Business deserves thanks for role in averting SA civil war
According to the chief negotiator for the NP, Roelf Meyer, business was the critical factor in laying the foundations in 1990/1991 for the peace deal
The pressures to end apartheid and build a new political dispensation were multi-levelled, but on one of those levels, business in this country played a significant contributing role. It and the individuals that drove it deserve wider mention.
1972 is probably a good starting point in this story, it was the year the then CEO of Anglo American Corporation, Harry Oppenheimer, invited Alex Boraine, then president of the Methodist Church, to join Anglo. Boraine had publicly criticised the company for its labour relations and challenged Oppenheimer directly with the charge that he “could not believe trade unions were good for whites but not for blacks”. This marked the start of a process of progressively deeper political engagement by the SA business community that led all the way to the Codesa negotiations of the early 1990s...
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