South African manufacturing was built behind a tariff wall and has spent the last thirty years living without one. Everything before 1990 is the story of protection; of a state that used customs duties, public corporations and an arms embargo to manufacture at home what it could not or would not buy abroad. Everything after is the story of what happened when the wall came down faster than the factories could adjust.
Sixty-two entries across six threads: the plants and the capacity they added, the policy and tariff decisions, the market shocks, the labour history, the changes in ownership, and the long cycle of isolation and re-entry. Select a thread to isolate it, or open any entry for detail.