Harry Oppenheimer; Led Diamond Giant

Harry Oppenheimer, the billionaire South African businessman who led the world’s largest diamond and gold mining companies for a quarter of a century and spoke out against apartheid, has died. He was 91.

Oppenheimer died Saturday night in a Johannesburg hospital where he was admitted Friday with a severe headache and abdominal pains. The cause of death was unclear.

As chairman of diamond giant De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., Oppenheimer was credited with marketing diamonds as the ultimate gift of love--an advertising campaign that culminated with the famous “A Diamond Is Forever” slogan.

Oppenheimer’s family was reported to be worth $2.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine’s 1997 list of the world’s super-rich.

Oppenheimer, arguably South Africa’s most respected businessman, was a vocal opponent of his country’s racist regime that sanctioned apartheid for decades.

“Disagreeable though it may be, we must admit that the racial policy which has been pursued here over the last 40 years has made South Africa stink in the nostrils of decent, humane people around the world,” Oppenheimer said in a speech in 1989.

But Oppenheimer’s role as the leading businessman in South Africa made his position within the racist regime ambiguous.

His labor-intensive mines thrived on a migrant labor system that forced black workers to live apart from their families, and his companies paid black workers far less than whites.

His economic success was considered crucial to the survival of the apartheid government, which ruled until South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994.

The Oppenheimer dynasty began in 1917, when Harry Oppenheimer’s father, Ernest, founded the Anglo American Corp., a mining company. Ernest Oppenheimer took control of De Beers in 1929.

After finishing college in England, Harry Oppenheimer became heavily immersed in his father’s businesses and in South African politics. He was elected as an opposition member of Parliament in 1948, while he was already managing director of Anglo American.

Upon his father’s death in 1957, Harry Oppenheimer resigned his parliamentary seat and took command of both Anglo American and De Beers.

He greatly diversified Anglo American’s international holdings and turned De Beers into a cartel that still controls the vast majority of the world’s diamond markets.

Under Oppenheimer’s leadership, De Beers made huge profits, not only by selling diamonds, but by stockpiling them in times of great supply to increase their price artificially.

Even during the darkest days of international sanctions against South African companies, Oppenheimer managed to prosper by using an inscrutably tangled web of holdings to mask his international business deals.

Oppenheimer retired in 1982 as Anglo American chairman and in 1984 from De Beers.

“Never dictatorial, his style rather was one of rational argument and persuasion, and his influence on the course of politics in South Africa, as well as business, was as remarkable as it was pervasive,” said Julian Ogilvy-Thompson, chairman of Anglo American.

Oppenheimer also served in the ceremonial post of chancellor of the University of Cape Town and was chairman of the Urban Foundation, an organization to promote black housing and education.

Oppenheimer is survived by his wife, Bridget; his daughter, Mary; and his son, Nicholas, who is chairman of De Beers and AngloGold.