Twentieth-Century South Africa
A Developmental History

This unique history highlights South Africa's complex and dynamic attempt to build a developmental state; an attempt that ultimately faltered.

Bill Freund (Author)

9781108427401, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 October 2018

268 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

'Freund's latest title is an important landmark, showing the transformation of radical scholarship in recent years … [his] is an important book that opens up new fields of urban research.' Timothy Gibbs, The English Historical Review

The twentieth century has brought considerable political, social, and economic change for South Africa. While many would choose to focus only on the issues of race, segregation, and apartheid, this book tries to capture another facet: its drive towards modernisation and industrialisation. While considering the achievements and failures of that drive, as well as how it related to ethnic and racial policy making, Bill Freund makes the economic data come alive by highlighting people and places. He proposes that South Africa in the twentieth century can actually be understood as a nascent developmental state, with economic development acting as a key motivating factor. As a unique history of South Africa in the twentieth century, this will appeal to anyone interested in a new interpretation of modern South African economic development or those in development studies searching for striking historical examples.

1. Twentieth-century South Africa: a developmental history
2. The conflicted foundations of industrial policy
3. Industrial development in South Africa up to World War II – some figures and some business history
4. A (near) developmental state forms 1939–48
5. The impact of Apartheid 1948–73
6. The Parastatals ISCOR and SASOL
7. Key institutions: the IDC, the CSIR, the HSRC
8. The company towns of the Vaal Triangle
9. Energy and the natural environment
10. Developmentalism dismantled.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH]