Page 26 - Cornwall Issue 3_2023

BOOK REVIEWS

Harry Oppenheimer

DIAMONDS, GOLD AND DYNASTY
By Michael Cardo

Harry Oppenheimer, the international
gold-and-diamond magnate, presided
over the corporate dynasty of Anglo
American and De Beers for more
than 25 years. Famed for his wealth
and his companies’ economic power,
he straddles the history of 20th-
century South Africa like a colossus.
Yet, two decades after his death, the
Oppenheimer empire is no more. As
the political opposition’s key financial
backer, the founder (along with Anton
Rupert) of the Urban Foundation
after the Soweto uprising in 1976,
and a ubiquitous philanthropist,
Oppenheimer helped propel the
process of reform.

Nevertheless, in some quarters he is
demonised as the archetype of ‘white and Oppenheimer’s complicity with
monopoly capital’ and scapegoated, the oppressive racial order of the past.
along with Nelson Mandela, for the Cardo brings to life the places, people,
country’s disappointing democratic events and relationships that shaped
dividends. In the first, full-scale Harry Oppenheimer’s long and rich
biography of Oppenheimer, based on career at the intersection of business
unrestricted access to his subject’s and politics. From the diamond fields
private papers and extensive interviews of Kimberley, where Harry’s father, I am Ella
with family members and close Ernest Oppenheimer, arrived to seek
associates, Michael Cardo eschews both his fortune, through the heir’s long
the corporate hype and the political apprenticeship, to his emergence on By Joanne Jowell
propaganda to produce a vivid, fully the world stage as a magnate and
rounded portrait. ‘monarch’ in his own right, Cardo Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving
traces the evolution of a dynasty. the Holocaust and building a new
He tackles thorny questions of legacy Price: R360.00 life in South Africa could easily
be mistaken for fiction. From
The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto

By Tom Hanks uprising to the fires of Majdanek,
Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz; from
the abandon of post-war Poland
A wildly ambitious story of the to the refuge of Paris, Palestine
making of a colossal, star-studded, and getting married and moving
multimillion-dollar superhero action to Johannesburg and eventually
film, and the humble comic book that Cape Town; from stateless refugee
inspired it all. to displaced immigrant, Ella’s 101
years of life have been nothing
Spanning 80 years and culminating short of herculean.
in the opening of the film, we meet a
colourful cast of characters including Together with her niece Roma
a troubled soldier returning from Rothstein, five years her junior, Ella
war, a young boy with an artistic gift, survived three concentration camps
an inspired and eccentric director, before being liberated by the British
a pompous film star on the rise, a Army in 1945. They made their
tireless production assistant and way across Europe to join their
countless film crew members that last surviving family member in
together create Hollywood magic. Palestine where Ella met the South
Funny, touching, and wonderfully DPL African man she would marry after
thought-provoking, the book just thirteen days. She followed
offers an insider’s take on the Isaac Blumenthal to the tip of Africa
momentous efforts it takes to where they settled in Brakpan,
make a film. At once a reflection outside Johannesburg where Ella
on America’s past and present, and her husband built a business
on the world of show business and raised their four children.
and the real world we all live in. Price: R330.00
Price: R390.00
24 Cornwall View • Issue 3 2023