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11 - The Economy and Poverty in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

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.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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