Most powers would be diffused among under-financed and ill-equipped 'ethnic' governments, with only the whites able to profit and prosper, much as they always have. A certain price would have to be paid for such flummoxery, of course: prestigious and high-paying offices for complaisant black politicians and changes in the apartheid laws, of which they, as well as their followers and constituents, were frequently victims. The process began in 1975.