Urban Foundation

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. The Foundation closed in 1995. Another of it's founder was Clive S. Menell.

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.

Related Sourcewatch

 * Ann Bernstein - executive director (1989-1995)
 * Benedict van der Ross - former executive director (late 1980s)
 * Julian Ogilvie Thompson - vice chair
 * Irene Menell
 * Brian Whittaker - former executive director
 * Vuka Eliakim Maswazi Tshabalala
 * Mike Rosholt - former chair
 * Johann Kriegler
 * Jan Steyn, former chair