Apartheid's long shadow: while South Africa has made great progress in the last two decades, it's still struggling to deal with the legacies of apartheid.

• Author: Dugger, Celia W.
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

Last year, seniors at Kwamfundo high school, outside of Cape Town, sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff lounge because their accounting teacher had once again failed to show up for class. With national examinations coming up that would determine whether they could go to college, they demanded a replacement.

"We kept waiting, and there was no action," says Masixole Mabetshe, who failed the exams and now, without a job, passes the days watching TV.

Thousands of schools across South Africa are filled with students who dream of being the accountants, engineers, and doctors this country desperately needs, but the education system is often failing the very children depending on it most to escape poverty.

So much so that South Africa is at grave risk, analysts say, of entrenching its racial and class divide rather than bridging it. Half the country's students never make it to 12th grade. Though some formerly all-white suburban schools are excellent, many students who attend rural and township schools are so badly educated that they qualify for little but menial labor, fueling the nation's high rates of unemployment and crime.

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The inequality that persists in South Africa's schools today has its roots in apartheid, the government-run system of rigid racial segregation that was in place for much of the 20th century: In a nation that was then 70 percent black, a white minority ruled, denying blacks basic rights and essentially treating them as aliens in their own land.

THE END OF APARTHEID

In the late 1980s, the South African government came under increasing pressure to end apartheid. Many countries, including the U.S., imposed economic sanctions on South Africa to pressure it to change, and its athletes were barred from the Olympics and most international competitions.

Things began to change in 1990 when the government legalized black political groups like the African National Congress; freed A.N.C. leader Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison (see p. 13); and began negotiations toward majority rule.

Apartheid officially ended in 1991, and three years later, South Africans elected a new government. Some feared a racial bloodbath when white rule ended, with blacks taking revenge for past injustices. Instead, South Africans embraced their new political power, with nearly 90 percent of those eligible casting ballots. Mandela was elected President.

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Since then, South Africa has held four national elections and has enjoyed a functioning judicial system. South Africa boasts the continent's largest economy and the 17th-largest stock exchange in the world. It has an abundance of natural resources that it exports--including diamonds, gold, and platinum--and a modern infrastructure in much of the country. Considered the superpower of Africa, South Africa regularly sends troops for peacekeeping missions elsewhere on the continent.

AIDS, CRIME, STRUGGLING SCHOOLS

But South Africa also faces many challenges. Almost a quarter of its workforce is unemployed. While its economy is the envy of most of the continent, about half of South Africans still live in poverty, many in overcrowded townships with poor services. One out of every seven adults is infected with HIV, the...