> The conventional wisdom on class sizes is being challenged currently.
This is a statement without any meaning. Yeah, large class sizes with 800 students is OK in college.
But it is a huge as difference between primary schools and secondary schools where children need more individual attention. How will a teacher check that each child writes properly, or get a chance to speak? I’ve been learning a foreign language recently and I found a class of 14 people too big. Imagine being a poor black kid in a class of 80 trying to learn English or another language?
You know that some rural schools have a ratio of 1 to 80? These are the kids that need more attention than any other student. Yet they do not get it.
You are right that in some sectors of education the idea of class sizes are irrelevant – notably college kids or self-motivated students (a very small percentage). This is not what you will find in your typical overfull and run down rural school.
> The reason why blacks, Indians and Coloureds have historically lived so far from their workplaces is that the apartheid government (literally) forced them out of urban centres and onto the periphery of urban areas.
The reason why most black people historically lived far from business centres was because they were spread around the country (This was the same for white Afrikaans people in the beginning of the century).
At least in Gauteng, business centers arose around mining sites and are unnaturally densely packed around this. By the way, look at groups such as Venda’s, N. Sothos, etc… They were historically far from business centers, not because they were moved there by the Apartheid government, but because there was not big industrial development in the area that they historically lived (such as a town which grew from mining roots).
> Transport infrastructure was neglected for 20 years, starting in the 1980's, and continuing under Mandela and much of Mbeki's tenure.
Again, this is debatable. Quality of roads in rural areas rapidly declined in the last 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact that the provincial governments and local governments lost almost all capacity to function (again, this is truer for rural areas).
> Car-centric urban sprawl also first took hold under the apartheid government (even today, mass transit between the black areas of Soweto and white-flight Sandton, established in the late 70's is nonexistent).
South Africa will always be a car based country as far as passengers go. We simply do not have the high densities needed to form passenger rail networks.
It is however interesting to note that freight rail has almost completely declined in South Africa with most freight transport occurring with trucks (increasing danger). The South African rail company (Transnet) is also a corrupt ANC cadre cesspool.
> why was did that government have to run up massive deficits to support the system?
The Apartheid government did not have to run up massive deficits to support that system. The deficits were created by defence spending (which was in the 80ies around 10% of GDP) and things such as sanctions.
> Communist countries also enjoyed low unemployment, just as Apartheid South Africa did, thanks to similarly massive misallocations of resources, and coercion, in pursuit of a failed ideology.
Yet, in 1994 SA’s economy was 50% the size of the whole sub-Sahara Africa’s economy. Whilst many of those countries followed a Marxist ideology, SA still remains the only industrialised country on the continent.
> The only place where pro-apartheid revisionism gets much currency is in obscure corners of the internet.
Look. Your argument is now “something is bad because someone said so”. I said at the beginning of this post that I do not see Apartheid as good, but I do not see the new government as good (Majority democracy failed horribly in South Africa). Or do you describe a government that presides over a 15 year drop in life expectancy as “good”?
I also do not care about moralizing. As an example, Singapore was ruled by a dictator and the PAP political party ever since it existed. They are generally condemned by people who take the (western) moral outlook and whatnot. Yet it is one of the most developed countries in the world with a higher standard of living than any of its more politically correct neighbours. When cold and hard statistics and facts are used, Singapore is one of the best governed countries in the world – and much better developed than its neighbours.