We don’t really need an international publication to tell us how bad our economic situation is, but it does make things hit home a little harder from time to time.

This time it’s the New York Times‘ turn to get in deep, releasing a massive piece titled “End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms”.

Like all good journalism, it begin with a tale:

Judith Sikade [below] envisioned escaping the townships, where the government had forced black people to live. She aimed to find work in Cape Town, trading her shack for a home with modern conveniences.

More than two decades later, Ms. Sikade, 69, lives on the garbage-strewn dirt of Crossroads township, where thousands of black families have used splintered boards and metal sheets to construct airless hovels for lack of anywhere else to live.

“I’ve gone from a shack to a shack,” Ms. Sikade says. “I’m fighting for everything I have. You still are living in apartheid.”

The piece is woven with exhausted tales from townships residents, gated community members and economists alike, as well as a bit of history about the country’s economics:

In the history of civil rights, South Africa lays claim to a momentous achievement — the demolition of apartheid and the construction of a democracy. But for black South Africans, who account for three-fourths of this nation of roughly 55 million people, political liberation has yet to translate into broad material gains.

Apartheid has essentially persisted in economic form.

…

This reality is palpable as turmoil now seizes South Africa. Enraged protesters demand the ouster of President Jacob Zuma over disclosures of corruption so high-level that it is often described as state capture, with private interests having effectively purchased the power to divert state resources in their direction. The economy keels in recession, worsening an official unemployment rate reaching nearly 28 percent.

Underlying the anger are deep-seated disparities in wealth. In the aftermath of apartheid, the government left land and other assets largely in the hands of a predominantly white elite. The government’s resistance to large-scale land transfers reflected its reluctance to rattle international investors.

Today, millions of black South Africans are chronically short of capital needed to start businesses. Less than half of the working age population is officially employed.

The governing party, the African National Congress, built empires of new housing for black South Africans, but concentrated it in the townships, reinforcing the geographic strictures of apartheid. Large swaths of the black population remain hunkered down in squalor, on land they do not legally own. Those with jobs often endure commutes of an hour or more on private minibuses that extract outsize slices of their paychecks.

But it’s not only the government who are to blame. Stepping out of apartheid, “we inherited an economy that was beleaguered. Those first years, we were grappling with avoiding a major collapse,” explains Alec Erwin, who served as deputy finance minister in the Mandela government:

“We all would have liked to do it differently. Whether we could have done it differently is another question.”

By the end of it, the NY Times’ tale about South Africa’s economic apartheid is one that will make you realise, just for a moment, how great the disparities are between the haves and the have-nots.

Take a read here.

[source:nytimes]