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Your rant doesn't mention that benign-sounding "separate development and rule for all ethnic and cultural groups" under Apartheid forced blacks onto 13% of the land, even though they formed by far the largest population group in South Africa.

Nor does it mention the fact that generations of blacks were forced by state policy into inferior "Bantu Education". Nor does it mention the fact that the migrant labour system, coupled with the other degrading laws to deprive blacks of economic and social freedom helped wreck the fabric of black society.

I am as disgusted by the current ruling party's corruption as anyone, and I am appalled by the way the west generally seems to turn a blind eye to its massive failings.

Apartheid was designed to turn black people into failures, and into an exploitable manual labour pool. And any attempt to decouple apartheid from its aftermath is, at best, highly inaccurate.

[w00pla2]

Look here, I am not in support of Apartheid (or the current system for that matter). The fact is that Apartheid could not work (for a multitude of reasons, including economic reasons). But a lot of attacks on Apartheid ignore the basic facts and do not perform a simple statistical comparison with the NSA.

> "separate development and rule for all ethnic and cultural groups" under Apartheid forced blacks onto 13% of the land, even though they formed by far the largest population group in South Africa.

What does this number include? Blacks were deprived of their land well before “Apartheid” started. During the creation of homelands, white people also lost their land (land was bought and sold to create contiguous homelands). A good example is the large farms of Lisbon, Berlin, etc… that became KwaNdebele.

It is clear that the deprivation of land from black people is wrong. But the fact is that most of the depravation/deprivation was done well before Apartheid.

> Nor does it mention the fact that generations of blacks were forced by state policy into inferior "Bantu Education"

Bantu education was inferior, that is a fact. But it is a question of resources. During Apartheid more money was spend on Bantu education than on the education of white people (although less per capita). White people almost exclusively pay taxation (as is still more or less true today).

The problem is that there are only so many math teachers, etc…

By the way, Bantu education is vastly superior to all education that every person in South Africa receives. This is not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and prof. Jonathan Jansen. OBE failed.

Even South Africa’s president Zuma, said the following of the previous education minister:

> This comes shortly after ANC president Jacob Zuma blamed former education minister Kader Asmal for closing down these institutions, causing more damage to education than had been done under apartheid. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20080425091635396C60...

There were a lot of teacher colleges whose function it was to train teachers. These colleges were often in rural areas and focussed towards black people. The ANC government closed down basically all these colleges, leaving SA in a severe shortage of (black) teachers (and people in these places without the opportunity to get education).

How many black universities did Apartheid government build? I can think of quite a few (MEDUNSA, University of the North, University of Venda, several Technicons, etc…). How many was built by the ANC government? None – they however closed down colleges.

Why wasn’t there at least a University built in the past 20 years in Mpumalanga? The province doesn’t have a single university.

> Nor does it mention the fact that the migrant labour system,

Migration is a natural cause of South Africa’s industrialization. The population is still rural and development is in the cities.

What you should bear in mind is that Apartheid government tried to get industrial development started in black and rural areas. This was done by means such as development zones (e.g. Babelegi) and making companies in homelands free from VAT.

Another thing that the NP government was fearful for was that black unemployment would lead to revolution. There were active programs in order to reduce unemployment. During Apartheid, SA’s unemployment was much lower than it is now. Do you know what unemployment is now? Narrow definition 25,3% (people who are actively looking for work but do not find any: http://www.statssa.gov.za/keyindicators/keyindicators.asp). Broad definition (people who are capable of work but have given up) is over 40%! (see articles by Kingdon, G. and J. Knight)

This had another effect – spreading development around the country. Now we have a lot of development in cities, but many rural areas are basically abandoned. Rural areas (where many black people live) have now extremely high unemployment rates and there is almost zero industry. The ANC abandoned the country site to its own fate.

> Apartheid was designed to turn black people into failures, and into an exploitable manual labour pool.

That is debatable. The primary goal of Apartheid was arguably to ensure the existence and security of minority white people (from real and perceived threats such as communism (“Rooi gevaar”) and black crime (“Swart gevaar”).

The amount of money spent on black education (e.g. universities) would indicate that the “exploitable labour pool” theory is not completely correct. I would like to remind you amount of black teachers and craftsmen trained during Apartheid were much higher than it is now.

I personally suspect that the aim of the ANC government is to create very stupid and untrained voting cattle while cultivating a very small and rich black elite with close ANC ties.

