Engineering nation

How engineers built an industrial South Africa – and why they matter again today

On 11 November 1955, beneath a scorching Free State sun, three men stood beside their cars, watching as the first litres of synthetic fuel flowed through a pipe.¹ The cars belonged to Sasol’s directors – Frans du Toit, Hendrik van Eck and Etienne Rousseau – and those drops of fuel represented far more than a technical milestone. They were proof could build industries from the ground up.

At the heart of this achievement was Rousseau, an engineer who would steer Sasol from improbable idea to industrial heavyweight. Only five years earlier, Sasol had been formed as part of a broader push for economic independence. By producing fuel from coal through the Fischer–Tropsch process, the state imagined itself insulated from the risks of foreign dependence. But the vision was nothing without the execution, and the execution rested on Rousseau’s shoulders. Engineers, after all, do not merely dream. They translate ambition into blueprints, and blueprints into reality…