Bill Freund, a prolific economic historian of (South) Africa, has written an insightful and precise historical analysis of South African economic development in the late colonial and apartheid periods, roughly 1910–1990. The book will be a must-read for those interested in the role that economic policy and state-led development has played in shaping the South Africa economy, both in the 20th century and beyond. The text is remarkably accessible, makes for enjoyable reading, and carries implications for our understanding of contemporary South African political economy.

The text will probably be seen as somewhat controversial. By Freund's own reckoning, he has set out to write an economic history of South Africa that deliberately sets aside – as much as possible – the role of racism and institutionalised race-based demographic planning. Instead, his explicit focus is on the connections between the state and the economy, or what, he argues, is the tumultuous history of South Africa's ‘developmental state’.

It is difficult to do justice to such a detailed historical analysis in only a few hundred words, but I will note a few major insights that the book delivers. The core idea, quite artfully spelled out in the Introduction, is that South African economic history from 1910 to 1990 can be re-understood as the history of a racially exclusionary developmental state. That is, white South Africans explicitly used the state, and coordinated state-business relationships, to lead industrialisation and development, albeit with a very specific racial agenda. While this trajectory was not linear or simple, the developmental state was quite successful in achieving sustained economic growth for white people. While most tellings of modern South African history focus (rightly) on the brutal theft and extraction that white people visited upon black, coloured, Indian, and Asian people, Freund argues that it is also worth considering this history as the exclusion from economic development of those same people – in other words, a history of exclusionary economic development.

This argument serves as an important counterpoint to contemporary social and political narratives in South Africa that tend to obscure economic history in favour of exclusively racial history. Given that South Africa's economy is one of the largest and most productive on the continent, and that contemporary public policy is heavily oriented around encouraging broad-based economic growth with little success, this feels like an important, albeit controversial, contribution. To make this contribution, Freund uses extensive archival evidence to extend prior accounts of the country's historical political-economy, sometimes re-focusing these arguments through the lens of the ‘developmental state’, sometimes deepening them empirically. The book also serves as a useful corrective to common understandings of apartheid's demise that focus on sanctions and international pressure; instead Freund deepens our understanding of the toll that contradictory economic and demographic policy took on economic growth, and the role that played in the regime's collapse.

The book follows three historical ‘trajectories’ over the course of the 20th century. The first focuses on the unstable period of 1910–1939, when state-led industrialisation began to occur with intensity, often aided and abetted by tariffs and protectionism. Yet, in part due to conflicts within the Pact Government led by Barry Herzog, state intervention was limited in scope and impact, and was heavily focused on employing white labour. By the start of the Second World War, South Africa's was a gold-exporting economy, with industrialisation largely confined to small sections of the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

The second trajectory occurs in the brief but important period of 1939–1948, covering Jan Smuts’ second term as Prime Minister. In this period, Freund argues, the foundations for a true developmental state were laid: the further development and expansion of pre-existing, partially state-owned enterprises (‘parastatals’ in South African parlance), an attempt to diversify away from gold-reliance, and a heavy focus on nationalised energy production for large-scale industrialisation.

The third trajectory – what Freund calls the ‘apartheid trajectory’ – is one of contradiction, the contradiction at the heart of South Africa: the tension between a modern economy and demographic segregation. For Freund, the twin imperatives of racial domination and the white-centric developmental state could not survive their contradictions. In the late 1970s, the state moved to physically segregate capital in the peripheries of South Africa (the ‘Bantustans’), while simultaneously investing heavily in militarisation. Combined with a Reserve Bank that kept inflation low, Freund argues, opportunities for state-led growth dwindled, ultimately resulting in the economic downturn that heralded the end of apartheid.

There is much more to the book than detailed here, both in theory and detailed empirical history. But the message is clear: South Africa's history has always been one of state intervention in the economy, and it remains so today. But the contradictions implied by the history of profound racism and structural segregation have meant, and continue to mean, that that development is highly unequal.