Page 39 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

The early debates
The antecedents to the SARB’s founding are steeped in the history of the country’s early economic framework and mired in political controversy. The institution’s history is replete with instances of attempts to tinker with its mandate, redefine its functions, limit its influence, and keep its role and functions in check.
From the onset, the SARB’s coming into existence was a polarising event accompanied by vociferous criticism and palpable suspicion. It sprung from the well of both economic and political crises. Thus, a consistent, and defining, trend of its institutional resilience is how the SARB has, through the years, responded to successive calamities, the most prominent and pressing being the debate about the gold standard, while preserving its institutional integrity and independence.
The debates and the discussions about the form and the functions of the SARB – whether it was to be a national bank or a central bank – date back to the late 19th century, when the influential Afrikaner Bond, a political force in the Cape Colony, first mooted the idea. It became a common refrain at subsequent Afrikaner Bond congresses. These early debates are aptly captured in De Kock (1954), the SARB’s 50th anniversary commemorative publication (1971), and the volumes detailing the SARB’s ordinary general meetings – among a myriad other sources, including the press.
Johannes Postmus, who would in later years become the second Governor of the SARB, expounded the merits of setting up a central bank in the Union of South Africa. Postmus articulated this view in a lecture delivered in October 1912. “Postmus cited the case of the United States ... where the need of a central bank was at that stage [1912] fully recognised. He prophesised that the time was fast approaching when the need for a central bank in South Africa would also be felt more strongly,” notes De Kock (1954, pp 4–5).
Extract from the first meeting of the SARB’s Board of Directors held on 29 July 1921. (The preliminary meeting took place at the Union Buildings in Room 39 on 9 May 1921). /SARB
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