Rarely has that conclusion been expressed more forcefully than in recent days when Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate once at the forefront of the fight against apartheid, issued his sharpest yet denunciation of the government, comparing it pejoratively with its apartheid predecessor.
To ensure he was read outside his own country he wrote first in Afrikaans, then in English, producing a series of internationally admired, prizewinning novels dealing with apartheid issues: Rumours of Rain (1978), A Dry White Season (1979) and A Chain of Voices (1981).
"Under apartheid, the issue was race and resistance," Mr. Attwell said.
This two-part exhibition traces what its curators call a "post-identity" development in South African art since the end of apartheid, with issues of class, race and gender subsumed under other personal or abstract concerns.
In his support for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), as a powerful public movement like that which abolished slavery and tackled apartheid, Nelson Mandela issued this call in 2005, "Millions of people in the world's poorest countries remain imprisoned, enslaved - they are trapped in the prison of poverty.
For one thing, it was not a black and white issue: apartheid viciously divided society into "natives", "whites", "coloureds" and "Asians".
Apart from his battles to unite the unions he was also a champion of womens' rights and a harsh critic of racism, in particular of apartheid; they were issues he continued to fight for in retirement.
It was made by F. W. de Klerk, president under the last apartheid government, who issued an internal order to dismantle the nuclear arsenal in 1990 and disclosed that decision to Parliament in 1993.
Other elected officials here have had their own issues: apartheid in the old South Africa, relations with Fidel Castro's Cuba, the shelling of Vieques island by the United States military, to list a few.