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Regarding the consolidation of universities, I wouldn't take Zuma too seriously (I have to wonder he was motivated to say that by individuals who lost power through the consolidations, and in any case Zuma was in Cabinet and didn't voice any objections at the time). There was a lot amount of duplication between racially segregated institutions, and cutting administration costs is a good idea. The merging of teacher training colleges into universities may be more problematic, but overall, in South Africa, the less institutions, the less chance for waste and looting. I also have to wonder how good the teachers produced by those colleges really were.

>Bantu education was inferior, that is a fact. But it is a >question of resources. ... >White people almost exclusively pay taxation (as is still >more or less true today).

Hendrik Verwoerd's comments about Bantu education clearly indicate, that it was about more than resource constraints http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheid/qt/ApartheidQts... Per capita spending on education for black children was 10% of that on white children. I do agree the Outcomes Based Education (introduced by Asmal's predecessor, if I recall correctly), has been a tragic waste.

The idea that blacks didn't contribute to the tax base, and were not therefore entitled to its benefits is absurd. They were systematically excluded from economic opportunity, so they couldn't contribute, even if they wanted to (and they have always payed sales taxes).

>Migration is a natural cause of South Africa’s >industrialization. The population is still rural and >development is in the cities.

Migration and the migrant labour system are two very different things. The Apartheid ideal was black men in hostels, black women and children in Bantustans.

The rural industrial development was worthy, and it is regrettable that it has been abandoned, but one has to question the sustainability of those developments. Their motive, like much development in apartheid South Africa, was to further racial segregation by keeping the races apart. If they had provided job opportunities close to major economic centres, those jobs might have proved to be sustainable.

[w00pla2]

> There was a lot amount of duplication between racially segregated institutions, and cutting administration costs is a good idea.

Yeah, closing them down isn’t such a good idea. You know that most universities which merged basically closed down their “satellite” campuses in black areas? This simply serves to keep away affordable education from black people.

> The merging of teacher training colleges into universities may be more problematic, but overall, in South Africa, the less institutions, the less chance for waste and looting.

Most teacher colleges weren’t merged, they were simply closed down. Note that waste and looting wasn’t such a big problem before, why is it now?

By the way, you know what is one reason why they were closed down? Provincial governments became extremely corrupt (the funding for colleges came from provincial governments). They simply closed it down to ensure more money for looting.

> I also have to wonder how good the teachers produced by those colleges really were.

Look, they were not the best teachers in the world. But the problem is that we do not need the best teachers in the world, we need a lot of teachers. A good teacher in a class of 40 doesn’t help a thing. Also, the idea of removing teacher diplomas ensures that there are even less teachers (teacher training courses at universities is now 1 year longer).

South Africa loses some 12, 000 teachers a year (6, 000 produced by universities but 18,000 lost due to retirement and immigration). It is a disaster waiting to happen.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&...

> Hendrik Verwoerd's comments about Bantu education clearly indicate,

Hendrik Verwoerd was not the be all and end all of the NP government. You know that many of the policies changed after him? In any case, I do not care what someone has said (or what the motives were) but what happens on the ground.

> Migration and the migrant labour system are two very different things. The Apartheid ideal was black men in hostels, black women and children in Bantustans.

Can you give a citation for that? During Apartheid, there were a lot more industries closer to the living area of black people. The industrial zones (of which there were numerous) are an example of that.

Today the economic activity near large centres of black population is a lot lower. The economic outlook in rural areas also forces people to become migrant labourers.

> that it has been abandoned, but one has to question the sustainability of those developments.

Whatever the motive, those developments worked.

> If they had provided job opportunities close to major economic centres, those jobs might have proved to be sustainable.

There are many reasons why those businesses moved (from high crime to non-functioning municipalities). The fact of the matter is that work and businesses are now far from where many employees work. So they have to rely on non-existent transport (such as taxis or horrible metro lines) each day to commute 30km+.

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>But the problem is that we do not need the best teachers in the world, we need a lot of teachers. A good teacher in a class of 40 doesn’t help a thing.

The conventional wisdom on class sizes is being challenged currently.

>Hendrik Verwoerd was not the be all and end all of the NP government. You know that many of the policies changed after him?

In the 1970's, well after Verwoerd's demise, a black child's education got 10% of the funding given to a white child.

