In the two decades after the Second Boer War, the flow of impoverished Afrikaners from the countryside to the Witwatersrand grew without a significant increase in the number of Afrikaans speakers, as is evident from the fact that the congregations of Afrikaans churches in Johannesburg showed almost no growth.

That an entire generation of Afrikaners on the Rand was lost and Anglicized during this time was due, among other things, to the lack of Afrikaans educational institutions.

[1] Compared to English-speaking South Africans, however, the intellectual potential of this large population concentration was underutilized, for social and economic reasons.

[1] It became clear to Afrikaner leaders in the 1950s that higher education institutions had to be established within easier reach of Afrikaans speakers in the Rand, to enable both part-time study, for students who were already in employment, and full-time study for students who were still living in their parents' homes.

It was not until the announcement on 13 February 1963 of the establishment of a new, bilingual university in Port Elizabeth that this policy was changed, especially in light of the findings of a commission of inquiry appointed by the Minister of Education.

The first students registered on 3 February 1968, and on 24 February of that year the Rand Afrikaans University was officially opened[5] with just over 700 registered students, and the inauguration of its first Chancellor (the then Minister of Finance and later third State President of South Africa), Nico Diederichs, and Vice Chancellor, Gerrit Viljoen.