Urban Foundation

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Urban Foundation was set up in 1977 by Anglo American's Harry Oppenheimer and Anton Rupert, who served as the groups founding chair and vice chair respectively. [1] The Foundation closed in 1995. Another of it's founder was Clive S. Menell. [2]

Patrick Bond writes that: "The agents most responsible for introducing the late-apartheid regime's neoliberal housing policy were a group of academics, advocates and deal-makers located within and around the Urban Foundation (UF), the privately-funded think-tank and housing developer set up by the Anglo American Corporation in the immediate wake of the 1976 Soweto riots." He adds that despite their "untiring... search for minor palliatives for apartheid" one of UF's subsequent "leading" strategists, Jeff McCarthy, was "formerly the leading urban marxist scholar in South Africa." Another formerly radical (Communist) scholar who 'during the 1980s... focused on the crafty goal of making neoliberal African economic policies appear to be 'homegrown'" was Geoffrey Lamb (now with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), who while undergoing his political reorientation in England along with another former Communist Party ideologue, Thabo Mbeki. [3]

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References

  1. W.P. Esterhuyse, Anton Rupert: Advocate of Hope (Tafelberg, 1986), p.69.
  2. Clive S. Menell, 65, Mining Executive In South Africa, NYT, accessed January 13, 2011.
  3. Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (Pluto Press, 2000), p.95, pp.97-8, pp.123-4.