The relatively short period from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s was a watershed in global and national politics. The fall of the Berlin Wall signified a dramatic transformation of the global geo-political landscape. At the same time South Africa entered a decisively new historical epoch. The political stalemate and relative quiescence that followed the introduction of the national state of emergency in 1986 came to an end in 1988. Heavy repression had failed to break the anti-apartheid movement, although township organisations had suffered some setbacks. Buttressed by the growing power of the trade union movement, especially the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the township-based organisations experienced a revival in late 1988 and embarked on a new wave of defiance campaigns. Faced with a rejuvenated liberation movement, deepening economic crisis and increasing international isolation the National Party (NP) was forced to reassess its strategy. In 1989 the cantankerous and autocratic P.W. Botha was replaced with the more responsive F.W. de Klerk, first as leader of the NP and then as president.

Within months of his accession to power, De Klerk, an erstwhile conservative, announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), as well as the release of Nelson Mandela. February 1990 heralded the dawning of a new era in South Africa. Over the next four years the ANC and the NP engaged in a process of intense negotiations that aimed to produce a new democratic dispensation for the country. However, the final years of apartheid were also marked by the outbreak of unprecedented violence in the Reef townships. The road to democracy was thus strewn with conflict and roadblocks of contestation, which were shaped by struggles over power and competing ideologies. At stake was the nature and character of post-apartheid South Africa. As national political parties busied themselves with constructing a new socio-political identity for the country, the people of Alexandra also embarked on a road of defining the township's identity and character. This local process was equally complex and contested but the local permutations of the national processes were shaped by the distinctive history of the township and the peculiar set of circumstances that existed there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.