>I imply nothing and the statement is a simple, albeit troubling, fact
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.
It's unreasonable to expect people to take a statement in support of a fundamentally racist institution as not being racist. People aren't "triggered" for making that connection and they aren't "shutting down the conversation" for calling out the racism inherent in such a statement.
It's incredibly easy to have a conversation about how to improve SA without taking needless diversions to support racist institutions. All you have to do is talk about potential solutions to current problems. That's it. That's all it takes.
Bringing up historical racist institutions is a good way to derail and shut down reasonable discussion.
Words have implications. This is one of those fallacious "but it's true" things, where it honestly becomes difficult to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt - i.e. that you think the phrase "South Africa was [insert anything positive] under Apartheid", by itself, has no possible implications.