added
importance from recent events. The announcement of withdrawal by the
Union of South Africa is in itself a sufficiently dramatic and
disturbing phenomenon, but it is, of course, only part of a much wider
movement, which in the end will revolutionize, for good or for evil,
the relations between Africa and the rest of the world, and will
profoundly modify the internal structure of Africa itself, though
internal and external changes are, in fact, vitally connected with one
another, as must be the case with all under-developed and developing
areas. Given the relative immunity from social unrest and political
interference, the tasks of the past were, first, the subjugation of the
physical environment and, secondly, the progressive improvement of the
productive machine and of the standard of living. So far as Southern
Africa is concerned, the pioneering stage is over; Ernest Oppenhcimer's
generation was more concerned with the integration of Southern Africa
into the world economy and with a change of scale. Economic progress
remains a problem for the future also; but the new environ-
prime
objective of which is the encouragement of the study of international
affairs in South Africa. He financed the Institute of Portuguese
Studies at Witwatcrsrand University, which appropriately carries his
name. When he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford on 16
October 1952, the Public Orator while, naturally, referring to his
contribution to the building up of South African economic life, to his
political activities and the 'services rendered by him in peace and war
alike to the British Commonwealth as a whole', stressed his
humanitarian endeavours and his encouragement of medical research:
'It
is more important to mention his humane spirit in providing for the
health and general welfare of miners and his munificence in endowing
the study of surgery, engineering and history at certain South African
universities.
'Least
of all should I fail to record his acts of generosity, first in making
it possible for medical specialists from Oxford to visit Africa in an
advisory capacity, and then in undertaking to establish there, in two
different places, centres for tubercular research.'
(The
writer has to thank Mr. T. F. Higham, then Public Orator of the
University of Oxford, for furnishing a copy of the Latin and the
English texts of his speech.)
The
Universities of Cape Town, Witwatcrsrand and Natal had all conferred
honorary doctorates upon him; he was about to receive an honorary
doctorate from the University of Leeds when death intervened. In
October 1955 a grant of ,£100,000, to be spread over eight years, had
been made to Leeds University by the Anglo American Corporation, for
the establishment of an Institute of African Geology.
On
28 May 1953 the London Institution of Mining and Metallurgy presented
the gold medal of the institution —'the highest honour within the power
of the council to bestow' —to Ernest Oppenhcimer (in absentia). Mr.
Vernon Harbord, the retiring president, in asking the late Mr. A.
Comar Wilson to accept the medal on Ernest Oppcn-heimcr's behalf, said inter alia that:
'Most
of those present were aware that copper companies in the Anglo American
Corporation group had during the past three or four years sponsored at
Cambridge a research project into the fundamental sciences underlying
mineral separation processes, and Sir Ernest had been instrumental in
creating a permanent foundation known as the Rhokana Unit, the new
Ernest Oppenheimer Laboratory of the Department of Colloid Science
being named after him' (62 Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, p. 494).
