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Apartheid mastermind Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd , getting of a horse-drawn carriage. Verwoerd was the Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966.
Most people both sane and insane would probably say NO. I suspect their answer would perhaps be more influenced by the morality of apartheid rather than an objective analysis of facts. However, when one critically thinks about the economic state of the African continent during colonialism and the state of the continent now, one cannot help but entertain that question. Would South Africa or Africa as a whole been economically better off had things stayed the way they were? Why were countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe surpassed by much poorer countries such as Korea and others in East Asia so quickly after independence?
These are all questions I am struggling to find adequate answers to. They were mainly brought about by reading the article (excerpt) below written by Charles Hoffman:
Apartheid made South Africa the rich country it is: iLIVE
I am a great fan of Jonny Steinberg’s writings, but his recent assertion in the Sunday Times that Apartheid, with all its inefficiencies, actually held back SA’s economic development calls for a response.
You cannot think away Apartheid and assume the alternative would have been some efficient and liberal dispensation immune to the post-independent African story.
In my view, if Apartheid never happened (if the Afrikaner was never here?) there is no reason to believe that SA would be any different today from any other ex-British ruled African country – that is a poor and collapsed state. via Timeslive.co.za
Arguably the whole system of apartheid was based on economically empowering a select few based primarily on their skin colour. That explains the historical economic disparities which to a large extent still exist in South Africa between white and black. But even so blacks in South Africa were also better off economically and richer than those in Sub-Saharan Africa even during apartheid. That begs a question. Why was that the case and can one be right in thinking that had the status quo of apartheid and colonialism not been dismantled South Africa and other formally colonised African countries could have been better off today?
Submitted by Peter Hans, SA
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