Economic history was at one time a thriving discipline in South Africa. A number of distinguished scholars—including W. M. McMillan, C. W. de Kiewiet, H. M. Robertson, and Francis Wilson—published stimulating studies investigating and explaining the character and causes of the country's economic growth. But in recent decades there has been a persistent decline, to the point where none of the leading universities now has a chair in economic history, many no longer even offer courses on this subject, and very little original research is being done. The profession was fractured by ill-tempered ideological disputes; scarcely any new recruits are coming in; and the attention of most of those who were at one time engaged in this field has turned to other areas. The editor of this volume, Stuart Jones, is one of the few who have struggled persistently to keep the subject alive, but in a form, and from a perspective, that has not gained many adherents.

The absence of significant new research and analysis is all the more regrettable because so much of interest has occurred in South Africa in the last three decades. From the late nineteenth century, the economy was transformed and driven forward by the development of its vast gold reefs. But the metal is no longer able to play that role; and the output of the South African mines has fallen by over 40 percent since its peak in 1970. It was generally expected that manufacturing would become the new engine of growth, and government policy has assiduously promoted this goal since the 1920s, but the sector proved unable to fulfil this task. By the end of the twentieth century, the rate of growth of real GDP dropped to little more than 1 percent per annum, and real income per head declined to a level 10 percent lower than it had been 25 years earlier. One of the most unfortunate consequences of these trends was a continuous rise in unemployment, and by the late 1990s the number out of work was close to 7,000,000, almost half the potential labor force.

The volume is focused on this period of decline, but its format and method does not really enable it to do justice to the central issues. There are nine substantive chapters, beginning with a useful overall survey of the period 1970–2000, and a concise account of monetary and fiscal policy. There are then five chapters devoted to individual sectors: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transport, and finance, and two to the external account, covering trade and the balance of payments. The editor is responsible for four of the chapters, and also contributes a brief introduction and a closing comment on the situation as he sees it in 2000. The other chapters are all by economists rather than historians.

Apart from Trevor Bell and Nkosi Madula, the approach adopted by all the other authors is very similar, and might be described as descriptive economics. There are brief accounts of the relevant internal and external developments, and of the introduction and application of major government policies, accompanied by numerous tables and a commentary on the data. The chapter by Bell and Madula stands apart because of its more rigorous methodology, and offers an excellent exploration of the reasons for the poor performance of the manufacturing sector, and for its failure to make the required transition from import-substituting to export-orientated industrialization. The volume thus provides much useful information and some interesting explanations for specific developments, but only Bell and Madula approach their subject by formulating hypotheses and attempting to test them in ways that would be familiar to readers of this Journal.

The other significant weakness from the perspective of someone looking for an explanation of why the South African economy has declined are the omissions in the coverage. In particular, the volume lacks a detailed treatment of the critical developments that occurred during these decades in the labor market. These included dramatic shifts in the relative pay of black and white workers, the steady upward mobility of black workers into skilled and semi-skilled occupations previously reserved exclusively for whites by legislation and custom, changes in capital intensity, and the rise in unemployment. One might also suggest that the adverse effects on economic growth of various Apartheid policies, such as the deliberate neglect of investment in human capital for 80 percent of the population, deserve more attention as contributory causes of poor economic performance. Above all, the volume needs a coherent overall analysis to explore in depth what has changed since earlier phases of relatively successful growth, and why the South African economy declined in this latest period.