Bill Freund. Twentieth-Century South Africa

Bill Freund, one of the grandmasters of South African economic historiography, has once again produced a piece of breathtaking analytical insight and focus. Twentieth-Century South Africa: A Developmental History is crafted around the historical origins of industrialization broadly, and the manufacturing industry in particular, in South Africa. Freund’s work is injected with a particular political focus, reminding the reader that context, political contestation, and individuals all matter a great deal in our understanding of the process of economic development. The book is timely in South Africa, as the country has emerged from a period of state capture of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Freund meticulously describes how these SOEs were formed and molded by key individuals and commissions of inquiries—thus serving as instruments of South Africa’s early industrialization. The origins of the Electricity Supply Commission (ESCOM, today’s much-troubled energy regulator, renamed ESKOM), the Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa (ISCOR), and South African Synthetic Oil Limited (SASOL, the modern-day chemicals multinational) are all carefully laid out. The central thesis is that these state-managed companies, or parastatals, served as vital domestic providers of energy and basic materials to the country’s bourgeoning mining industry. The role played by Hendrik Johannes van der Bijl, Jan Christiaan Smuts’s early economic advisor, in pivoting both ESCOM and ISCOR into key revenue generators was instructive. Freund reminds the reader of the role played by entrepreneurs (although he does not specifically use the word) such as Sammy Marks, David Graaff, and Philip Frame in shaping the early manufacturing base of South Africa. The origins of ESCOM in particular illustrate how party political aims and the pursuit of economic development served to elevate the SOE from a supplier of energy to the mines to one oriented specifically to “the growth of heavy industry as a national grid” (67).

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