The progressive recommendations of the National Health Service Commission of 1942–1944 have attracted historical attention but the three and a half million words of evidence given to it have hardly done so. This article reviews this testimony, which gave unrivalled detail on the fragmented state of South Africa's healthcare structures and on the variety of its pers...

The progressive recommendations of the National Health Service Commission of 1942–1944 have attracted historical attention but the three and a half million words of evidence given to it have hardly done so. This article reviews this testimony, which gave unrivalled detail on the fragmented state of South Africa's healthcare structures and on the variety of its pers...

The article discusses the aspirations and achievements of 10 Bantustan departments of health in trying to develop integrated district healthcare for their African populations from the 1970s to 1990s. These aimed to prioritise preventive and promotive rather than curative medicine, and to decentralise healthcare in an expanding network of clinics. The departments we...