MANDISA MASHEGO CLAIMS APARTHEID DEVELOPED SOUTH AFRICA

This is perhaps the most cynical claim of all. Yes, black people had jobs under apartheid. They also had no minimum wage, no meaningful labour rights, and no legal protection from exploitation. They were paid wages deliberately suppressed to keep white businesses profitable — a system researchers have accurately described as legalised economic slavery.

The apartheid city planning framework deliberately kept black workers like those in Soweto physically separated from employment hubs, ensuring they remained cheap, controllable labour. Being employed under those conditions is not a metric of national success. It is evidence of systemic exploitation. Celebrating apartheid-era employment figures is celebrating the efficiency of a system that stripped black workers of their dignity and kept the profits firmly in white hands.

This one is particularly telling because it reveals exactly how little Mandisa Mashego understands, or cares, about what life actually looked like for black South Africans.

Apartheid crime statistics were collected almost exclusively from white neighbourhoods. Crimes committed against black people in townships and rural areas were routinely ignored, unreported, and unrecorded. Research has consistently shown that historical distrust between the police and black communities led to massive underreporting with upwards of 50% of crimes in many categories going unreported even in the post-apartheid era, a direct legacy of decades of dismissal.

• The apartheid government didn't reduce crime. It simply decided that crimes against black people didn't count. The police weren't protecting communities — in the townships, they were the threat.

Research has further found that the apartheid state actively sponsored township violence, state-backed atrocities that never appeared in any official crime count. The rule of law was not upheld during apartheid. It was weaponised against black people, by design. Today's crime statistics reflect a country where black lives are considered worth recording. That is not a sign of deterioration. That is, at minimum, a sign of recognition.

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 is one of the most thoroughly documented acts of deliberate intellectual sabotage in modern history. It was not a school system. It was a containment system. Hendrik Verwoerd (The architect of apartheid) was explicit about its purpose. He stated:

• "There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?"

The curriculum was designed to produce workers who could follow instructions, not thinkers who could challenge the system. Black schools were severely underfunded, operating on taxes paid by black South Africans themselves, taxes that were never reinvested at the level required. Only one third of black teachers were even qualified.

The schools were not competent. Calling them competent is an insult to every black child who was deliberately denied a real education under that system.

The death penalty under apartheid was not a public safety measure. It was a political weapon. It was used to silence, intimidate, and eliminate black freedom fighters — activists, organisers, and anyone who dared resist the system. They were protecting white minority rule from the people those communities produced.

Mandisa Mashego is not a random social media influencer. She is a former senior politician who sat in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. She has a track record of making explosive, unsubstantiated public claims — a Johannesburg High Court recently found her guilty of defamation after she made false allegations against Unisa, ordering her to pay R550,000 in damages. She also faces a separate R1 million lawsuit from Unisa for other remarks made on The Penuel Show.

A pattern of spreading misinformation is not incidental to her brand. It appears to be central to it. And when that misinformation romanticises one of the most violent, dehumanising systems in human history — on behalf of a government that oppressed the very people she claims to represent — it is not just provocative commentary. It is the regurgitation of white supremacist talking points, dressed up in the voice of a black woman to make them more palatable and harder to challenge.

Disclaimer:

I am not your therapist, attorney, or doctor. I cannot diagnose you, represent you, prescribe anything, or replace professional support. What I can offer in good faith is a thoughtful perspective from someone who understands the social, cultural, and political landscape most of us are navigating in South Africa, without judgment, without an agenda, and without compensation.