XXᵉ siècle – XXᵉ siècle
Southern Africa
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Southern Africa, as defined in this extract, comprised South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland, while remaining closely connected to Mozambique through language, trade, and migration. During the mid-twentieth century, the region was structured by national boundaries, racial legislation, linguistic divisions, urban-rural separation, and class inequality. South Africa experienced sustained industrialisation after the early 1930s, driven by gold mining, manufacturing, construction, state investment, and rapid urbanisation, while political and economic power remained heavily concentrated among whites.
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The extract defines southern Africa for constitutional purposes as the five-country region of South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland. This political definition was necessarily selective: communities divided by the Namibia–Angola frontier shared languages and customs, while southern Mozambique remained connected to South Africa through trade, language, and long-established migration to the gold mines. The region therefore combined formal borders with older social and economic networks that crossed them.
Historical memories differed sharply among the peoples of southern Africa. Africans remembered conquest, land loss, and restrictive legislation; Herero communities associated German annexation in 1884 with three decades of brutal conquest; and Swazi remembered the alienation of their land to white settlers. In Lesotho, the loss of the Caledon plains was partly balanced by the defensibility of Moshweshwe’s mountain stronghold. Afrikaner nationalists, by contrast, interpreted the Great Trek, Blood River, the Anglo-Boer War, concentration camps, poverty, and British anglicisation as a sacred history of suffering.
The region’s social divisions were reinforced by law and by economic structure. South African legislation such as the Mines and Works Act of 1911, the Land Act of 1913, and the Urban Areas Act of 1923 linked racial classification to access to land, employment, and political power. Language formed another important frontier: Nguni and Sotho languages were widely spoken among Africans, while Afrikaans and English dominated official and many urban settings. The forced use of Afrikaans in schools helped make language a central political issue, culminating in the Soweto schoolchildren’s revolt of 1976.
After the economic disasters of the early 1930s, South Africa entered a period of sustained expansion. The abandonment of the gold standard by General Hertzog, renewed rainfall, and the rise in the price of gold helped establish four decades of almost uninterrupted growth, with gross national product increasing by approximately five per cent annually. Mining employment expanded rapidly before the Second World War, while manufacturing and construction grew during the war and continued to expand in the post-war decades.
Gold remained central to the economy, but the mineral base diversified. The richest gold ore yet found in South Africa was struck at Geduld in the Orange Free State in 1946; between 1951 and 1969, gold output nearly trebled. After employment in the gold mines peaked in 1961, platinum and other minerals partly offset the decline, while diamonds remained important for employment and foreign exchange. Coal acquired increasing economic and strategic significance after the oil-price rise of 1973.
Industrial growth transformed settlement patterns. Population in the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, and Vereeniging rose from 1.2 million in 1936 to 3.7 million in 1970, while South Africa’s urban population increased from 3.0 million to 10.4 million. Migrant workers moved toward the southern Transvaal and the harbour towns linking Cape Town to Maputo, often living in labour compounds or rapidly expanding settlements. Urbanisation was shaped by racial hierarchy: many black workers entered cities without being permitted to bring their families, and districts such as Fordsburg, Sophiatown, and Vrededorp became polyglot points of entry into urban life.
Industrialisation did not dissolve the region’s inequalities. In South Africa, whites constituted approximately one-fifth of the population but received about three-quarters of total income, whereas Africans formed more than two-thirds of the population and received roughly one-fifth. Ownership of private farmland was almost entirely restricted to whites, while black reserves occupied approximately thirteen per cent of the country after 1936 and supported dense populations on limited arable land. Better-paid positions in mining and manufacturing were restricted through legislation, occupational practice, and unequal access to education and training.
The state became increasingly important as employer, producer, and investor. The government-owned iron and steel corporation Iscor produced its first steel in Pretoria in 1934; by 1976 it accounted for more than five million tons, or 77 per cent of national steel production. Public and semi-public employment expanded substantially, and government investment rose from 35 per cent of gross domestic fixed investment in 1950 to 53 per cent in 1976. This intervention accompanied, rather than replaced, a racialised economic order.
