Dinosaurs, Diamonds & Democracy by Francis Wilson

Author:Francis Wilson [Wilson, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: An asteroid the size of Table Mountain crashed into what was to become South Africa over 2 billion years ago, marking the spot. The countryg’s history since then has always been robust and full of energy. This book takes you in record time from that moment, when the earth’s richest gold reefs were shaped, to the advent of democracy in 1994, another event that stunned the world, and beyond.
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0955-4
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2017-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Accommodation in the all-male compounds of the mines and other sectors of South African industry improved over the years, but the old concrete bunks continued to be used in many places, as attested by this 1980 photograph.

The impact of the policy was devastating. Quite apart from turning police into the enemy, the system of oscillating migration played havoc with family life as wives were separated from their husbands and fathers from their children. Moreover, it prevented women from moving to town and acquiring the skills needed to hold down urban jobs to supplement their meagre family incomes. And, over time, it reduced investment and production in the rural areas from which the migrants came. Thus, the pattern of industrialisation developed by the mining industry and extended by apartheid generated both wealth and poverty simultaneously. By the early 1970s it was estimated that one out of every two urban black workers was housed, as a migrant, in single-sex accommodation. In townships such as Langa in Cape Town, where the policy was rigorously applied, the ratio of men to women in 1974 was estimated to be eleven to one. Apartheid did more than divide black from white; it also divided the black man in half: labour unit in town, husband and father in the rural area.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.