ABSTRACT
Stanley Trapido has argued that South Africa's particularity among industrial, capitalist societies lies in the fact that the majority of its workforce, who are black, are excluded from common political rights and prevented from participating in the dominant political institutions. This feature of its political economy emerged out of the special circumstances of its industrialisation. The rapid growth of the industrial labour force and the urban population, which followed the establishment of the mining industry, promised to lift the sluggish agricultural economies of southern Africa out of the doldrums in which they had previously existed. Despite the low tariffs and preferential treatment for imported British goods which prevailed until the 1920s, manufacturing industries developed rapidly during the period following the establishment of the goldmines, and by the end of the Second World War had outstripped gold-mining as the leading sector of the economy.
