This chapter and the following three chapters are devoted to the economic history of South Africa from the end of the Second World War until the transfer of power to the first democratically elected government in 1994. Both government and business embarked on post-war economic development with considerable optimism, and for a time the economy appeared to make excellent progress, aided by a booming world economy and exceptionally favourable conditions for the gold mines. However, even in these good years there were significant underlying problems, and from the early 1970s there was a drastic deterioration in performance. The primary aim of these final chapters is to analyse the background to, and reasons for, this transition from relatively successful growth to the abysmal economic record of the final phase, and to explore the latter's relationship to South Africa's distinctive economic and social system.

In order to set the record before and after the critical turning point in a clear perspective, the present chapter begins with an overview of the whole period from the end of the war to 1994, including a comparison of growth of real GDP per capita in South Africa and a sample of other countries. The following sections outline the apartheid policies of the new National Party government, focusing particularly on those with a direct bearing on the economy, especially the attempts to control urbanization and promote separate development.