South Africa was a regional rather than a world power; it was not a global centre for invention or new scientific ideas. Yet its geographic position on the African continent made it a staging post for Portuguese, Dutch and British colonialism and part of a global imaginary. Colonisation by Britain brought the region into connection with a technologically advanced world empire. South Africa was at key moments an incubator and testing ground of innovation, which had profound social and economic effects on the country: agricultural technology underpinned exports of wool and ostrich feathers; new rifles changed the balance of power in favour of colonial regimes; the mineral revolution necessitated developments in applied geology and gold extraction. Key advances were often a response to urgent economic requirements, but the scientific imagination was also more exploratory with respect to astronomy, palaeontology, and wildlife conservation. And as a crucible of racial politics in the twentieth century, South Africa has long been seen as a social laboratory for the study of 'race relations'. We aim to illustrate the scientific imagination as an expression of human curiosity and ingenuity, to discuss the politics of science and to examine its imbrication with white political power.

The new apartheid government under D. F. Malan proved adept at using science for its own purposes. The 1949 ‘African Charter’ promoted science and technology as a means to secure regional domination and South Africa’s position as a bulwark of anti-communism. South Africa’s Antarctic research programme regained momentum in the context of the Cold War. The IDC sponsored SASOL, based on an oil-from-coal chemical process, and phosphate-based fertilisers by means of a new parastatal, FOSKOR. Platinum, discovered by Hans Merensky, came of age in the 1970s. Uranium was enriched at a secret plant at Valindaba. The apartheid state also invested heavily in dam construction, hydro-electric power, and irrigation. Agricultural ‘Betterment’ schemes were imposed in the black homelands or Bantustans. From the mid-1970s, state resources were devoted to support weapon production and develop a nuclear capability, and optical astronomy was consolidated under the South African Astronomical Organisation at Sutherland. A major scientific achievement was the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967. Botany, agronomy and biodiversity were major areas of research, as was wildlife conservation. It is therefore possible to distinguish between science under apartheid and apartheid science designed to underpin white supremacy.