South Africa

J

2

Literature

South Africa has three main literary traditions, in the English, Afrikaans, and Bantu languages. A specifically South African literature in English had its beginning with the publication in 1883 of The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner. Later writers in English who dealt with the South African land and peoples, and in particular with the country’s political problems, include the novelists Laurens van der Post and Alan Paton; the short-story writer and novelist Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature; and the playwright Athol Fugard. Poetry is represented by such names as Roy Campbell, F. T. Prince, and Roy McNab.

Afrikaans has proved particularly fruitful as a medium of poetry. It reached its mature expression in the 1930s with such poets as N. P. van Wyk Louw, Uys Krige, and Elisabeth Eybers. Also of note are the poet, dramatist, and critic D. J. Opperman and the poet Breyten Breytenbach, an outspoken foe of the oppressive policies of the former white minority government. Among Afrikaaner novelists are Étienne Leroux and André Brink. J. M. Coetzee, twice winner of the Booker Prize, is another opponent of apartheid.

Black South Africans have a long and rich oral tradition. With the coming of white settlers traditional themes were given written expression, and in recent years numbers of black writers have made significant contributions to South African literature in the major languages of Sesotho, Xhosa, and Zulu as well as in Afrikaans and English. Among the leading 20th-century black writers are Thomas Mofolo, B. W. Vilakazi, J. R. Jolobe, Bloke Modisane, Alex La Guma, Mongane Wally Serote, Njabulo Ndebele, and Es’kia Mphahlele. See African Literature.

IV

Economy

South Africa has Africa’s largest, most diversified, and most developed economy. Its gross national product in 2004 was about US$165 billion, equivalent to US$5,390 per capita.

Until World War I the South African economy was based principally on mining (especially of diamonds and gold) and agriculture. Since then, however, and particularly since World War II ended in 1945, manufacturing has developed rapidly, and is now the leading sector of the country’s economy. Another area that has expanded fast is financial services—the country has the most developed financial sector in sub-Saharan Africa. The estimated national budget for 2006 included revenue of about US$81.20 billion and expenditure of about US$77.50 billion. Economic developments in the 1990s were driven largely by the new government’s attempts to improve living conditions for the black population, to increase exports, and to reduce the extremely high levels of unemployment. The economy in recent years has absorbed less than 5 per cent of the more than 300,000 workers entering the workforce every year. In 2006, 8.40 million tourists visited South Africa and spent an estimated US$3,377 million.

A

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

Limited rainfall and infertile soils restrict the areas in South Africa suitable for crop-raising. As a result, about 87 per cent of farmland is devoted to raising livestock, particularly sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and poultry. Large areas in the commercial arable sector are irrigated, and the country produces almost all the food crops it needs, except in the worst drought years. However, the country is well known for the high quality of its fruit crops. Whites generally operate large, commercial farms; most blacks, struggling with poor land, have small farms and still use traditional, often only marginally productive, methods—in no small part because access to modern methods has been denied them.

Black farmers have minimal access to agricultural credit, to extension (training) facilities, or to a market system in which to sell their crops. South Africa’s estimated annual agricultural output includes a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. In 2006 it included (in tonnes) sugar cane, 20.3 million; maize, 6.94 million; potatoes, 1.86 million; wheat, 2.10 million; grapes, 2 million; and sorghum, 96,000. Other crops include sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, and barley. Livestock included an estimated 25 million sheep, 13.8 million cattle, 6.40 million goats, 1.62 million pigs, and 127 million chickens and other poultry.

South Africa has some 9 million hectares (23 million acres) of forested land. Of this, approximately 1.3 million hectares (3.1 million acres) is commercial forest. Timber production comes largely from stands of pine, eucalyptus, and wattle planted under the state forestation programme. Bark from the wattle tree, used in tanning, is an important export. The annual timber harvest in 2006 was 30.1 (2006) million cu m (1,062 million cu ft). Sawnwood production in 1997 totalled 2.09 million cubic m (73.8 million cu ft), while plywood production amounted to 38,300 cu m (1,352,552 cu ft).

Coastal fishing, for both domestic and foreign markets, is an important industry. Much of the catch is processed into fish meal. In 2005 the annual fish catch was about 830,369 tonnes. Anchovy are among the most important fish caught; other species include hake, pilchard, herring, snoek, and mackerel.

B

Mining

The mining industry has been a dominant sector of the South African economy since the late 19th century, when large-scale gold and diamond production began. In the late 1990s leading products of South Africa’s mines included gold, coal, platinum, iron ore, diamonds, chromium, manganese, vanadium, vermiculite, antimony, limestone, asbestos, fluorspar, uranium, copper, lead, silver, and zinc. The country has no known major deposits of petroleum, but large amounts of oil are produced synthetically from coal-to-oil plants, established during the apartheid era.

C

Manufacturing

Prior to World War II manufacturing was of less importance than mining or agriculture. During and after World War II a substantial expansion of manufacturing took place, and in the early 1990s this sector of the economy contributed an estimated 25 per cent of the gross domestic product; in 2006, 18 per cent. Most of the capital for this expansion was from private sources, both domestic and foreign, but the government also played a key role. The pressures caused by international sanctions, plus traditional suspicion between the Afrikaner government and the English-dominated industrial sector, encouraged the former to take a large direct stake in the economy, through state corporations. Many of these are now being privatized.

The new government, which is dominated by the African National Congress (ANC), has maintained a mixed economy. Leading manufactured products of South Africa include chemicals, petroleum and coal products, tobacco, wine, processed food and beverages, transport equipment, iron and steel, metal products, machinery, paper, and textiles. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, and Port Elizabeth are leading manufacturing centres.