So, they won’t even approach a conversation trying to determine the actual causes of decline because they feel any possible explanation is going to be racism-adjacent.
It kept a vast part of the country outside of the education needed to work the jobs that produce the highest values (finance, business, etc).
So yeah the "observation" is correct, except the implication of it is not.
Note that I imply nothing and the statement is a simple, albeit troubling, fact.
How do you propose that the discussion of decline in South Africa is framed so it doesn’t devolve into people screaming “that’s racist!!”?
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.
Reframe the statement so some discussion on decline can proceed without triggering anyone.
It's incredibly easy to have a conversation about how to improve SA without taking needless diversions to support racist institutions. All you have to do is talk about potential solutions to current problems. That's it. That's all it takes.
Bringing up historical racist institutions is a good way to derail and shut down reasonable discussion.
Other African nations that didn't have Apartheid or similar institutions have similar economic and political results. And even the one sub Saharan nation that didn't experience colonization, Ethiopia, isn't screaming ahead of its neighbors economically or otherwise. Its GDP per capita is slightly ahead of Uganda's and fairly far below Kenya's.
Countries that have developed in the last 60 years tend to have strong authoritarian leaders and the favor and interest of Europe and the United States.
Ethopia does have natural resources but it doesn't have a strong central government, partly because the warring factions want control of the resources. Places like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar had strong dictators before they developed the petroleum industry. African states that have oil tend to be too weak politically to resist outside interests taking the wealth by paying bribes and funding warring factions.
Also what point are you trying to make here? You seem to be implying a common cause for these results. Care to explicitly state it?
Sometimes when the house is on fire, you just get everybody out. Instead of 'waiting for the fire brigade' or 'somebody smarter than you needs to make that decision'.
I'd hate to be that generation of young people condemned to a violently racist system because, it was going to be difficult for the rich to adjust.
And now, Joeburg is on fire and the fire department is no longer able to put out the fire because of incompetence and mismanagement.