Chris Saunders: Ruled SA sugar for decades 1929-2020
Chris Saunders, who has died in Durban at the age of 90, was the first chair of Tongaat Hulett and dominated the South African sugar industry for the best part of 40 years.
He played a leading role in the hostile takeover of Huletts Sugar Company in 1962 by Tongaat, the company he inherited from his father.
For the next 20 years he was chair of both companies.
He drove a strategy of diversification, which led to a considerable widening of the companies’ horizons beyond their primary interests of growing and manufacturing sugar.
They merged in 1982 and Saunders became chair of Tongaat Hulett, making it one of the country’s most recognisable blue-chip stocks. He retired in 2000.
Saunders, who died on October 17, was born in Durban on October 20 1929. His great grandfather James settled in Natal in 1854 after an unsuccessful foray into the sugar trade in Mauritius.
After managing Tongaat on behalf of a syndicate of London and Cape Town speculators, he became the owner.
To ensure cheap labour for his burgeoning sugar estate, James, known as the “Tongaat Slasher” because of his fiery temperament, introduced indentured labourers from India.
Rugby blue
After attending Hilton College, Saunders completed a BA in social science, with political philosophy, sociology, chemistry, business administration and Xhosa among his subjects.
He then read for his MA in agricultural economics at Christ Church, Oxford. He played first-team rugby at fullback for Oxford — which he on occasion captained — and for the Barbarians and Natal.
After Oxford he worked for a shipping company in the US before returning to SA, where he had no real desire to join the family firm.
In 1954 he succumbed to pressure and spent a year working in the pressing sheds and with the machines on the estate.
When he was 28 his father Douglas made him MD. Within a year he was chair of the Sugar Association.
He subsequently became chair of the South African Sugar Millers’ Association as well, which entrenched his position as the dominant player in the local sugar industry.
In 1961, after SA withdrew from the Commonwealth, Saunders was involved in delicate negotiations to secure the new republic’s vital sugar markets on the lapse of existing agreements.
He played a major role in the seven-strong Tongaat-led consortium that in 1962 took over Tongaat’s rival Huletts after a fierce battle.
“SUGAR WAR ENDS IN WIN FOR THE SEVEN” ran the headline on the front page of the Natal Mercury on November 8 1962.
In spite of announcing at a press conference that there would be “as little interference as possible with the management of Huletts”, the consortium immediately gave Huletts chair Guy Hulett his marching orders, along with his board.
In 1963 Saunders succeeded his father as chair of Tongaat and Huletts.
Under his leadership the two companies diversified in the early ’60s.
Tongaat grew from being one of several Natal sugar fiefdoms into the Tongaat Group, embracing property development, building materials, transport, electrical engineering and electronics, food production, animal feeds and textiles.
At the same time Saunders was the architect of Huletts’ diversification beyond sugar into paper, timber, engineering, a major foreign investment division and aluminium, with its acquisition in 1973 of a majority shareholding in the South African interests of the huge Aluminium Company of Canada, Alcan.
Tongaat already controlled Corobrik and this move complemented its interests in the building industry.
Politically, Saunders supported a federal solution for SA.
He sat on the high-level Buthelezi commission established in 1982 to analyse and study possible options for the political, economic, administrative and educational future of a unified KwaZulu-Natal government.
He was chair of the Natal region of the Urban Foundation and a member of president PW Botha’s economic advisory council.
Saunders was a prominent member of the KwaZulu-Natal horse-racing community as a breeder, owner and chair of Gold Circle.
His Invermooi Stud farm in Mooi River was one of the leading thoroughbred nurseries in the country.
White silks
He won the Durban July in 1967 with Jollify, who dead-heated with the famous Sea Cottage, and in 1969 with Naval Escort. His other winners included Embassy, Raise A Raucus and Point with Pride.
The famous UK jockey Lester Piggott raced in his colours — white silks with red stars and cap.
Saunders died after a long illness and was unaware of the corporate scandal that has engulfed Tongaat Hulett.
He is survived by three children. His wife Pam (née Butcher), a member of another prominent family in the sugar business, who he married in 1955, died in January this year at the age of 91.