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[english si]

Although the country was arguably an island until the 90s, it was economically better off than it is now.

Indeed, and South Africa will remain a de facto one-party state for the foreseeable future. Mandela did a lot of good at trying to heal the country and prioritised that over economy, etc. And Mandela's legacy means that anyone who doesn't support the ANC is often hounded for being anti-Mandela/pro-apartheid/whatever smear they can get to stick.

Zuma is more Mugabe (and very friendly towards the former dictator and his aims, even if he disagrees with the excesses like lack of democracy) than Mandela though - hard left, often hostile to white people due to the colour of their skin, corrupt.

As far as I can tell, the National Party didn't really trust the black/colored South Africans to run the country, for fear that they would run them (white South Africans/Afrikaners) out of the country.

They just had to look north at Zimbabwe for those fears to be rational (also 'colored' is a specific term in South Africa and the smallish colored population got some of the issues black people got during apartheid, and some of the issues white people have had since - mostly as they aren't one nor the other, and don't have the clout of white wealth or black population and so are relatively powerless).

Though, unlike Zimbabwe, when mobs went around farms demanding whites leave and killing them if they didn't, the mobs didn't have Government backing.

And the actual emigration of white South Africans more resembled (past tense as the white population has stablised now) American-style white flight: crime rates are way too high, the country is too violent now, etc being the reasons why they have left. Also, affirmative action pushed away the less well-off white people as they found it easier to get jobs in other countries (which means the wealth disparity being whites and blacks is still huge, as the whites that are around are the rich ones who could afford to stay)

[jakeroot]

^^
I used to think that the US was a racial mess ... until I read about South Africa!

I had read that a significant number of Afrikaners left South Africa in the 90s for places like Australia and New Zealand, but I also read that many of them are returning. While Zuma is certainly a piece of work, at least some of the cities have their own governments that keep them in good shape (Cape Town with the DA, for example).

For as much of a mess as the country may seem to be, at least they have good roads! (and public transportation)

[Roadgeekteen]

Because of [apartheid/UN sanctions], South Africa was basely an island until the 90s. Crazy that a country could have something like Jim Crow for so long.

Unlike the US, where the black/colored population is the minority, South Africa is, by far, majority black/colored. The ruling party under Apartheid (the National Party) was worried about loosening laws on voting because the black/colored South Africans heavily favored the ANC, who were not allowed on the ballot. The moment laws were loosened, the ANC would take power, the current politicians would be out of a job, and they would no longer have a say in how the country was run. As far as I can tell, the National Party didn't really trust the black/colored South Africans to run the country, for fear that they would run them (white South Africans/Afrikaners) out of the country. Based on the corruption evident in today's ANC, their fears may have been slightly justified, even if they didn't run them out of the country (although anti-white sentiment is very evident both now and since Mandela took power).

Although the country was arguably an island until the 90s, it was economically better off than it is now.

So it was a dictatorship?

[Brandon]

Because of [apartheid/UN sanctions], South Africa was basely an island until the 90s. Crazy that a country could have something like Jim Crow for so long.

Unlike the US, where the black/colored population is the minority, South Africa is, by far, majority black/colored. The ruling party under Apartheid (the National Party) was worried about loosening laws on voting because the black/colored South Africans heavily favored the ANC, who were not allowed on the ballot. The moment laws were loosened, the ANC would take power, the current politicians would be out of a job, and they would no longer have a say in how the country was run. As far as I can tell, the National Party didn't really trust the black/colored South Africans to run the country, for fear that they would run them (white South Africans/Afrikaners) out of the country. Based on the corruption evident in today's ANC, their fears may have been slightly justified, even if they didn't run them out of the country (although anti-white sentiment is very evident both now and since Mandela took power).

Although the country was arguably an island until the 90s, it was economically better off than it is now.

So it was a dictatorship?

Depends.  If you were anything but white, then yes, it effectively was.  I think the best term might be oligarchy.

[jakeroot]

So [South Africa] was a dictatorship?

Depends.  If you were anything but white, then yes, it effectively was.  I think the best term might be oligarchy.

Definitely classic case of oligarchy. Not quite a dictatorship, though. The NP never held all the assembly seats, and South Africa's PM was chosen by the party (classic parliamentary democracy). It was just that the rest of the country couldn't participate in the voting process.

[skluth]

Although the country was arguably an island until the 90s, it was economically better off than it is now.

South Africa has had a pretty steady growth rate since the end of Apartheid. There are fewer civil service jobs for whites as blacks are now eligible for those jobs. There is a growing middle class, including a black middle class. All those nice new roads exist because SA is doing well economically, especially compared to much of Africa.

There are still significant problems with poverty and crime. It's much like India in that while the country is doing well and the middle class is growing, that wealth has not reached most of the most disadvantaged. At least now that wealth isn't just limited to one self-selected group of people.

[J N Winkler]

Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana have similar traffic lights and markings, hence my curiosty surrounding some sort of convention governing road standards in the south of Africa.

Those three (and Namibia) were either colonies of (on behalf of the UK), or part of, South Africa until the 1960s (or 1990 in Namibia's case). And since then there has been close economic cooperation among them which might have some governance.

Either that, or, more likely, the smaller countries have complied with the Vienna convention from back in the 60s when they weren't independent, even though they haven't signed the treaty.

South Africa and a number of its neighbors are members of the Southern African Development Community.  There is a SADC traffic signing manual that functions as a regional MUTCD equivalent, though the extent to which it is followed in the poorer countries varies, and even South Africa has (or used to have) a significant overhang of old signing from previous systems, such as a pre-Worboys-ish system that was used before the 1960's and US/Australian-style signing (with FHWA alphabet series) that was used from the 1970's to the 1990's.  Current direction signing is very German-influenced and uses the DIN typefaces.

The current South African traffic signing manual runs to about 4000 pages spread across four volumes.  I have found versions of it on the NDOT and SANRAL websites.  For the convenience of volume-by-volume download, I'd go for the latter; NDOT has chopped it into pieces of a few dozen pages each.  (If the SANRAL link doesn't work--they seem to insist on putting a session ID in the URL--just go to the main page and follow bread crumb trail Service Provider Zone --> Manuals, Policies, Technical Specifications.)

IMV, South Africa's manual is too long and too complex.  As long as there is a reasonably strong and self-renewing community of practitioners able to apply it correctly, this is tolerable, but I believe it is also reflective of a tendency in South African administrative culture generally that feeds illegality by making it too difficult to follow the rules.