Long post. South African here. I'm a 23 year old male, Indian. For context; Indians were brought here as slaves and there are a lot of us here now so we go by Indian for convenience, although most of us younger ones are quick to point out that we are, in fact, South African when asked online or by people overseas. So when I say Indian in this post, I specifically mean South African Indians.

SA is around +70% black and it hasn't been very long since apartheid was abolished. Naturally most of our poor people are black simply because of the sheer number of black people compared to other races. It gets more complicated when you break it down between ethnic different (Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho etc) because certain groups are concentrated more in different areas. Basically what you hear about SA is true, but it isn't the whole truth. The rural areas here can be incredibly rural, and the shantytowns (we call them squatter camps, jhondol in Zulu) exist. But many of the ones you've heard of or seen online are close to big cities.

Parts of our CBDs can be very crowded, messy and violent. In contrast with other business areas which actually look really incredible (Umhlanga in Durban, Rosebank in Joburg) so to understand why the poor areas exist you have to understand that the wealth gap in SA is ridiculous because it shows very clearly.

Of course, not all blacks and Indians and coloureds (separate ethnic group, not racial slur) are poor. And depending on where you are, the racism is either apparent, existent, or hushed. It's never institutionalised or legal as it used to be. But it's still there, especially among older people. And I mean people older than me. So 40s and up.

SA is different mostly because people aren't restricted from going anywhere because of their race. So we tend to be very mixed and you'll see a lot of different races if you're in one of the cities. But as you start to leave the nicer areas, you'll see less white and Indian people. But as for racism going away...no.

A big reason for many of the current issues with SA is that the majority of voting adults aren't tax payers. Which screws up the system a lot. So if you decide to ask this question in /r/southafrica you're going to get responses like this about it having well developed areas and underdeveloped areas, with the societal racism existing under the surface but not quite gone away. And it will never go away, but it is less in more cosmopolitan areas.