Been to SA 3 times, have a number of South African friends (white), and have studied its history and politics pretty closely. Pains me to say it but AP is about 100% correct.
Change had to happen and quickly. Quotas in sport and business sped up that change. But still millions are without work. Not helped by having poor war ridden or poorly governed countries like Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe nearby with economic refugees flooding into SA.
The biggest downfall for whites has been huge increase in violent crime. That won’t drop significantly until big drop in unemployment, and higher average wages for blacks. Until then an unemployed, low educated black guy, who may have say lost his parents to HIV, will be tempted to grab a gun when he sees a white person or middle class black drive a nice European car. Not excusing all South Africa’s criminals - but have sympathy for some, when their future seems hopeless.
On the positive front the Springboks have just appointed their first black (not coloured) captain, who was raised in a poor township. Also seemingly an appointment completely on merit by a white coach (who replaced a black coach).
Then their cricket team has a young black fast bowler (Rabada), who when not suspended is already one of the worlds best.
The sports quota process has undoubtedly sped up the increasing merit selections of blacks in top level SA sport.
Why has the quota process sped this up? It might have encouraged young black people to try the sport, seeing a black person playing it on the tv, which is nice, but that's not a speed-up of anything, just an encouragement for black people to play rugby, which was not the issue being addressed.
See the Willemse furore recently? The bitterness there from a famous former player? Still now fighting for his dignity, having to prove that he was a merit-based selection, which we don't know if he was or not. Reduced to tears on national tv, refusing to be on camera with white guys involved in those selections. Quotas have been going for 30 years and they're still arguing about the injustice of it all.
I remember there was a white flanker in the news constantly in the 90s/2000s for not getting picked, always complaining the quota was keeping him down. Great headline grabber for the media at the time.
The media didn't want quotas to work, they just wanted salacious headlines, and they got em from quotas.
FYI Ntini precluded Rabada by quite a few years in terms of being one of the world's best bowlers for SA, and being black. And unfortunately he had to battle quota-talk in his first few seasons, before people accepted that yes, he was actually good enough.
All the black players wanted was equality-of-opportunity, to not be left out due to skin colour, not to be included arbitrarily because of skin colour. They didn't want quotas themselves, it's damaging to be considered a quota player, it's not good by any stretch. The reason Chester Williams was so loved was because he was clearly good enough to be there, not because he was some Eric the Eel getting to have a cute little try with the big boys.
Basically I don't see any connection between enforced quotas and merit-based selection. One does not naturally lead to the other. At some point quotas have to be stopped, and only then does fairness result. People being selected on merit now, are not thankful for quotas, they are thankful they aren't part of one.
Equality of Opportunity, not Equality of Outcome.