ABSTRACT
The convergence of race and class has shaped South African economic and political history; the response to changing racial and class structures will ultimately determine the outcome of the confrontation. In the 1970s, South African citizenship was taken away from millions of rural and urban blacks and replaced with the citizenship of a particular "independent" homeland, and four homelands have so far been granted "independence": Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981. The growth of militant worker and youth organizations was a clear indication that banning the African nationalist movements had not terminated black resistance. By 1989, the South African government was able to maintain an uneasy semblance of stability by renewing the existing state of emergency, banning or curtailing a number of black political and labor organizations, and by stifling press freedoms. Revolutionary conditions in South Africa are driven by a combination of political, economic, social, and demographic factors.
