In the townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg and Pretoria, where the urban black labor force is required by law to live, many of the roads are littered, unpaved and scarred with potholes. Increasingly, however, they lead to the gates of grandiose homes built amid the matchbox slums by a new class of upwardly mobile black professionals and entrepreneurs known, like their American counterparts, as "buppies." Inside exclusive enclaves with up- market names like Siluma View and Beverly Hills, the new black elite is enjoying amenities once reserved for whites only: "his" and "hers" Mercedes, live-in black servants, Jacuzzi baths.
This newly affluent class is spearheading a peaceful but dramatic revolution in which blacks, who outnumber whites nearly 5 to 1 in South Africa, are starting to flex their economic muscle as earners and consumers. Blacks will pay an estimated total of $350 million in taxes this year, up from $58 million two years ago. Increasing numbers of blacks are working in middle-class professions as lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, engineers, tax consultants and stockbrokers. Black businesses, large and small, are sprouting like mushrooms. The South African Black Taxi Association, for example, has increased its + membership fivefold, to 45,000, since 1983 and last year made an abortive $75 million bid to take over the country's largest white-owned bus company. Last month the black-owned Soweto Investment Trust Co. acquired PepsiCo's independent South African subsidiary for $2 million.
The rise in black purchasing power is having a marked impact on the national economy. More and more companies are boosting their sales figures by targeting their products to the black consumer, who now buys almost half of all items sold at retail. Kellogg's, one of the few U.S.-linked companies that continue to maintain a high profile in South Africa, last year established an annual "excellence in achievement award" to encourage black entrepreneurship. New organizations, such as the Business Achievers Foundation and the Black Management Forum, are promoting black business and financial interests.
Black-owned shopping centers are fast replacing the corner groceries and market stalls that until recently were the main stores catering to township residents. The new $2.8 million Lesedi City mall, east of Johannesburg, the largest yet built in any urban black area, houses 53 black businesses, including a supermarket, video library, disco and off-track betting parlor, as well as the local witch doctor and herbalist. Says Lesedi City Developer Gray Thathane, 56: "That's the march to freedom."