South Africa

C

2

Mining

The South African mining industry is one of the most technologically advanced in the world. South Africans are the world’s foremost deep-level miners, exporting their expertise to many countries. Historically, the mining industry was built on the foundations of cheap black labor, but wages have improved substantially since the early 1970s.

The contribution of mining to GDP declined over the course of the 20th century, but the mining industry still employs hundreds of thousands of people and continues to dominate exports. South Africa remains the world’s largest producer of gold, but the industry faces long-term decline because of its high production costs and falling gold prices. These costs are primarily the result of the great depth of the South African mines. The country is rich in many other minerals, and non-gold mining expanded significantly in the second half of the 20th century. Other important mineral products include diamonds, coal, uranium, platinum, nickel, chromite, vanadium, manganese, and fluorite.

D

Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing

The relative contribution of agriculture, forestry, and fishing to GDP has steadily declined and was 3 percent in 2005, but these industries employ hundreds of thousands of people and support many more in the subsistence sector. Only 12 percent of South Africa’s land area is cultivated, and most of the rest is suitable only for pastoral farming. The most important crop is maize (corn), the staple food of most black South Africans. Other important crops include wheat, sugarcane, barley, potatoes, citrus fruit, and grapes (for winemaking). Livestock includes poultry, sheep, and cattle.

Under apartheid blacks were restricted to the ten bantustans, which made up only 13 percent of the country’s total area. Farming in these areas is primarily for subsistence, and traditional land tenure systems vest land in the chiefs or headmen, who allocate small plots to individual farmers. Marketing crops is largely local because of poor infrastructure. Commercial agriculture remains overwhelmingly white-owned, employing black farm workers.

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Although South Africa has little native forest, it has developed a significant timber and wood products industry based on pine, eucalyptus, and wattle plantations. Commercial forests are mainly in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga provinces.

The commercial fishing industry is centered on the waters off the west coast, which are productive because of the cold Benguela Current. Pilchard, anchovy, and hake are the most common catch. Rock lobsters are also caught, mainly for export. In terms of volume, multispecies shoal fishing by purse seine (a surface net that encircles and entraps entire shoals of fish) is the most important method used, followed by bottom and mid-water trawling.

E

Energy

Thermal power plants produce 94 percent (2003) of South Africa’s electricity. Most are coal-fired power stations located on or near the main coal fields in Gauteng, Free State, and northern KwaZulu-Natal. South Africa’s nuclear power station at Koeberg in Western Cape serves the part of the country most remote from the coal fields.

Eskom, the Electricity Supply Commission, distributes electricity through a national power grid. South Africa supplies more than half the electricity generated in the whole of Africa, but in the early 21st century had yet to supply power to all South African households.

F

Transportation

South Africa has by far the most developed transport infrastructure in Africa. The rail system, which links all major centers, is almost entirely administered by the state-owned Transnet through its railway division Spoornet. Passenger services are slow by Western European standards, but the provision of luxury and semiluxury trains is an attraction.

Car ownership is almost universal among whites and rising rapidly in the rest of the population, although less so in rural areas. Commuting for blacks is largely by public transport, including buses, kombi (minibus) taxis and, in the larger cities such as Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, commuter railways.

South African Airways provides an extensive network of air services between all major cities in South Africa, between Johannesburg and a variety of destinations in Africa, and between South Africa and major cities in Europe, the Americas, East Asia, and Australia. Smaller carriers also fly domestic routes. Johannesburg has the country’s major international airport, but Cape Town has a number of direct overseas flights.

The ports of Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town provide large container terminals. Durban is the busiest port for general cargo. East London is the only river port in South Africa. Saldanha Bay, northwest of Cape Town, is the largest port on the west coast of Africa. It was developed primarily for the export of iron ore from Northern Cape. Richard’s Bay, one of the best artificial harbors in the world, was developed primarily to handle bulk cargoes, including coal.

G

Communications

South Africa has a sophisticated communications network. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) provides radio services for national and regional audiences and different language groups. There are also a number of independent radio stations.

The SABC offers three television channels broadcasting programs in all 11 official languages. The majority of African households do not have television, although it is widely watched in bars. The SABC was subject to close government control under apartheid, but now reflects a wider spectrum of political views. The government is much less intrusive in the media than during the apartheid years.

There are 17 daily and 48 weekly newspapers. Their political allegiances are less narrowly defined than in the apartheid era, with even the more conservative papers giving at least critical support to the country’s first majority government. Most of the papers are published in English. Major weeklies include the Sunday Times, Rapport (published in Afrikaans), the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Tribune, and the City Press. Regional dailies are published in all major cities. In Johannesburg those with the largest circulation include the Sowetan, targeted at black readers; along with The Star, The Citizen, and Beeld (Afrikaans). Die Burger, an Afrikaans paper, and the English paper the Cape Argus are published in Cape Town. The Daily News is published in Durban. Smaller influential papers include the daily Business Day, the weekly Financial Mail, and the relatively left-wing weekly Mail and Guardian, all published in Johannesburg.

The South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority oversees the country’s telecommunications networks. South Africa has two-fifths of the telephone lines in Africa and an expanding mobile phone network. The Internet is widely used in urban areas, particularly in business circles.

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