THEAPARTHEIDERA
ficial estimates are much higher. The head of the Community Health De-
partment at the South African medical school for Africans said that in
1982, 110,000
people had active TB in South Africa, while about
10
million had it in dormant form, and that 82 percent of these were Africans.
Moreover, though TB was decreasing among Whites (whose children were
routinely inoculated against it), it was increasing among Blacks. Other
infectious diseases included typhoid fever (more than three thousand cases
reported annually), typhus, measles (which was.often fatal among under-
nourished children), and rheumatic fever.Venereal diseases were prevalent.
There were also epidemics of cholera, polio, and bubonic plague, while
trachoma was endemic in the northern Transvaal. Many mine workers
suffered disabling injuries or contracted lung diseases. In all these cases, the
incidence was higher among Africans than among Coloureds and Asians,
and far higher than among Whites. 3 8
Apartheid society was also ridden with mental stress and violence.
Suicides were exceptionally frequent among white South Africans.I"
Murder was a frequent cause of death among Africans and Coloureds."?
South African society was very different from the benign picture produced