Mutumwa Mawere

Nation building is a complex enterprise involving the actions of individuals.

In any generation, there are individuals who stand out and whose legacy flame continues to shine and inspire even after their death.

As we come to the end of this historic year that began with the inauguration of the first African American President of the USA, we are compelled to pause and reflect on our past particularly in view of the fact that South Africa will be the first Africa state to host the Soccer World Cup.

Why South Africa and not Nigeria is the host, for instance? Why are many Africans choosing South Africa as a tourist destination and most importantly as the last station of their life for those that become medically challenged?

The role of diamonds in the transformation of South Africa as an industrial state can never be understated. Diamonds attracted great minds to South Africa.

This minds stand out as the founding fathers of corporate South Africa.

There probably has never been a dynamic group of business leaders in any part of the world, which had in a short space of time done so much than the Kimberley men.

They came to make money and so they did. Some of these men represented a small group that was subject to political malice and religious, racial, and social prejudice of the worst order and in spite of the odds stacked against them they prevailed with distinction.

They never let prejudice stand in their way but managed to seamlessly weave themselves into the dominant cultures in South Africa.

By forging partnerships and networks, they became part of the special class of people who established the foundation that we often take for granted as we negotiate the future of Africa.

This small group of people who could hardly be described as agents of British Imperialism was Jewish emigrants.

The South African story would be incomplete without including the lives and exploits of these men for they were important figures who believed in the future of the country to allow us to write about their contribution today.

Such individuals used the newly found wealth for common good. They could hardly be described as Marxist accumulators or misguided entrepreneurs.

They were creative adventurers of the first order and took the challenges of their time head on.

They became the bearers of civilization not as a burden but as part of their call with destiny.
As we look back at the last 15 years of democracy in the South Africa which represents the birth of a new nation founded on new values, principles and beliefs we can observe that the vanishing of the kind of individuals who occupied the higher echelons of South African society at the defining hour in its journey is a signal of a civilization's decline.

We find ourselves enmeshed in a Eurocentric civilization that has its own demands on humanity and yet many of us daily reject the obligations imposed on us by its inherent social contract.

Several of the first Randlords were Jewish. They were of the same generation and they seized the opportunities that Africa offered.

They gained control of the diamond industry and more importantly they creative genius lay in setting up an infrastructure of financing and industrial consolidation that they applied to exploit gold discoveries from 1886.

Such individuals included Leopold Albu, a German Jew, born on 10 March 1861, the brother of George Albu, who together emigrated to South Africa in 1876. He died at 77 on 19 March 1938.

Their father was a coachbuilder. They began their career in South Africa as department store clerks in Cape Town before they became magnates of special stones.

In 1895, they became pioneers in the field of industrial and financial consolidation by establishing on the Rand, General Mining and Finance Corporation with the help of the House of Wernher Beit, a Jewish controlled finance house.

General Mining evolved over the years into Gencor, a company that controlled by Afrikaners.

There was nothing that prepared the Albu brothers for the wealth they accumulated in Africa.

They were ordinary people motivated by a desire to better their own lives.

They started their careers at the bottom and through luck and hard work they made a mark on South Africa's story.

Two brothers with no family support system in South Africa managed in one generation to benefit from Africa's resources in a manner that has not been replicated by many of Africa's black citizens notwithstanding the prejudice against Jews.

If Jewish people could rise above the challenges of the time and end up as respectable British citizens on the back of African resources, why is it that we have not seen the level of activity and entrepreneurship of the order that obtained in the first generation of post-diamond discovery in South Africa.

The non-South African born black Africans are as disliked as the Jewish people were but the difference is that the Jewish entrepreneurs were of a different kind.

They integrated themselves into the dominant culture and proved to be indispensable to the colonial project.

Even the Queen had to recognize their contribution to the Empire.

Africans of Jewish heritage have been in South Africa for the last 122 years and yet their contribution to African heritage is yet to be fully exposed and told.

Did you know for instance that of the 94 mayors of Johannesburg since its formation on 20 September 1886, 22 of them were Jewish?

Through civic, state and other activities, Jewish people became part of the African story.

Although in the diaspora, they refused to regard themselves as foreigners in their adopted home unlike many foreign born South African black citizens who refuse to be the change they want to see in South Africa.

They are conspicuous in their absence in the state and non-state organizations preferring to define themselves as second-class citizens whose rights are only relevant in their countries of birth.

What do we learn from the experiences of the Albu brothers? We learn that there is nothing inevitable in human life. Anything is possible. There harder one works the luckier one can become. If Leopold could do it surely our generation can do better.