Huberte Rupert often visited the cellar and showed visitors around. At that stage there was no glass factory in the Cape that produced bottles, so they had to avail themselves of used ones. Bottle cleaning was a major operation, conducted just outside the laboratory. It was not a prepossessing spectacle for visitors. So Milton, the gatekeeper, would give a few shrill blasts on a whistle whenever Huberte and her visitors arrived. This was the sign for the bottle-washers to vanish into the cellar, leaving access to the laboratory unobstructed.
Within the company Distillers’ personnel relations attested to Rupert’s personal values. Despite the growing number of employees, he kept his ear close to the ground and shared their well and woe, in a sense honouring the ethos of earlier, more intimate family businesses. Huberte was very much involved in this aspect of her husband’s career.
Soon after he became Distillers’ wine technologist in 1946 Alfred Baumgartner, a German who hailed from Swakopmund in present-day Namibia, was under threat of deportation to Germany as a hostile alien. Awaiting the dreaded deportation order, he and his wife had already sold most of their possessions and kept only their beds and five suitcases. Huberte, deeply moved by their plight, offered to look after their three children and return them to their parents once they had found their feet in war-ravaged Germany. But eventually Baumgartner, father of the Stellenbosch artist Regine Kröger, was not deported and in 1948, when the Malan government took over, the family was granted permanent residence. But the Ruperts’ generous offer earned their lasting gratitude and Baumgartner’s lifelong loyalty to Rembrandt.6
There are many such stories of assistance to employees, such as the case of Annies Breytenbach’s wife Loretta who needed eye treatment that was not available in South Africa at the time; she was sent abroad at the company’s expense. On one occasion a female employee told Huberte that married women were not members of the pension fund. Huberte wasted no time in having the anomaly set right. She and other company wives arranged Christmas parties with presents for staff and their children, and she personally congratulated employees who excelled at sport in any way. Her view was that as empathetic wife of the chief executive she could mean much more to the staff than she would have been able to accomplish as a career woman with an occupation of her own.
In Huberte’s view, Rupert had the ability to inspire people to achieve beyond themselves, based on qualities like integrity, purposefulness and honesty. ‘The people who worked with him all ended up as inspired, better people, intensely loyal. This is what makes a leader; someone who can achieve this. It is not enough to be entrepreneurs with capital in the bank. Without the human material Anton had around him, people he could inspire, he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything.’7
Loyalty would become one of the core concepts of the Rembrandt Group. On the occasion of Rupert’s 80th birthday in 1996, the business journalist David Meades wrote that Rupert gave ‘new meaning’ to the word: ‘It is probably the single strongest building block of his business empire. His people are willing to sacrifice everything for the group.’8
Rupert expressed his own views on character as the most important ingredient of leadership in a lecture given in 1965 that was published in 1967 in his book Leiers oor leierskap (Leaders on leadership). A good manager lives by ‘a code of values that emanates from his ethical and spiritual life’. He singles out loyalty as the quality of character he prizes above all others – ‘the one quality that cannot be bought with money and has to be earned.’
Indeed, Rupert demanded undivided loyalty. For him it began in the family circle. He believed that an unfaithful husband or wife who became disloyal to a marriage partner could also become disloyal towards the group, and how could someone like that be trusted in his or her work? For him, office relationships between married and unmarried staff were a cardinal sin. Everyone in the Rembrandt Group knew that, and a few individuals who transgressed were transferred or went to work elsewhere in the days before the community norms became more accommodating.
Rupert regards loyalty as one of the supreme virtues to such an extent that he relishes an anecdote about himself. Once when he had to handle a difficult situation concerning a colleague, his friend Prof. James Yeats of Stellenbosch told him: ‘Anton, you are too loyal.’ Rupert stood up, walked round his desk and shook Yeats‘s hand: ‘Thank you, Jamie, thank you; it is the biggest compliment you could have given me.’
When married staff of Rembrandt had to go overseas on business their spouses often accompanied them. This was at Huberte’s insistence. She felt strongly that neither partner’s personal development should lag behind: they should share mind-broadening experiences and build their marriages on a basis of equality, with successful marriages also being an asset to the group. When Johann Rupert took over the reins of Rembrandt he continued the policy.
The Ruperts’ humane empathy ensured a committed workforce. In 1997 their son Johann, testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, could claim a staff turnover of only two percent over more than 50 years.9
Loyalty was one of the factors that helped Distillers as well as the later Rembrandt to go from strength to strength. Another contributing factor to his business success was Rupert’s ability to be ahead of his competitors as far as scientific innovation was concerned. A trained scientist himself, he constantly exploited new technologies as they became available.
Distillers’ first technical manager, the Berlin-trained perfectionist Gerhard Schröder, quickly established a laboratory despite the rather primitive conditions. Schröder left most of the laboratory work to Alfred Baumgartner, who had obtained his doctorate in plant physiology summa cum laude at the University of Freiburg. In Baumgartner’s opinion Rupert could not have had anyone better than Schröder: ‘Gerd Schröder was married to Distillers. He never rested until a task had been completed to perfection and he was always prepared to be on duty at any hour, night or day.’10
As early as 1947 Schröder ordered from France the equipment needed to launch the only modern, fully automated sparkling-wine cellar in the country. Four kinds of sparkling wine were produced under the brand name La Residence.
In 1951, when Rupert first heard about cold or ‘controlled’ fermentation, a process devised by the German Wilhelm Geiss in California, Distillers immediately ordered four high-pressure tanks from Germany. With state-of-the-art equipment and stringent quality control they were able to produce wines of standardised, predictable quality for the mass market. Popular brands like Grünberger Stein with its distinctive flagon (modelled on the Bocksbeutel used by the Franks in Germany) and Kupferberger Auslese are still top sellers today.
As in the case of tobacco, Rupert initially marketed a wide range of brands to suit all tastes. Some were competing with each other, a technique he often followed since it kept everyone in the group on their toes. In the end, however, they reduced the number of brands, concentrating on the top sellers − household names like Oude Meester and Richelieu brandy, Old Master medium sherry, Theuniskraal Riesling and Stellenheimer Rooderust, La Residence sparkling wine and liqueurs like Van der Hum and Amarula.11
While a success story was unfolding in the liquor industry, the dramatic expansion of Rupert’s tobacco empire as well as a controversial beer war lay ahead.
Chapter 7
Rembrandt: birth of a masterpiece
Rupert’s study of world markets as well as his own observations during the Depression had convinced him that ‘tobacco and liquor had the best growth potential because I noticed during the depression of the Thirties that people didn’t smoke less and, if anything, they probably drank more’.1 Undaunted by the unsuccessful attempts of Voorbrand to produce cigarettes for this lucrative market, he persisted in pursuing his dream of manufacturing cigarettes. The Rembrandt Tabakvervaardigingskorporasie van Suid-Afrika Beperk (Rembrandt Tobacco Manufacturing Corporation of South Africa Limited), in which Voorbrand was taken up, was founded in 1946. As a whole the group concentrated on tobacco and liquor because of the growth potential Rupert saw in these markets, but also because the first shareholders were mainly wine and tobacco farmers.
In