What was wrong with apartheid?

Answer 1

Everything. The indigenes were highly mistreated. For more information, read books from people like Alex la Guma.

Apartheid, it seems to me, depended on a belief that there is a distinct difference in the quality of any given person which is dependant on their race or ethnicity. This is the belief that makes people Racist. Most people will accept, except racists of course, that racism is inherently both wrong & fallacious.

The above are very answers are bias. Basically apartheid was just about separating ethnic groups and therefore helping them develop separatly. However the apartheid government did make the 'non-white development' inferior. For example "non-white toilets" were in worse condition, and Bantustans (non-white homelands) were made up of mostly unarable and hilly landscapes. An exception was Bophutatswana, which had platinum and vanadium mines. Nevertheless, only 10% of Bophutatswana was arable land, and only 4 homelands were declared independence. None of the four "independent" homelands were ever recognised by any nation except South Africa.

I cannot agree with the statement above, the old Transkei Homeland had (and still has) some of the best agricultural land in SA, I worked there on a Fencing project in 2000, there is flat open lands, sub-tropical climate, massive rainfall and deep soil (places where the local are over using field you will find erosion trenches of up to 8m deep, indicating how deep the topsoil is). I agree that the homelands were not really recognised since it used a lot of resources to try and develop them. One aspect that seems to be left out is always that when the Boer lost the Anglo-Boer war and the Brits Annexed SA they moved a lot of people to the central areas from the homelands to work on the mines (and impoverished them by doing so). This was the start of the relocation of peoples and finally led to the implementation of the apartheid system to some extend to rectify this problem. (By the way when was the last time you used a public bathroom today in RSA, good luck with that)...

What was the question again, O yes, what was wrong with Apartheid? Not an easy answer at all!

A few things to help you decide: Apartheid created the largest economy in Africa, The biggest BLACK middle class in Africa, had some of the lowest crime rates in Africa, had the lowest unemployment in Africa (few of these are still true today) but it had racial classification (very wrong) and Still in Place Today in the New RSA.