Word: apartheid
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...death of an international music star who had sung against apartheid and in celebration of peace and unity sparked outrage across South Africa. The following day, crowds surrounded and beat a suspected purse-snatcher in Bez Valley, shouting that it was men like him "who had killed Lucky Dube." On Monday, police announced they had arrested five people in connection with Dube's murder, and the country's newspapers pointed out the irony in his tragic death. In his eerily prescient 2001 song "Crime and Corruption," Dube demanded that the post-apartheid government protect its people from the surging crime...
...Although the victims in many of the murders that get the most media attention are white, it escapes no one in South Africa that the vast majority of victims are black. The same townships that were the cauldron of revolution before apartheid ended in 1994 are now crucibles of crime...
...what has happened to the new South Africa? The government argues that crime is fueled by the gross social iniquities bequeathed by apartheid. That may be true, but as Dube pointed out, it is also true that the African National Congress, the liberation movement that is now the ruling party, has been a disappointment. Unemployment is 40% overall, but in some areas - and among people under 30 - it is significantly higher. Given the poor sanitation, medical care, and water and electricity supplies to millions of impoverished South Africans, they could be forgiven for wondering how much the end of apartheid...
...Following a series of riots in 2005 that pitched impoverished township dwellers against riot police in scenes reminiscent of the apartheid era, President Thabo Mbeki recognized the dangers posed by the ongoing social inequality. "The riots seek to exploit the class and nationality fault lines we inherited from our past," Mbeki told parliament. "If ever they took root, gaining genuine popular support, they would pose a threat to the stability of democratic South Africa." But Altbeker sees the danger exacerbated by the ANC's own policies of pursuing economic growth without promoting social equality. "A large body of economic thinking...
...Nowhere is the social makeup of the national rugby team more of an issue than in South Africa, where the sport which had been a totem of the white minority in the apartheid era still remains almost entirely composed of white players. That has sparked passionate debate over whether rugby's national squads should replicate the socio-ethnic demographics of the societies they represent. A laudable goal for all nations on earth, perhaps, but one that would make those four New Zealanders playing for Japan a little tough to explain...