had received counselling or been helped with the financing of their studies by the RDB, which later linked up with the Helpmekaar study fund.
By the time the RDB was dissolved in 1957, Rupert had left the organisation. But his involvement with small business had made him aware of tantalising possibilities. Besides, he was itching to try his hand at manufacture, for, as he saw it, ‘chemistry and industry are first cousins’. His choice of a branch of industry stemmed from his experience as a child of the Depression: he came to the conclusion that an entrepreneur keen on entering the business world should concentrate on products that would sell even during a depression. And if any two products were depression proof, they were liquor and tobacco.
As early as 1941, while Rupert was still involved with the RDB, he heard about an insolvent tobacco company that was for sale. He himself could raise only £10, but as in the case of Chemiese Reinigers he found willing partners: Dr Nic Diederichs and his mentor Dr Stals. The new venture received loans of £2 500 each from FVB and Kopersbond, a big wholesale concern, and the new company was launched with a starting capital of £5 000. A week before Rupert’s wedding, on 21 September, Voorbrand Tabakmaatskappy4 was formally established and was registered the next day, 22 September 1941 − the official founding date of the Rembrandt Group. On the 23rd the directors held their first meeting.
Voorbrand was established at a time when the South African business world was dominated by English speakers. In trade, industry, finance and mining the turnover of Afrikaner enterprises comprised only five percent of the total in 1938-1939; in industry, only three percent. The few established Afrikaans companies included the insurance companies Sanlam and Santam, the media companies Nasionale Pers (later Naspers) in the south and Voortrekkerpers in the north, the undertaker Avbob and Volkskas, the first Afrikaans commercial bank, founded in 1934.
Two other pioneer entrepreneurs who were creating empowerment and job opportunities for Afrikaners in parastatal institutions were the chemical engineer Dr Hendrix van Eck and the equally brilliant electrotechnical engineer Dr Hendrik van der Bijl. Van der Bijl, chairman of Escom and thereafter of Iscor, realised his ideal of supplying inexpensive electricity and steel as the basis for industrial development. The industrial town of Vanderbijlpark was named after him. His successor as chairman at Iscor was Dr Frikkie Meyer, who as chairman of the council of the UP established the 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