Old Eras and New

The story of South Africa’s modern economy cannot be told without Anglo American, the giant mining conglomerate that also owns De Beers. It was the Kimberly diamond rush in 1867 and Witwatersrand gold stampede in 1886 that forcefully pulled South Africa into the global economy and financial markets. The dark flipside of the rapid development and industrialisation was the exploitation of black workers from across Southern Africa, planting the seeds of the apartheid system.

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