master anything for his right to occupy the land.”
To the development economists who visited South Africa
in the 1950s and ’60s, when the academic discipline was
taking shape and the ideas of Arthur Lewis were
spreading, the contrast between these Homelands and the
prosperous modern white European economy seemed to
be exactly what the dual economy theory was about. The
European part of the economy was urban and educated,
and used modern technology. The Homelands were poor,
rural, and backward; labor there was very unproductive;
people, uneducated. It seemed to be the essence of
timeless, backward Africa.
Except that the dual economy was not natural or
inevitable. It had been created by European colonialism.
Yes, the Homelands were poor and technologically
backward, and the people were uneducated. But all this