Another situation that helped get educated youth involved in movements was the global atmosphere in the late 1980s when governments were collapsing in Eastern Europe. as people pushed for an end to socialism, which looked strikingly like "an unmentioned story happening right in our backyard" (Poplak, 296), as the same types of protests occurred in the streets of Johannesburg and other major metropolitan areas in South Africa. It was the will of this single individual that led to the education reform movements throughout the later life of apartheid, as now younger as well as more educated students became an integral part of the movement progressive who would elect Mandela as the first president of the Southern Republic.