Legacies of apartheid

President Nelson Mandela's democratic election in 1994 marked the end of apartheid in South Africa,  a system of widespread racially based segregation to enforce almost complete separation of the different races in South Africa. Under the apartheid, South Africans were classified into four different races: white, black, coloured, and Indian/Asian, with about 80% of the South African population classified as black, 9% as white, 9% as coloured, and 2% as Indian/Asian. Under apartheid, whites held almost all political power in South Africa, with other races almost completely marginalized. While the end of apartheid enabled the nation to maintain full legal equality of all South Africans, regardless of race, today’s South Africa struggles to correct the social inequalities created by decades of apartheid. Despite a rising GDP, indices for poverty, unemployment, income inequality, life expectancy, land ownership, have declined due to the increase in population, with the end of the apartheid system in South Africa leaving the country socio-economically stratified by race. Subsequent government policies have sought to correct inequity with varying amounts of success.

Many of the inequalities created and maintained by apartheid still remain in South Africa. Income inequality has worsened since the end of apartheid, but has become to somewhat be less associated with race, and between 1991 and 1996, the white middle class grew by 15% while the black middle class grew by 78%.

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