5 - The Commonwealth of Knowledge, 1930–48

Summary

Under Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog (1924–1939), the state became increasingly central to scientific research and industrialisation. Hendrik van der Bijl and H. J. Van Eck developed national power supply through the state electricity commission (Escom) and used the Industrial Development Council to fund state-led enterprises. State officials and scientists devoted themselves to environmental issues from soil erosion to irrigation, invasive plants and vermin eradication. With Jan Smuts back in power in the war years, competing ‘worlds of possibilities’ emerged in political and scientific imaginations: Anglophone and liberal constituencies looked forward to reforms and postwar reconstruction; the African National Congress focussed on social progress, welfare and human rights for all; Afrikaner nationalists began to envisage an alternative utopia of republican independence and apartheid. The promise of science in helping to deliver these outcomes was expressed by all three political traditions. Improved economic prospects, fuelled by the expansion of gold mining, encouraged urbanisation, state planning, industrial development and social welfare. Science became an arm of an increasingly interventionist state, planning for national postwar reconstruction that envisaged less rigid racial divisions and promised conservation and development in African areas.