ABSTRACT
South Africa is the most powerful country in Southern Africa. This chapter explores how the various cultural groups came to populate the country, how the white government has utilized pluralism to maintain its power and the methods with which blacks have sought to overcome ethnic diversity to achieve majority rule. Meeting the needs of powerful pluralistic society is the challenge which will determine the legitimacy and ultimately the fate of the South African regime. The whites who control the government have sought to retain power and preserve their cultural identity by the formal imposition of apartheid, the systematic separation of races. Recognizing push-pull facts the government has begun to treat South Africa as an “economic unit” notwithstanding official homelands policies. A watershed in the fight for majority rule occurred in 1983 when the government undertook constitutional reform. The Black Local Government Act was designed to have the same divisive effect on urban blacks.
