The list of socialist‐​style reuglations and controls imposed by the National Party government since 1948–and by the white governments that preceded it–shows just how far removed from capitalism South Africa’s economy has been. Many of the anticapitalist laws were racist, like those that prohibited black ownership of land in vast areas of the country. But many were not particularly racial at all–like today’s local‐​content programme that tells car manufacturers how to build their vehicles. South Africa’s rulers have shown both a love of racism and a hatred of the market.

District Labour Control Boards determined whether black farmworkers could get permission to work in town (local white farmers served on the boards). Wage Boards set high minimum wages to prevent blacks from getting jobs by undercutting white wage earners. The Livestock and Meat Industries Control Board curbed the sale of black farmers’ produce. The Publications Control Board censored the country’s newspapers, magazines, books, and movies.

The Customs Tariff Commission recommended import protection for companies that hired sufficient numbers of white workers. The Physical Planning Act dictated acceptable ratios of black workers to white.

The Land Acts and Group Areas Act prevented blacks from owning property in most of the country and led to forced removals of families and businesses. Blacks were prevented from managing or controlling businesses in white areas. Even in areas reserved for blacks, such as urban townships, blacks were generally not allowed freehold title to land until 1986.

White property rights were also restricted. The Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act prevented farmers from breaking off pieces of land and selling them, and laws restricted white investments in black homelands.

Pass laws, influx control, and homeland citizenship prevented blacks from moving freely around South Africa, looking for work or shelter. The government withdrew passports from critics.

The central government determined what language students would learn in, who could teach them, and what subjects they would be taught. It shut down private missionary and farm schools. It outlawed television until 1976, when it introduced TV as a state monopoly.

Import controls, tariff barriers, and exchange control severely restricted the movement of goods and capital in and out of the country. Historically, protection was granted to companies that best complied with racist labour legislation.

Assaults on enterprise included: shop‐​hour laws, licensing laws, a ban on Sunday movies, segregation in movies and restaurants, movie and book censorship, laws preventing blacks from opening businesses in city centres, and liquor‐​licensing laws. Other statutes prevented entrepreneurs from starting telephone, postal, TV, radio, airline, and electricity services to compete with state‐​protected monopolies.

The government set up and subsidized the Industrial Development Corporation to finance favoured industrialists. It staffed the state monopolies with political supporters–“jobs for pals.” It set up two dozen agricultural control boards to restrict the growing and marketing of food, and it controlled hundreds of consumer prices. It decided which remote areas needed industrial development and then paid decentralization subsidies to companies that located in them.

Tariffs propped up uncompetitive firms and drove up consumer prices on a wide range of goods. And the government raised taxes to punitive levels and imposed dozens of hidden taxes and duties.

No area of potentially capitalist activity was too minor for the government’s economic police to restrict. Anekie Lebese, who grew up in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, had to raise three sons alone when her husband died. Crippled in both legs, she could have begged but didn’t want to. So she sold goods on Noord Street in Johannesburg:

I sold fruit and vegetables. This selling took all my three sons to school and made sure they had food and a place to live. But to the police, my working for my children was breaking the law. I slept in jail many times.

Very little was left untouched by the apartheid state: transport, communications, investment, labour, prices, banking, agriculture, energy, construction, travel, movement, housing, arms, education, retailing, entertainment, land, and the hawking of vegetables by crippled widows. This was capitalism?…

When the state owns or controls property and industry, freedom is crushed. And in South Africa, successive white governments have waged a long war against private ownership, personal freedom, and a free market.

Blacks suffered most under apartheid socialism because their liberties were the most severely curtailed. AS the great liberal economist William Hutt, author of The Economics of the Colour Bar, noted as early as 1964: “The African himself is as dependent upon the whim of politicians and officials as he would be in a totalitarian country…”