> Large numbers of poor/mediocre teachers and small class sizes are not necessarily better than good teachers with larger class sizes.

I suspect that this probably referred to class sizes of 15 (small) and 30 (large). In South Africa, a small class is 35 and a large class is 80. It is quite a difference.

How do you think a teacher would keep rudimentary discipline in such a big class? You cannot even check their homework.

Learning a new language, it is important to talk it. In a class size of 80 people, each person would get 45 seconds to talk or answer a question in a double period (assuming that there was no lesson or any interruption otherwise). Learning a language would be impossible for these people.

> South Africa's densities are low because of apartheid planning. Segregation trumped density or sustaintability.

South Africa’s densities are low because South Africa only industrialized fairly recently and we have a natural low density (40 people per square kilometre).

> The lower life expectancy is due to HIV/Aids and it is similar to neighbouring countries.

I think that you set the bar artificially low when you compare with neighbouring countries (Civilwartorn Mozambique, Mugabe Zimbabwe and the Kleptocracies of Lesotho and Swaziland).

> In the (highly unlikely) event that the Apartheid government had survived, I doubt that the life expectancy figures would have been much better. (And the AIDS epidemic took hold under the apartheid government).

The NP government of De Klerk had a surprisingly good AIDS program (seeing as the disease was then a smaller problem).

You seem to gloss over Mbeki’s AIDS denial (he did not want to give pregnant mothers even Nverapine which would have prevented mother to child transmission of AIDS during birth). The courts had to be used to force the government to change.

Even Harvard University had a study which they claimed that Mbeki’s government at least caused 300,000 deaths. That is genocide. The world would have been up in arms if the Apartheid government had a similar policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/aids-south-afric...

> The Apartheid regime was not viewed as a benevolent dictatorship by the majority of South Africans (or the rest of the world),

So? Neither Singapore (or for that matter, Pinochet’s Chile) is/was viewed as benevolent dictatorships. All things considered, statistically the country was governed better than neighbouring countries.

> Instead, Apartheid was an organised state policy to further the interests of white people, at the expense of all others,

It is ironic that it is middle class white people whose income grew* the most in post-Apartheid South Africa (see again the Knight & XX study I mentioned) while unemployment and real salaries fell for black people.

So, if you complain about the enrichment of white people, the current government is doing a much better job of it. Income inequality increased significantly the past 15 years.

> deliberately dumbed-down black population, to keep them docile.

This is also debatable. The biggest expansion of tertiary education on the African continent (for both black and white people) occurred during the 70ies and 80ies. Even the TIMSS study (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) scores were higher in 1994/1995 than in the newer study. There are numerous international benchmarks which showed that the quality of education declined.