CHAPTER
7
Apartheidin Crisis.
1978-1989
By 1978, the apartheid state was in trouble. South Africa's
economic boom of the 1960s and early 1970s had been fol-
lowed by a sharp recession. The administration of the complex
network of apartheid laws was proving to be extremely costly.
Inflation was running at over 10 percent. The increase in the
gross domestic product was scarcely keeping up with the in-
crease in the population, and many white people were becom-
ing poorer. There was also a shortage of the skilled labor
needed to run private industry and the bureaucracy. That short-
age was accentuated by the fact that in 1977, for the first time,
there was a net white emigration from South Africa-largely
of professionals
and men and women with much-needed
managerial
and industrial experience. Moreover, the black
population was increasing at a far greater rate than the white
population and demographers were forecasting a rapid decline
in the white proportion of the total population of South Africa.
It had already dropped from its peak of 2 I percent to 16
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