After Oppenheimer had heard that diamonds were discovered in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in 1908, he feared this would lead to a significant decrease of the price of diamond. After WW1, he formed the Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa in 1919 and gradually built himself a monopoly that equaled that of Rhodes in the Cape Colony.
Oppenheimer then offered Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa to De Beers in exchange for a hefty amount of De Beers stock and a seat on the board of directors. As soon as the deal was finished, he and his family bought all the stock of De Beers they could find.
In 1929, Oppenheimer was elected as chairman and became the most powerful man in the diamond industry. Oppenheimer continued to apply the single channel marketing structure originally implemented by Rhodes and formed the Central Selling Organisation (CSO) by incorporating other major sellers and producers into De Beer’s syndicate. When pressuring companies to join their cartel didn’t work, De Beers used all sorts of illegal and immoral tactics to either destroy their opponents or make them change their minds.
When Oppenheimer died in 1957, his son Harry took over de role of chairman. He continued the strategies of his father and signed an agreement with the Sovjets in 1959 to purchase their diamonds that were being mined in Yakutia. In 1939 he initiated the marketing campaign for diamonds in the US that helped expand the marked for diamonds to middle class Americans who had previously believed that diamonds were only for the extremely rich.
Harry Oppenheimer also contributed generously to the official philanthropies of the State of Israel. He personally directed that Israel receive the necessary diamond raw products from De Beers in order to establish itself as one of the world’s diamond polishing and exporting countries. In the 1970s and 1980s, he financed the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party, that later merged into the Democratic Alliance.
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