The student revolts of 1976 were the most dramatic and visible sign of the manner in which the balance of power was starting to shift from the apartheid state, which had held firm control of the nation since the Sharpeville crisis of 1960, to the forces opposing it. In the aftermath of the 1976 crisis, the apartheid rulers devised new strategies to attempt to maintain control: the creation of independent homelands was intended to allow black people to hold ‘citizenship’ and a measure of administrative power; the 1983 Constitution Act established a ‘tricameral’ parliament, in which Indians and coloureds would have their own legislative houses and which was to replace the all-white legislature. For public service professionals such as Rive, one of the consequences of this strategy to divide and co-opt was that salaries suddenly increased dramatically at the start of the 1980s. But while this widened an existing class divide within oppressed communities – between professionals and skilled workers on the one hand and the mass of semi-skilled and unemployed workers on the other – it failed to buy the allegiance of most intellectuals and activists. The majority of leaders of the oppressed remained implacably opposed to the government's offer of sham citizenship and power sharing.

By the early 1980s there was widespread mobilisation of workers, students and activists in South Africa against the various policies of the state. Among the liberation movements at home and in exile there was a simultaneous increase in confidence. In the Cape, the Federation of Cape Civic Associations (FCCA), a broad front of neighbourhood civic organisations that were resuscitated or established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was founded by Victor Wessels and his comrades early in 1979, the same year as Wessels's untimely death. Rive made numerous contributions to the activities of a number of FCCA affiliates in the early 1980s, oft en presenting talks on poetry or literature for high school students. He used to have his notes inked on small, ruled index cards and used these as prompts during these talks. The formation in 1983 of the United Democratic Front (UDF), an internal federation of organisations broadly supporting the African National Congress (ANC), was the most popular and visible manifestation of this increasingly organised opposition.