READER LETTER | Apartheid’s shadows linger

The irony of SA’s democracy is that while rights expanded—especially gender rights — the majority remained trapped in the same constrained spaces of apartheid. Townships, informal settlements and overcrowded urban areas continue to define black life. Without physical liberation, rights become hollow.

How can there be equality when the majority are still trapped in the same constrained spaces of apartheid? And how can there be freedom when such conditions reproduce the same destructive outcomes? The failure to dismantle apartheid’s structural geography has produced predictable crises: These outcomes are not accidental; they are the outputs of apartheid reproduced under a democracy that delivered rhetoric rather than transformation. — Khotso KD Moleko, Mangaung