South Africa's Mineral King

Coping with turbulence in politics and prices

"To be successful, your business has to be fun." By that creed Harry F. Oppenheimer, 72, has become one of South Africa's, and the world's, wealthiest and most influential businessmen. These days, however, Oppenheimer, head of an $18 billion gold, diamond and natural resources empire, and one of the country's most outspoken critics of apartheid, is smiling less than usual.

Though he has a personal fortune believed to be well in excess of $250 million, and either directly or indirectly controls nearly 300 companies involved in everything from gems to groceries, Oppenheimer hardly has absolute control over the marketplace in which his companies' goods are sold. His giant Anglo American Corp. of South Africa Ltd. two weeks ago reported 1980 profits of $1.1 billion, up 65% from 1979, but sagging gold prices point to leaner times ahead.

Except for an accounting change, De Beers Consolidated Mines, the huge diamond company of which Oppenheimer is also chairman, would have had an 8% drop in 1980 profits to $861 million.

Tumult in the diamond market has come as a real surprise. Oppenheimer's De Beers group supplies about 85% of the world's rough diamonds, and is by a wide margin the most influential member of the London-based Central Selling Organization, an international price-fixing cartel of diamond producers. In spite of the cartel's efforts to stabilize the market, diamond prices have fallen because of excessive speculation combined with a slack in demand.

Gold and diamonds are hardly Oppenheimer's only lines of business. Though Oppenheimer inherited many of his mining interests from his German-born father, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who immigrated to South Africa in 1902, his complex and interlocking activities today include investments in uranium, chemicals, real estate, manufacturing, banking and insurance.

Oppenheimer and his wife Bridget live in a style befitting their wealth. Home is a colonial mansion surrounded by formal gardens in a northern suburb of Johannesburg. Decorations include paintings by Chagall, Goya, Renoir and Picasso, and bookshelves are lined with first editions of Lord Byron and other poets. Oppenheimer owns a stud farm where he raises prize race horses, and a 900-acre game preserve in eastern Transvaal.

As South Africa's most powerful industrialist, Oppenheimer defends his criticism of apartheid on both moral and practical grounds. Says he: "In South Africa today, we are suffering from the effects of 30 years of keeping the races apart. We cannot live forever isolated from, and condemned by, the great Western democracies. The dangers we face internally and externally call for major and rapid changes in our policies."

Oppenheimer's companies are known throughout South Africa for their willingness to improve job opportunities for black workers. Moreover, Oppenheimer has ordered that when blacks and whites in his firms do identical work they get identical pay. Further, he has ordered his managers to make detailed semiannual reports on exactly what else they are doing to promote equal treatment for black and white workers in their companies.