Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, its divisions and absurdities live on. Segregation may now be voluntary rather than legal, but South Africans still live in neighborhoods defined by skin color - white, black or "colored" [mulatto or descendants of slaves from the Dutch East Indies]. To address the iniquities of apartheid, the state decided it still needed to classify its citizens by race: The post-apartheid government instituted an affirmative action program called Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) to redress the massive imbalance of economic power in favor of whites. BEE legislation relies for the most part on apartheid...
...delineated by race have long been abused from all sides. Many arrived in South Africa as virtual slaves, convicts imported as manual laborers by the Dutch and, later, the British. Their second-class status was formalized after World War II as the newly elected National Party government instituted the apartheid system that denied non-whites the right to vote, to work in certain jobs or live where they choose, and imposed countless other restrictions...
...During his time in jail, Mandela was an important symbol of opposition to apartheid. But "the closest thing the world has to a secular saint"? On most practical measures, South Africa has gone backward since Mandela's presidency. The African National Congress (ANC) has been in power since 1994 and is as unlikely to be replaced via the ballot box as President Robert Mugabe's government is in Zimbabwe. South Africa's real saint is Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Julius Bergh, Nerang, Queensland...
...fight against apartheid is over. Journalists should now be focusing on the performance of the ANC after 14 years in power. On its watch, South Africa has seen increased unemployment, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, lowered educational standards, declining health services, an uncontrolled AIDS pandemic, a justice system in disarray, an inept police force, the second highest murder rate and the highest rape rate in the world, ethnic cleansing of white citizens, the national electricity provider unable to satisfy power needs, and more than half of municipalities approaching bankruptcy. Cynics now predict that South Africa will...
...tide of events, a man of conservative bent who has been prodded by historical forces to act progressively, even boldly. It is not implausible to argue that whoever succeeded P.W. Botha as President of South Africa would have been compelled to release Nelson Mandela, dismantle the apparatus of apartheid and pave the way to the promised land of one-man, one-vote elections. For his part, Nelson Mandela has always taken the path of most resistance. The son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was groomed to be a traditional tribal leader but chose instead to become an outlaw...