SOUTH AFRICAN SUNTAN

CROSSROADS, South Africa : South African blacks still waiting. The End of Apartheid, but for most, few economic gains-

The end of apartheid was supposed to be a beginning:
Judith Sikcade envisioned escaping the township, where the government had forced black people to live.

She aimed to find work in Cape Town, trading her shack for a hoe with modern conveniences.

*More than two decades later, Ms. Sikade, 60, lives in the garbage-strewn dirt of Crossroads township-

Where thousands of black families have used splintered boards and metal sheets to construct airless hovels for lack of anywhere else to live.

''I've gone from a shack to shack,'' Ms. Sikade says. ''I'm fighting for everything I've have. You still are living in apartheid.''

IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS, South Africa lays claim to a momentous achievement -the demolition of apartheid and the construction of a democracy.

But for Black South Africans, who account for three-fourths of this nation of roughly 55 million people, political liberation has yet to translate into broad material gains.

Apartheid has essentially persisted in economic form:

This reality is palpable as now seizes South Africa. Just recently, Enraged protectors demand the ouster President Jacob Zuma over disclosures of corruption so high-level that it is often described as-

State capture, with private interests having effectively purchased the power to divert state resources in their direction.

The economy keels in recession, worsening an official unemployment rate reaching nearly 28 percent.

Underlying the anger are  deep-seated  disparities in wealth.

In the aftermath of apartheid, the government land and other assets largely in the hands of a predominantly white elite.

The government's resistance to large-scale land transfers reflected its resistance to rattle international investors.

Today, millions of black South Africans are chronically short of capital needed to start businesses. Less than half of the working age population is officially employed.

The government party, the African National Congress, built empires of new housing for black South Africans, but concentrated it in the townships, reinforcing the geographic strictures of apartheid.

Large swaths of the black population remain hunkered down in squalor, on land they legally do not own.