Page 14 - Bulletin 23- 2020

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death.” This surge of new business allowed the insurance industry to more than recoup
what it had paid out through the deaths of its policyholders during Black October.

At the public level too, the experiences of that frightful month underlined the need for action
to address a host of administrative and social deficiencies which had been so starkly revealed

by the epidemic.

Public Health Bill passed

Most urgent was the need for a comprehensive system to take responsibility for the country’s
public health and not leave it to a heterogeneous array of local authorities of varied capacity.

Three attempts to repair this omission by the makers of Union had foundered on the rock of
vested interests in the years after 1910. What Black October did was to ensure that this would

not happen for a fourth time. In its wake, a draft scheme to create such a system (which had

been hammered out just before the Spanish flu struck South Africa) was rapidly transformed
into a formal Public Health Bill which was tabled in Parliament early in 1919. There, the

prospect of a return by the epidemic drove the complex bill through all its readings with
speed, yielding, at the end, the Union of South Africa’s founding Public Health Act which set

up a separate, full Department of Public Health under its own minister. The Government’s

Law Adviser noted that, during the debates on the bill, the experience of Black October had
“induced a spirit of compromise both in and out of Parliament, a spirit which it is doubtful

would have existed except for the remembrance of what the public suffered in the
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epidemic”.

The new Department of Public Health acted quickly to try and prevent a recurrence of Black
October by requiring incoming ships fitted with wireless sets to radio to South Africa

information about any outbreaks of infectious diseases on board, while all countries which
had regular intercourse with the Union were requested to telegraph news of any epidemics

raging within their borders. Meanwhile, all along the South African coast, port health
regulations were tightened up in case the attempts to keep epidemics at bay were unsuccess-

ful. The elements for an early warning epidemic system thus came into being, and in 1920

these were consolidated when South Africa joined the League of Nations’ International