Page 104 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

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There are contradictory accounts about how the new major unit was named. Some of the earlier writing points to the Coinage Bill of the 1930s. Although not recommended as the preferred name in the Bureau report of 1954, ‘rand’ appears among the contenders. News reports of the time credit P A Moore, a United Party MP representing Kensington, for the new major unit’s name: “The new monetary unit to be introduced under the decimal coinage system will be the ‘rand’ – a 10s. unit to be divided into 100 cents – according to a statement issued by the Treasury this evening. ... Mr. P A Moore, who has been campaigning for the introduction of the decimal system, said: ‘Ten shillings was the unit proposed in my Private Members Bill in 1956. It was the unit originally recommended by the British Decimal Association some years ago.’ Mr. Moore said the name ‘rand’ was the one he gave to the 10s. unit in his Bill. The reason for this was that the name of the unit should be short. He added: ‘In this country it should be bilingual too. The term rand has the ring of gold about it, and it will be recognised as South African in the money markets of the world’.” (Rand Daily Mail, 6 March 1959).
Both the Bureau and the Commission recommended Tuesday, 14 February 1961 as D-day. This timeline was adhered to by the Decimalisation Board, whose Chairman, Dr Arndt, was quoted in the press stating: “The ... switch to decimal coinage on February 14 will be made without fuss or disorganisation. ... [After] the banks close on Friday, February 10, they will reopen on the following Tuesday ready to deal in decimals.” (Rand Daily Mail, 20 December 1960).
Decimalisation had implications for commerce, large financial institutions, insurance companies, building societies, industries, government departments and undertakings. For the public, practical matters such as how to calculate bus fare and cash cheques at the banks were front of mind.
Thus, “[the] ... change [to] the currency system ... called for what was probably the biggest mass education campaign in the country’s history, viz., to prepare its 15,000,000 inhabitants of different races and stages of development, scattered over an area of 800,000 square miles, for this far-reaching socio- economic reform,” reflects Arndt (1961b) in a pamphlet about the changeover to the rand.
This task was taken on by the seven-member Decimalisation Board, which included a cost consultant and a technical adviser (Arndt, 1961a, p 98). Professor B S Wiehahn, a cost and management consultant and professor at the Pretoria University, and P L Vlaskamp, an adviser on accounting and money machines, were the two experts on the Board (Rand Daily Mail, 19 June 1959).
“The necessary funds required by the Board were to be voted by Parliament, while the Governor-General could make regulations on any matters deemed necessary to facilitate the introduction of the Rand/cent system, subject to the very wide powers conferred by section nine of the Currency and Exchanges Act, 1933. Finally, the Act was also to apply to the Territory of South West Africa,” according to Arndt (1961a, p 98).
That meant the Decimalisation Board, in consultation with the Minister of Finance, could make decisions about compensation to be paid to machine owners “in respect of costs incurred or losses sustained as a result of the introduction of the new system.” (Arndt, 1961a, p 97).
The Board “... advanced roughly R4,500,000 (£2,250,000) to no fewer than 16 machine companies, in amounts ranging from R787 to R2,160,277, all of which were secured by guarantee insurance placed with no fewer than 35 South African and overseas insurers. In addition, insurance to the amount of R40,000,000 (£20,000,000) was taken out with a similar number of insurers, which covered the shipment of all decimal parts and loan machines, and the value of all convertible machines that would be handled by all the machine companies, and their replacement by new machines of similar type in the event of loss or damage.” (Arndt, 1961a, p 98).
Crucially, the Board made available “... [the] Popular Conversion Table, explanations of the difference between the Popular and the Banking and Accounting Tables, ... freely in various languages, in printed form. Even a gramophone record was produced for broadcasting purposes, in which a character, Decimal Dan, in song extolled the simplicity and virtues of the Rand/cent system.” (Arndt, 1961a, p 99).