The Economy and Poverty in the Twentieth Century

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521869836.013

11 - The Economy and Poverty in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2011

Nicoli Nattrass and

Edited by

Anne Kelk Mager and

Nicoli Nattrass: Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Jeremy Seekings: Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Robert Ross: Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Anne Kelk Mager: Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Bill Nasson: Affiliation:
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

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Summary

The South African economy experienced substantial growth and change over the twentieth century. By the time of Union in 1910, gold mining on the Witwatersrand had already and rapidly transformed what had been a peripheral agricultural economy into one that was industrialising around mineral exports. Gold attracted British capital and immigrants from Europe (as well as from across southern Africa), and made possible secondary industrialisation and four decades of sustained economic growth in the middle of the century. Between the early 1930s and early 1970s, the South African economy grew approximately tenfold in real terms. Even taking into account the steady increase in the population, real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita tripled (see Figure 11.1). Despite faltering growth in the 1980s, South Africa accounted for almost exactly one half of the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa at the end of the apartheid period, in 1994.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of South Africa , pp. 518 - 572

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521869836.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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11 - The Economy and Poverty in the Twentieth Century

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