White neighborhoods are becoming darker in (1) ______ and more expensive. (1) ______.
Analysts say that soaring house prices and booming car sales are being fueled
by an (2) ______ mobile black middle class (2) ______.
emerging from the ashes of (3) ______. (3) ______.
Blacks, who make up about 75 percent of South Africa’s 46.6 million people,
are moving from the (4) ______ of the economy into the mainstream (4) ______.
thanks to policies aimed at redressing decades of injustice.
Statistics compiled by the independent Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC. show that the black middle class
has (5) ______ to 7.8 percent of the total population in 2000 from 3.3 percent in 1994. (5) ______.
"The development of a black middle class was deliberately stunted under segregation and apartheid," said the HSRC’s
Roger Southall.
Although official figures are not (6) ______, (6) ______.
analysts say the black middle class is behind the retail sales boom and strong house price growth.
Before 1994, blacks were (7) ______ by legislation from owning properties in suburbs exclusively reserved for whites
and had limited access to bank credit. (7) ______.
But the face of the former white suburbs has changed as blacks (8) ______ move from the townships in search of
security and better municipal services. (8) ______.
Living in posh suburbs is seen by many as a status symbol.
"The black middle class is (9) ______ strongly to the growth of the property market and other sectors of the economy,"
says Jacques du Toit, an economist at banking group Absa. (9) ______.
House prices rose by an (10) ______ of 30.3 percent in real terms in 2004, (10) ______.
the highest since 1967, and business is also booming for auto traders, with a growing number of sales attributed to
black buyers.