If I undertook a street survey and asked passers-by how much they weighed or how tall they were, the answers I would get back would be dependent on what system of weight and measures a person was brought up on and was familiar with. Grandparents would most likely answer in imperial units (pounds, feet & inches), and their grandchildren would reply in metric units (kilograms and metres), the reason for this is that South Africa converted to the metric system in the early 1970’s. Metrication started here in 1967 with the appointment of a Metrication Advisory Board to oversee the change over from the old units to the new (click here for a short history of Metrication in South Africa) with the bulk of the process taking place between 1971 and 1973. The authoritarian Nationalist Government speeded up events by banning the sale of measuring devices calibrated in imperial units, and by 1977 the Board was made redundant. South Africans on the whole took metrication without complaint and accepted it as a move forward, just as they had with the decimalisation of our currency 10 years before (1961) when the country changed from Pounds, Shillings and Pence (£.s.d.) to Rands and cents (at an exchange rate of R2-00 to £1). The changing of the currency (on 14-02-1961) not only signified going decimal but also South Africa’s impending departure from the British Commonwealth, which would be on the 31st May 1961 when South Africa became a republic (59 years after the...
