Overview of sa's economy (1910 -1948)

Activity 3:

To determine the racial composition of mineworkers on the goldmines in 1907

[lo 2.1]

In 1907 only 18% of the 18 600 white mineworkers were not immigrants.

• How many foreign workers were there?
• How many were South Africans?

Activity 4:

To determine the contribution of the three most important economic sectors to the country’s gross interior product

[lo 2.1]

In 1925 the gross domestic product was R537 million (in terms of its value in 1982). Calculate the financial value of each sector’s contribution and write it next to the percentage.

• Agriculture 21%
• Mining 16,2%
• Manufacturing industry 7,8%The government had decided that the manufacturing industry were to expand to provide work for more whites in that area, as the mines offered whites only a limited number of job opportunities. In the early 1920s mining houses started to invest a bigger portion of their profits in the local manufacturing industry.

g) Government enterprises

Hendrik van der Bijl

(1887 – 1948)

Hendrik van der Bijl is regarded as the father of the twentieth century’s industrial revolution in South Africa.

In 1920 gen. Jan Smuts offered him the position as technical consultant, hoping that this brilliant young man would contribute towards industrialisation in South Africa.

From the outset Van der Bijl realised that South Africa would first need an electricity network before industrialisation could be attempted. He wrote the Electricity Act that led to the establishment of the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM) in 1923, which would provide South Africa with a power supply. The assets of the company grew dramatically during Van der Bijl’s lifetime, and increased thirty-fold before his death. In 1948 there were 16 100 people in the company’s service.

Van der Bijl realised that no country could industrialise successfully without having two basic commodities: cheap, accessible electricity and cheap steel. At that stage South Africa depended wholly on imported steel from Britain.

In 1928 the Act on the South African Steel Corporation was passed. Van der Bijl was the first chairman of ISCOR. The first factory was erected outside Pretoria, and a second plant was constructed at Vanderbijlpark in 1945. This concern was founded just before the onset of the Big Depression, and his determination to make the concern a success immediately bore fruit.

Adapted from: Hulle het ons gevorm. Kaapstad, Human&Rousseau (pp.334-338).Article by Pieter Kapp.

h) The government under the Nationalist Party

The policy of “civilised labour”

The Nationalist Party came into power in 1929. The government wanted to create jobs for unschooled and semi-schooled workers, even at the cost of other white workers.

The government made a difference between two kinds of labour:

There were those who rendered “civilised labour” and whose earnings would enable them to maintain a decent standard of living.

As opposed to that, there was “uncivilised” labour, rendered almost exclusively by black workers, and whose wages would only provide for the needs of “barbaric and underdeveloped persons”.