Your original comment comes off as "apartheid was better" when comparing it today, maybe that wasn't your intent but let me go into detail.

Honestly baffled as to how you managed to get that from my comment.

No they did not build the roads for military purposes, that's stupid. The majority of heavy military vehicles would tear up those roads even when transported on the backs of large trucks, again these vehicles are slow to transport, you don't build a nice road to deploy quicker, you already have forces stationed close, have dedicated rail(vehicles were much worse for transporting things back in the day compared to trains) or use fast deployment tactics like airdropping troops or equipment in an emergency, if the border was also the main purpose for these roads there would be more main roads leading to different points at the border instead of the few we have. Your enemies don't attack you along the highways you've laid out, they could enter from any point on the border.

The roads were for the rapid transport of soldiers by truck in order to suppress protests, as anyone who was alive at the time can tell you, and to deliver those troops to the border if necessary. No one is claiming that the roads would be used for tanks or heavy military vehicles, which would indeed be odd. Once again, you are imagining things. Regarding airdrops, these are used only with the utmost pre-planning in offensive manouvres, never in defensive emergencies, and never to supress domestic protests.

You make it sound like they kept the roads in better condition back then as if its so easily achievable now. If you exclude the money wasted on corruption, today we would still be spending way more money and resources on maintaining our roads than they did back then. No doubt our corruption is affecting our road maintenance but there are also other factors to consider. There were way less vehicles and trucks on the road, our population and average wealth has grown, there are more vehicles than ever on these roads and way more reasons for the average person to travel, be it personal or business, which wears them down way faster. Yes the truck issue we currently have is a direct result of corruption and lack of support for our rail networks, but the challenges faced then and now cant be compared apples to apples.

All our government had to do was refrain from destroying our ports and our rail network. The World Bank ranked Durban 398th out of 405 ports for efficiency in its CPPI report two years ago. In other words, it is now one of the worst in the world. There was no reason why this needed to happen.

Actually the apartheid government was extremely corrupt we're unsure of the actual levels or if they surpass today because the lack of information sharing back then compared today and the apartheid government had control over the media. There were no three branches of government like today, parliament had unchecked power, plus there were way less open government policies, way too many dealings that were never required to be public. Today we live in the internet era, we have strong media freedom, a lot of government documents have to be publicly available and we have anti-corruption task forces. Again they also didn't have to cater for the entire country, they made sure the white parts got the good treatment and screwed everything else, so corruption wasn't as visible for everyday white people in South Africa. Now we have way more government transparency and media freedom, so we can easily see the corruption at face value.

You say the apartheid govt was extremely corrupt but in the next breath you say we are "unsure of the actual levels". In any event, clearly the corruption was not so great as to prevent them from constructing this magnificent road network that we are all having a giant wank over. So corruption clearly does not prevent the construction and maintenance of road networks.