Crime and Total Institutions in the Making of Modern South Africa: the life of ‘Nongoloza’ Mathebula 1867–1948

Abstract

Modern South Africa's industrial achievements are often pointed to with considerable pride sometimes by outsiders, but more frequently by insiders. Viewed from the commanding heights of our financial institutions there is, no doubt, considerable justification for this sense of achievement. A country which in 1981 had a gross national product of approximately 70,000 million Rand, and a wage bill of close on 35,000 million Rand is indeed, as the Official Yearbook of the Republic of South Africa recently put it; 'the economic workshop of the African Continent'. I Yet common sense as much as class analysis would lead one to expect that the view from lower down from the mine compounds, the black townships and the urban slums would be rather more critical. That there should be these two different perspectives is hardly surprising. More interesting, is the fact that until comparatively recently historians have tended to pay greater attention to the measured tones of pride that have floated down from on high, than to the shriller voices of criticism that have arisen from below when attempting to assess the nature of South Africa's economic achievement. This, in turn, has helped to give rise to an imbalance in our historiography which has charted the benefits of economic progress with considerably more enthusiasm than it has recorded the undoubted cost of industrialisation. After the mineral discoveries of the 19th century, southern Africa underwent