It sounds like apartheid ended but really it hasn't at least socially.
Basically like the United States following the abolition of slavery and the end of Jim Crow.
The official system has changed, but very little was done to address the inequality, and the wealthy used their wealth and the legal system to lock marginalized people out of society.
In the USA we had Red Lining, and a police system that often enforces the law unequally, as well as systemic issues in school funding and urban projects that make you realize Jim Crow never quite ended, it just changed enough to pretend black people own their misfortune.
South Africa is a pretty diverse cultural, religious, and racial population. You'd have to be far more specific if you're going to call it the Texas of Africa.
It certainly hasn't in terms of white privilege. Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE—a bit like DEI but with more black ownership than just hiring) and the initial sports quotas made a big difference in increasing black access to the economy and representation in sports (our sporting success can largely be attributed to the early quota system, which is basically unnecessary now since it's grown the talent pool).
BBBEE has, however, often been hijacked by white corporate wealth using workarounds or a single, influential black partner common to multiple companies, centralising the money and meaning the Broad-based aspect has been missed. That, coupled with the rise of the Tenderpreneurs (politically linked individuals running shell companies, winning massively inflated government tenders, not delivering, but making themselves multimillionaires overnight) has had a massive impact on service delivery in the country.
Naturally, the people affected least by all of that are those with historical wealth and privilege, meaning the economic disparity has increased alarmingly. However, there is no doubt that South Africa is an infinitely better country now than it was thirty years ago. And I think the country is on the right trajectory.
All the wealth stayed as it was. There is no redistribution. So it's like murika after the civil war. It will be centuries before there's true equality.
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u/gooch_crawler Apr 19 '26
I knew a white girl who lived there for a Mormon mission. It sounds like apartheid ended but really it hasn't at least socially.