I have American centered myopia, but I can grudgingly admit, that in the face of their persecution and impending genocide, non-democratic racist apartheid was far preferable for the Afrikaners. Abandoning it really was a naive betrayal of their own people. At the level of existential conflict, the only morality that matters is your own survival and loyalty to the tribe. The Afrikaners have been there as long as whites have been in the United States. Under the same rubric we should be forced to give up all our belongings and property to Native Americans or blacks. I'd much rather kill or die than do that, whatever moral argument you could come up with, legit or not.
It's humiliating, but in many ways, I'm sure the Africans were better off economically under apartheid, and without European colonialism they would still be small scale agriculturalists or hunter-gatherers. I might differ in that I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I'm not sure modern South Africans are willing to pick up the spear again, and they're obviously in many ways dependent on whites to maintain the infrastructure of modernity.
Perhaps the ultimate lesson is, it's a bad idea in the long term to place yourself as a domineering minority where you will have to exploit an alien majority to enrich yourself and maintain order...especially across racial lines...eventually there will be some kind of uprising. And if you must, there's no sense in being half-way evil, "humane" oppression will still be unforgiven.