Despite the desperate situation in 1985-1986, important social and economic changes were occurring behind the scenes.

High economic growth during the 1960s and 1970s and reforms during the 1980s resulted in:

• accelerated black urbanization that seriously undermined any possibility of territorial separation and separate development;
• a steady increase in the black share of personal income from 28% in 1970 to almost 50% in 1994;
• the legalisation of black trade unions;
• rapid growth of the black informal sector which included 650 000 businesses in the mid-1980s;
• an increase in black matric passes from 15 000 in 1980 to more than 200 000 in 1994; and
• a 58% majority of black, “coloured”, and Indian students at South African universities by 1994.

At the same time, a whole generation of Afrikaners had migrated to the middle class by the mid-1980s. They were going to university, were travelling overseas, and felt increasingly uncomfortable with apartheid.