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Since its inception in 1974, the South African family planning programme has been widely believed to be linked with white fears of growing black numbers. The programme has been repeatedly attacked by detractors as a programme of social and political control. Yet, in spite of the hostile environment, black women's use of services has steadily increased. Using historical and anthropological evidence, this paper delineates the links between the social and political context of racial domination and individual fertility behaviour. It is argued that the quantitative success of the family planning programme is rooted in social and economic shifts conditioning reproductive authority and fertility decision-making. State policies of racial segregation and influx control, ethnic 'homeland' politics, and labour migration of men transformed opportunities and constraints for black women and men, and altered local and household expectations of childbearing. Women came to manage their own fertility as they increasingly found themselves in precarious social and economic circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inadequate data and apartheid policies have meant that, until recently, most demographers have not had the opportunity to investigate the level of, and trend in, the fertility of South African women. The 1996 South Africa Census and the 1998 Demographic and Health Survey provide the first widely available and nationally representative demographic data on South Africa since 1970. Using these data, this paper describes the South African fertility decline from 1955 to 1996. Having identified and adjusted for several errors in the 1996 Census data, the paper argues that total fertility at that time was 3.2 children per woman nationally, and 3.5 children per woman for African South Africans. These levels are lower than in any other sub-Saharan African country. We show also that fertility in South Africa has been falling since the 1960s. Thus, fertility transition predates the establishment of a family planning programme in the country in 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an attempt to elucidate the character and mechanics of population growth among a group that can be loosely equated with the Whites or Afrikaners in the Cape Colony in the eighteenth century. Essentially it is an overview, because many of the details, which are needed for a full demographic analysis, are lacking. Nevertheless, it is hoped that it may be interesting to demographers, for the purposes of comparison, especially since many of the features of the South African population have close parallels in other settler situations, such as French Canada and New England. It is also hoped that this paper will form the beginning of the establishment of the social history of early South Africa on a basis, which the concerns of previous historians have not given it. After an evaluation of the reliability of these sources, it proceeds to give estimates of the gross population growth rate, of the importance of immigration, of the sex ratio and of such aspects of nuptiality and fertility as can be ascertained in the absence of systematic information on the dates of death of individuals. Finally, it attempts to show the effect of the demographic structure on the social development of the colony.