XXᵉ siècle – XXᵉ siècle
Southern Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
Southern Africa, as defined in this extract, comprised South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland, while remaining closely connected to Mozambique through language, trade, and migration. During the mid-twentieth century, the region was structured by national boundaries, racial legislation, linguistic divisions, urban-rural separation, and class inequality. South Africa experienced sustained industrialisation after the early 1930s, driven by gold mining, manufacturing, construction, state investment, and rapid urbanisation, while political and economic power remained heavily concentrated among whites.
Poursuivre l’exploration
Le récit
The extract defines southern Africa for constitutional purposes as the five-country region of South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, and Swaziland. This political definition was necessarily selective: communities divided by the Namibia–Angola frontier shared languages and customs, while southern Mozambique remained connected to South Africa through trade, language, and long-established migration to the gold mines. The region therefore combined formal borders with older social and economic networks that crossed them.
Historical memories differed sharply among the peoples of southern Africa. Africans remembered conquest, land loss, and restrictive legislation; Herero communities associated German annexation in 1884 with three decades of brutal conquest; and Swazi remembered the alienation of their land to white settlers. In Lesotho, the loss of the Caledon plains was partly balanced by the defensibility of Moshweshwe’s mountain stronghold. Afrikaner nationalists, by contrast, interpreted the Great Trek, Blood River, the Anglo-Boer War, concentration camps, poverty, and British anglicisation as a sacred history of suffering.
The region’s social divisions were reinforced by law and by economic structure. South African legislation such as the Mines and Works Act of 1911, the Land Act of 1913, and the Urban Areas Act of 1923 linked racial classification to access to land, employment, and political power. Language formed another important frontier: Nguni and Sotho languages were widely spoken among Africans, while Afrikaans and English dominated official and many urban settings. The forced use of Afrikaans in schools helped make language a central political issue, culminating in the Soweto schoolchildren’s revolt of 1976.
After the economic disasters of the early 1930s, South Africa entered a period of sustained expansion. The abandonment of the gold standard by General Hertzog, renewed rainfall, and the rise in the price of gold helped establish four decades of almost uninterrupted growth, with gross national product increasing by approximately five per cent annually. Mining employment expanded rapidly before the Second World War, while manufacturing and construction grew during the war and continued to expand in the post-war decades.
Gold remained central to the economy, but the mineral base diversified. The richest gold ore yet found in South Africa was struck at Geduld in the Orange Free State in 1946; between 1951 and 1969, gold output nearly trebled. After employment in the gold mines peaked in 1961, platinum and other minerals partly offset the decline, while diamonds remained important for employment and foreign exchange. Coal acquired increasing economic and strategic significance after the oil-price rise of 1973.
Industrial growth transformed settlement patterns. Population in the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, and Vereeniging rose from 1.2 million in 1936 to 3.7 million in 1970, while South Africa’s urban population increased from 3.0 million to 10.4 million. Migrant workers moved toward the southern Transvaal and the harbour towns linking Cape Town to Maputo, often living in labour compounds or rapidly expanding settlements. Urbanisation was shaped by racial hierarchy: many black workers entered cities without being permitted to bring their families, and districts such as Fordsburg, Sophiatown, and Vrededorp became polyglot points of entry into urban life.
Industrialisation did not dissolve the region’s inequalities. In South Africa, whites constituted approximately one-fifth of the population but received about three-quarters of total income, whereas Africans formed more than two-thirds of the population and received roughly one-fifth. Ownership of private farmland was almost entirely restricted to whites, while black reserves occupied approximately thirteen per cent of the country after 1936 and supported dense populations on limited arable land. Better-paid positions in mining and manufacturing were restricted through legislation, occupational practice, and unequal access to education and training.
The state became increasingly important as employer, producer, and investor. The government-owned iron and steel corporation Iscor produced its first steel in Pretoria in 1934; by 1976 it accounted for more than five million tons, or 77 per cent of national steel production. Public and semi-public employment expanded substantially, and government investment rose from 35 per cent of gross domestic fixed investment in 1950 to 53 per cent in 1976. This intervention accompanied, rather than replaced, a racialised economic order.