For the first three months of the Ruperts’ marriage they lived with Huberte’s mother and stepfather in Krugersdorp before moving to Johannesburg where they rented a furnished flat in Joubert Park at fifteen guineas per month, half Rupert’s salary. Later they moved to 59 Auckland Avenue, a suburban house in Auckland Park, where they stayed until their move to Stellenbosch in 1946.
At one stage the couple shared the flat with Rupert’s younger brother Jan, then a clerk with a law firm in the city. The commercial artist Kobus Esterhuysen, from whom TIB rented an office, also moved in for a while − he had to sleep on the balcony. Esterhuysen, the brother of Joubero Malherbe, grande dame of the South African music world, was the designer of the country’s bank notes and also did freelance work for Voorbrand.
The office Rupert rented from Esterhuysen had only the most basic furniture and no telephone. When AGMs were held, chairs had to be borrowed to seat everybody. During the first year there was no money for directors’ fees or salaries. Huberte was for a long time the unpaid secretary, typist, clerk and messenger. Rupert’s principle was: ‘As long as we don’t have our own capital, we have to avoid costs.’ Huberte was a thrifty housekeeper and for many years made her own clothes − later their children’s as well until Hanneli was five years old. But as children of the Depression, they did not mind living frugally. ‘We knew that where one lives has nothing to do with the quality of one’s life,’ she said about those early days.1 ‘What did worry us, however, was that Anton should make something that produced no profit.’
Huberte saw her role as that of Anton’s helpmeet, companion and sounding board. ‘When he had a problem, he’d tell me about it. I’d listen and then he’d go out and solve it. The main thing was, I was in it with him. I learned the business from the inside.’
In the stimulating atmosphere of Johannesburg her life was a buzz of friends from different walks of life, entertaining Rupert’s business associates and − in between spells of unpaid office work − a job as secretary at a girls’ high school, Hoër Meisieskool Helpmekaar, and freelance work for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
Huberte was to maintain her close involvement in Rupert’s business enterprises over decades. At an early stage in Johannesburg she was offered a position at Voortrekkerpers at a salary higher than that of her husband’s. She declined the offer, however, ‘because I had to work for Anton for free, and I knew their set-up. But everything one accomplished was an adventure.’
TIB was registered on 16 March 1943 and would eventually develop into a company with diversified interests in tobacco, liquor, coal mines, wool brokers, tea and coffee. Contrary to what is sometimes told in business circles, Rupert already started to diversify at a very early stage in his career.
The entry of Rupert and his partners into the liquor market − the second depression-proof product − was prompted by the rather poor performance of Voorbrand as a result of wartime constraints and, perhaps, over-reliance on Afrikaner sentiment. Rupert realised that the highly competitive tobacco industry would not give them enough of a foothold in industry. They had to look wider, also southwards.
In September 1943 he and one of his co-directors, Coenie (Oupa) Kriel, started making inquiries. In October they travelled to Paarl in the Western Cape where they met Canzius Pretorius, accountant of the Koöperatiewe Wynbouersvereniging (KWV). He advised them that the only way to enter the liquor industry would be to buy a Cape company, Forrer Brothers. With the aid of the company auditor, Roux van der Poel, they negotiated the purchase of a 50% interest for £17 500.
In the north of the country money for capital expansion was scarce on account of the failure of institutions such as Kopersbond and Spoorbondkas. Rupert therefore started selling five-shilling shares to the more established, wealthier community in the Western Cape, notably the wine and export grape farmers, who would become the mainstay of his business empire. His investors were all Afrikaners; nobody else was interested.
De Wet Theron of the farm Montpellier near Tulbagh, who had previously been a wine expert at the KWV where his father, Hennie, was chairman, assisted Rupert in his recruitment drive. Among the earliest investors who put their trust in Rupert were Frank le Roux and Paul Roux of Paarl, founders of the KWV.
Rupert had to divide his time between business interests in Johannesburg and Cape Town, a thousand miles to the south. For three years he commuted, mainly by rail. In one year he spent 63 nights − more than two months − on bunks in train compartments. He had sold his little DKW after a shop owner in Linden, Johannesburg, studying the battered jalopy, observed: ‘Rupert, I won’t be able to do business with you.’ Eventually he replaced it with a second-hand Studebaker. But by then he had crisscrossed the winelands in the DKW in the company of De Wet Theron, selling shares to leading farmers in those fertile valleys.
In early 1944 the outstanding debt on the purchase price of the Forrer Brothers’ company still stood at £9 000, money Rupert did not have. This was not an unusual situation for an entrepreneur; contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs are often not people who start off with ample supplies of money or have access to big capital. They are rather enterprising individuals who spot opportunities and strive passionately to exploit them. Nevertheless, times were hard at a stage that Huberte has described as a ‘dark period’ in their lives.
On 29 January 1944 the Ruperts were in Cape Town when they learned that Anton’s mother had died the previous night at a hospital in Port Elizabeth, where she was due to have a heart operation. She was only 50. They left for Graaff-Reinet immediately. Fuel was rationed and they had no coupons left. At Oudtshoorn Jurgens Schoeman, a businessman and farmer who was one of Rupert’s directors, filled their tank and they managed to reach Graaff-Reinet in time for the funeral. On the way they stopped for a while so Huberte could, as she put it, ‘finish crying’: she had loved her mother-in-law dearly, describing her as ‘a lovely woman’. They also discussed what to do about Rupert’s youngest brother Koos, then only fourteen. The moment they arrived in Graaff-Reinet, Koos hugged Huberte and asked: ‘You’re taking me with you, aren’t you?’ Huberte reassured him. He would come to live with them. After the funeral Rupert returned to Cape Town to attend to unfinished business. Huberte stayed behind to make the necessary arrangements for her and Koos’s departure for Johannesburg.
A few days after his mother’s funeral Rupert was booking into a hotel in Paarl when a report in the afternoon newspaper caught his eye: his good friend and staunch supporter Jan de Kock of MTKV had died tragically. He and the chairman of MTKV were crossing a flooded low-level bridge when their car was swept away by the torrent and they had both drowned. De Kock was the one who had shown such confidence in Rupert’s unproven ability when Voorbrand was founded. To Rupert this was a double blow, losing both his mother and one of his best friends in the space of week.
Less tragic but nonetheless distressing was the news soon afterwards that his accountant and friend Daan Hoogenhout was resigning from Voorbrand to go farming in Botswana. That venture folded after a year and Daan returned to the fold, this time as accountant of the latest venture, Distillers Corporation. In 1948 he was to return to the tobacco group.
But 1944 started badly for Rupert. And he still had to find the £9 000 to pay the Forrer Brothers. The day in March when the money was due Rupert addressed a group of wine farmers at De Doorns in the Hex River valley, known for its export grapes. ‘I showed them a few labels for wine bottles and sold them my ideas. I sold them a dream,’ he said afterwards.2 His dream earned £11 000 in TIB shares within a couple of hours. It was one of the closest shaves of his career up to then. He drove back to Cape Town via Wellington and Bainskloof − the Du Toits Kloof Pass had not yet been built – and before closing time the money was in the bank. That evening he made his first long-distance call ever to Huberte to share the glad news. She treasured the memory, a memento of comradeship.
Rupert,