Ouch.
Thank you for explaining this, and I think this unfortunately does pretty much describe reality. In addition, I’ve read it was “thin” policing, meaning in both money and staffing and they tried to make up with brutality.
That's quite true. Ultimately, it was a collection of interlocking problems that led to that point. Proposition 13 in California, which passed in 1978, caused a huge cut in the budgets of the LAPD and LASD just before crack cocaine came to the streets of the city, a bad combination that meant a big rise in property crime (addicts needing to get money for a fix) just as the police presence had to be thinned for budget reasons. As you say, the LAPD fought back through attempting to intimidate those they felt (rightly or wrongly) were part of the crime problem, but this served to grow the gap between the police forces and the people they served.
I'm only an outsider, but it's interesting that what my in-laws say confirms your points. My wife was born in an SA family that had an open anti-apartheid stance since the early 1900s (her great-great uncle was John X Merriman) but when we've been there to visit her family it's been depressing to see the pessimism they now have for the short term prospects of the country and about the ANC's corruption and competence. My wife's cousin was editor of a major opposition newspaper in SA, and I think in the end it was the corruption that wore him down to the stage where he left the country to take up a role with the UNHCR. I can recall going to his place and being warned that he wouldn't answer the door until he was sure it was us, as he had recently had yet more death threats from organised crime. It was an interesting insight into the place.
I'm not surprised by that. South Africa's crime problem is a real one, though in fairness there is something of a disconnect in a way - the police forces in South Africa during apartheid days were regularly used as tools of oppression, and thus the vast majority of the country's population would never call them unless it was absolutely necessary, which is a big help to criminals, and when I was there in 1997 even then vigilantism and tit-for-tat responses to crime were sadly too common, something the government has been trying to sort out since the end of apartheid.
Another in-law is working in teacher education and notes that the apartheidt regime kept the level of education of black teachers so low that fixing things will take more than one generation. It's hard for teachers to lift the education level of the kids when the teachers are poorly educated themselves.
I think that the in-laws would say that the best POD for a more successful post-apartheid SA would ideally start much earlier (which is probably obvious) but with education as perhaps the No. 1 ingredient. While depriving people of education is one way to try to control them, it doesn't seem to be the best way the old regime could have chosen even for their own interests.
I agree. The ideal scenario (as I see it) is for apartheid to disappear by the mid-1970s, because up until that point the country's economic growth post-WWII had been very, very quick and had by the 1960s created a sizable middle class among all races. In 1970 SA had an unemployment across all races in the single digits (it stayed this way until 1981 according to government statistics, though this is again probably an underestimate) and while as you say there was a vast disconnect between the whites (who had a higher standard of living than just about anywhere else in the world at that point), by the 1960s even blacks were benefitting too, even as the leadership of Hendrik Verwoerd pushed for the idea of ultimately pushing blacks out to the Bantu countries with the long-term goal of them getting independence. (I've never thought this workable, as these small, resource-poor countries would always struggle to advance themselves in meaningful ways.) South Africa's powerful trade unions came during this time period as well.
As I see it, ideally Pretoria would realize by the 1960s that the idea of total apartheid is unworkable - how do you have blacks working with whites but not having any contact with them aside from that? - and instead advance the idea of them being the African state that is well run, not having to deal with Marxist-leaning governments (which were depressingly common in Africa during that time period) or colonialism, as was the case in Angola and Mozambique (and, to a point, Rhodesia as well). The idea would be best described as "In South Africa, we're making things bigger and better for everyone." This would require a major growth in the country's educational system starting in the 1960s, but financially this is doable. Start off the process of fixing the infrastructure issues by scrapping the Group Areas Act (which by 1970 was starting to be ignored in any case) and extending services to as many of the underserved areas as possible. Toss the pass laws immediately, and as quickly as is feasible scrap the petty apartheid laws (some will be able to be shed earlier than others, as South Africa was and is still somewhat of a conservative country when it comes to social norms, so the laws over the likes of interracial marriages may be more tough to scrap than others) and the most troublesome aspects of segregation - gathering places, public transportation, parks and recreational facilities, hospitals and ambulances - and allow police officers of all races to do their jobs without worrying about the skin color of those they interacted with. (As ridiculous as it sounds, black South African police officers couldn't arrest whites until the end of apartheid. Like, how do they enforce the law then?)