>There are many reasons why those businesses moved (from high crime to non-functioning municipalities). The fact of the matter is that work and businesses are now far from where many employees work. So they have to rely on non-existent transport (such as taxis or horrible metro lines) each day to commute 30km+.

This is a rather strange argument. The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.

Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure. The taxi industry/mafia was deregulated in the late 80's by the apartheid government. Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).

If the Apartheid economic model of decentralised and seperate development was so worthwhile, why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system? Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.

Apartheid was declared a Crime against Humanity, with good reason. The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.

[w00pla2]

> The conventional wisdom on class sizes is being challenged currently.

This is a statement without any meaning. Yeah, large class sizes with 800 students is OK in college.

But it is a huge as difference between primary schools and secondary schools where children need more individual attention. How will a teacher check that each child writes properly, or get a chance to speak? I’ve been learning a foreign language recently and I found a class of 14 people too big. Imagine being a poor black kid in a class of 80 trying to learn English or another language?

You know that some rural schools have a ratio of 1 to 80? These are the kids that need more attention than any other student. Yet they do not get it.

You are right that in some sectors of education the idea of class sizes are irrelevant – notably college kids or self-motivated students (a very small percentage). This is not what you will find in your typical overfull and run down rural school.

> The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.

The reason why most black people historically lived far from business centres was because they were spread around the country (This was the same for white Afrikaans people in the beginning of the century).

At least in Gauteng, business centers arose around mining sites and are unnaturally densely packed around this. By the way, look at groups such as Venda’s, N. Sothos, etc… They were historically far from business centers, not because they were moved there by the Apartheid government, but because there was not big industrial development in the area that they historically lived (such as a town which grew from mining roots).

> Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure.

Again, this is debatable. Quality of roads in rural areas rapidly declined in the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact that the provincial governments and local governments lost almost all capacity to function (again, this is truer for rural areas).

> Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).

South Africa will always be a car based country as far as passengers go. We simply do not have the high densities needed to form passenger rail networks.

It is however interesting to note that freight rail has almost completely declined in South Africa with most freight transport occurring with trucks (increasing danger). The South African rail company (Transnet) is also a corrupt ANC cadre cesspool.

> why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system?

The Apartheid government did not have to run up massive deficits to support that system. The deficits were created by defence spending (which was in the 80ies around 10% of GDP) and things such as sanctions.

> Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.

Yet, in 1994 SA’s economy was 50% the size of the whole sub-Sahara Africa’s economy. Whilst many of those countries followed a Marxist ideology, SA still remains the only industrialised country on the continent.

> The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.

Look. Your argument is now “something is bad because someone said so”. I said at the beginning of this post that I do not see Apartheid as good, but I do not see the new government as good (Majority democracy failed horribly in South Africa). Or do you describe a government that presides over a 15 year drop in life expectancy as “good”?

I also do not care about moralizing. As an example, Singapore was ruled by a dictator and the PAP political party ever since it existed. They are generally condemned by people who take the (western) moral outlook and whatnot. Yet it is one of the most developed countries in the world with a higher standard of living than any of its more politically correct neighbours. When cold and hard statistics and facts are used, Singapore is one of the best governed countries in the world – and much better developed than its neighbours.

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Regarding class sizes, I refer you to the recent news about Gates Foundation findings regarding class size, versus teacher quality. Large numbers of poor/mediocre teachers and small class sizes are not necessarily better than good teachers with larger class sizes.

South Africa's densities are low because of apartheid planning. Segregation trumped density or sustaintability.

Freight rail has indeed declined in South Africa, partly because of corruption, but the neglect started many years before. South Africa's railway rolling stock is, on average, decades old, so the lack of investment in rail, and promotion of road transport, started long before the present government took over.

The lower life expectancy is due to HIV/Aids and it is similar to neigbouring countries. In the (highly unlikely) event that the Apartheid government had survived, I doubt that the life expectancy figures would have been much better. (And the AIDS epidemic took hold under the apartheid government).The infant mortality rate remains better than the world average.

The Apartheid regime was not viewed as a benevolent dictatorship by the majority of South Africans (or the rest of the world), so comparisons to Singapore are spurious. Instead, Apartheid was an organised state policy to further the interests of white people, at the expense of all others, monopolising the wealth and resources of the country, while throwing enough crumbs at a deliberately dumbed-down black population, to keep them docile.