South Africa is deeply divided along socio-economic lines. According to the World Bank, it is the most unequal society on earth. Broadly, whites who were rich under apartheid - which was scrapped in 1994 - remain rich. The black middle class is growing, but blacks who were poor under apartheid remain so. While racism is no longer the law of the land, its tenets remain, in too many ways, the way South Africa functions. Or doesn't. Rampant government corruption, widespread white resistance to change, and the tendency of the moneyed - old and new, white and black - to insulate themselves from their country's many challenges stymies attempts to build a fairer, better society. Cricket is part of the flotsam and jetsam of all that. The better facilities are in largely white areas. To make their way in the game, black and brown players are all but forced to subject themselves to the comparative outlandishness of what not long ago were all-white elite schools. Affluent families have the means to indulge a younger member's ambition of a career in professional cricket. Poorer families need them to get a proper job in an economy where the unemployment rate rose to 32.1% in the last quarter of 2023, and that's the untrusted government figure.
Telford Vice, ‘How does South Africa fix its broken selection system?’, Cricbuzz
