An amplifier of these disparities is that children and adolescents living in townships have almost zero access to psychologists and psychiatrists (mainly due to the acute shortage of both professionals in the public health sector: with only 0.02 psychiatrists and 0.32 psychologists per 100,000 people in government health facilities alongside other social and financial deterrents)((Yarrow, P., & Cohen, R. This means that mental health indicators measured across racial groups match the asymmetrical distribution of wealth and material resources that were intentionally skewed by the policies intended to exclude non-white South Africans during apartheid, with obvious spillover effects. Mental Health Inequalities in Adolescents Growing Up in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Cross-Sectional Survey, SHaW Study.

Unsurprisingly, mental health disparities in South Africa resemble material inequality that run along racial and ethnic lines((Das-Munshi, J., Lund, C., Mathews, C., Clark, C., Rothon, C., & Stansfeld, S.

25 years of freedom have failed to bridge the divide. South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. In 2019, the World Bank recognized South Africa as the most unequal society in the world((Scott, K. This does not, however, erase the haunting legacy of apartheid that continues to actively disempower Black and Coloured communities that inherited structural confines of poverty-stricken and violence-ridden living environments. A little shy of three decades old, South Africa’s democracy has much to boast about, such as its vibrance in multiculturalism and unity through the spirit of ubuntu. It traces its inception to South Africa’s own process of economic urbanization and acquired its defining characteristics from the apartheid eras’ systematic policies of racial and spatial segregation. “Township” is a term that is synonymous with black urban dwelling.

Define township in south africa