Dispossession of fertile, mineral-rich land is correctly repeated as the root cause of the economic precarity of Black people in South Africa.

Colonial wars are rightly foregrounded but in a way that frames black people as having existed outside of organised enterprise.

This book builds and adds dimension to the picture of black people’s economic participation, taking the narrative from pre-colonial mining and spanning the colonial and apartheid periods, detailing tactics of economic exclusion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phakamisa Ndzamela is an award-winning former business journalist for Thomson Reuters, Business Day, Financial Mail and Moneyweb. He holds a BA in journalism from the University of Witwatersrand and is currently reading for a Masters in business history at the University of Stellenbosch. He lives in Cape Town.

Native Merchants: The building of the black business class in South Africa is published by Tafelberg, an imprint of NB Publishers