Give Anton Rupert his due – don’t crucify his memory through ignorance

By Alec Hogg

The fire started by Johann Rupert’s comments at the Remgro AGM continues to blaze, evoking passionate Tweets and posts to my Facebook page. Unfortunately, some commentators have dragged Rupert’s late father Anton into the fray. Claiming that as he – and his son – were beneficiaries of Apartheid, Ruperts have no place expressing any political opinion. Such comments are ignorant.

Anton Rupert was as much out of step with the political rulers of his day as Johann is now. Ebbe Dommisse’s excellent biography on the man devotes an entire chapter to the elder Rupert’s political perspectives, shaped at a debate he attended in 1947. Ever since, Rupert urged his fellow Afrikaners to reject racial segregation, believing the country’s future lay in co-operation and co-existence. As his ideas were rebuffed, he followed an approach of “lojale verset” (loyal resistance).

Dommisse writes that ahead of Ghana’s independence in 1957 Anton Rupert urged the politicians to welcome this new free African state: “His plea was motivated by a passionate vision of a South Africa organised on the basis of co-existence, both within its borders and externally with fellow African states. The idea did not impress the rulers. South Africa missed a golden opportunity.” Rupert the elder was not an Apartheid puppet. He was no crony capitalist or old-style tenderpreneur. To tar him with that brush does the late entrepreneur a terrible injustice.

A selection of the most popular comments under the reference to the Johann Rupert story on Alec Hogg's Facebook page.
A selection of the most popular comments under the Johann Rupert story on Alec Hogg’s Facebook page.
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