South African : What "Independence" for the ?

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Alternative title Notes and Documents - United Nations Centre Against ApartheidNo. 26/76 Author/Creator United Nations Centre against ; Kirby, Alexander Publisher United Nations, New York Date 1976-10-00 Resource type Reports Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Coverage (temporal) 1976 Source Northwestern University Libraries Description This issue of Notes and Documents contains extracts from a study prepared by Mr. Alexander Kirby, and published recently by the World Council of Churches' Programme to Combat . Mr. Kirby is an Anglican priest, a freelance journalist and researcher. Format extent 9 page(s) (length/size)

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NOTES AND DOCUMENTS .j V October 1976 17_-; No. 26/76 SOUTH AFRICAN BANTUSTANS: WHAT "INDEPENDENCE" FOR THE TRANSKEI? by Alexander Kirby Note: This issue of Notes and Documents contains extracts from a study prepared by Mr. Alexander Kirby, and published recently by the World Council of Churches' Programme to Combat Racism. Mr. Kirby is an Anglican priest, a freelance journalist and researcher. The views expressed are those of the author. _/ 76-19396 * All material in these notes and documents may be freely reprinted. Acknowledgement, together with a copy of the publication containing the reprint, would be appreciated.

On 26 October 1976 the Transkei, one of the black homelands of South Africa, is to be declared "independent": it will, according to the South African Government and to its own Chief Minister Paramount Chief Kaiser Matanzima, become a sovereign state, eligible for admission to the United Nations and courting the recognition of the world. If the Transkei wins that recognition it will have gone far to make good - in appearance - South Africa's claim to be liberating its black population, to be developing apartheid with a human face. For the Transkei is only the first of ten homelands or Bantustans (others are planned for , but they will not be discussed here), each destined for independence as a supposedly individual nation. Refusal by the world to accept the claim that the Transkei has achieved true independence would drastically reduce the chances of the other nine Bantustans gaining international acceptance, and would directly threaten the survival of the policy itself, and with it the whole apartheid system. Foreigners in their own land The Transkei is designed to be one of the two nations of the Xhosas of South Africa (another Bantustan, the , is also designated for them). Into its three separate tracts of land, i,200 square miles in area, will be notionally crammed over 3 million Xhosas (the Transkei's de Jure population: its de facto one will be appreciably smaller), with a further 924,000 destined for the Ciskei. Those Xhosas who will live in neither the Transkei nor the much smaller Ciskei (3,500 square miles) will still be deemed citizens of one or other Bantustan, according to the South African Government, and they will, despite Chief Matanzima's protests, be obliged to acquire Bantustan citizenship and to abandon their citizenship of the . It is already clear, therefore, that one achievement of the Bantustan policy will be to deny forever any chance of political activity to those black South Africans who for one reason or another will continue to live in so- called 'white' South Africa. And many of them will go on living there: they need the jobs available there, and, equally, the jobs depend on them. So the Bantustan policy means that South Africa's Africans will become foreigners in their own land, South Africa itself. They can choose between exercising their civil rights in the Bantustans or earning their living in 'white' South Africa. What is certain is that they will not be able to do both. The Bantustan policy will also, of course, set the seal on the complete disenfranchisement of those ethnic groups which South Africa designates as 'Coloured' and 'Asian', for it foresees no way of providing them with civic rights anywhere.

It is vital to see the "independence" of the Transkei, not as a single self-contained issue, but as fundamental to the whole Bantustan policy. The Transkei is chronologically the first, and in some other ways the likeliest, candidate for independence, but that is all. It is just as vital to see the Bantustan policy, not simply as the granting of independence and civic rights to Africans, but as a means of giving them that "independence" only in a very small part of the country, and exclusively on white terms. The ten Bantustans will amount to about 12.4% of South Africa's total land area, although Africans constitute over 75% of the country's population (15,056,900 Africans, 1,509,000 '', 620,400 Asians and 3,751,300 whites, according to the 1970 Census). That census showed that only 46.6% of Africans actually lived in the "Bantu homelands"; the rest were in "white areasl'. So it is'equally crucial to see the Bantustan policy, not as a new departure in the granting of self-determination, but as the logical development of a policy which has been worked out over the last eighty years and more against a background of increasing repression by Whites of BJlacks, culminating in the full blown apartheid system of the present government. The last fifteen years, in particular, have seen the introduction of the Terrorism Act, of the 90 and then the 180 day detention laws, and of the ruthless suppression of the African liberation movements. Acceptance of Bantustans means acceptance of theory and practice of apartheid Finally, a judgement on the Bantustans must recognise that the policy has been developed to its present point of granting "independence" in order to serve the interests of , not black. The white regime in South Africa urgently needs to win the world's acceptance of the Transkei's "independence", and of all that follows from it, for two reasons. The first is political and the second economic. Politically, international acceptance of the Bantustans' "independence" will mean acceptance of the white claim that Blacks can enjoy full civic rights and equality within the physical confines of the present South African state, though under the form of some sort of federation. Economically, international acceptance of the Bantustans means acceptance of the existence of permanent reservoirs of migrant black labour, whose people will always be accessible to the demands of the white economy on its terms alone. The Bantustans are therefore a product of the policy of apartheid, and are integral to that policy's continued success. The Bantustans will be - at least in theory - the logical conclusion of the policy of separate development, and so they are an inescapable final step: only partition can bestow the ultimate physical separation so dear to the hearts of the architects of apartheid. Equally, of course, a society that was not obsessed with racial separation would have no conceivable use for so twisted and perverse a concept as the Bantustans. What is certain is that those who agree to recogd2z.e as "independent" the Transkei and the other Bantustans will also be agreeing with the theory and the practice of apartheid. The South African Government, naturally, hopes to secure the widest international support for apartheid through the confidence trick of the Bantustans. If the plan succeeds, there will in time be no black South Africans, and apartheid will have won its final victory. A factor which makes the Bantustan policy harder to judge objectively for many people is the continued implied support for it by the many wellintentioned organisations which have declared their intention of continuing to support projects within the Bantustans. Those who are prepared, like OXFAM, to continue giving financial and moral support to the Bantustans often cite the former British Southern African protectorates, , Lesotho and Swaziland, in their support. If these three now independent countries deserve support, the argument runs, then so do the Bantustans. This brings us directly to the key issue, the kernel of the Bantustan policy. The former British protectorates were never part of what is now the republic of South Africa, and any contribution they have made to the creation of South Africa's wealth was made, principally, by individuals who went there to seek work. The protectorates as a whole have never had any claim on South Africa. Thie is the opposite of the case with the Bantustans: the people of the Transkei and of the other homelands have, since the arrival of the British and the Dutch colonialists, and particularly since the creation of the in 1910, made a direct and concerted contribution to the establishment of what is now the wealthiest nation in Africa, and one of the richest in the world. Any they are now being endorsed out of the wealth they have worked to create. As the British monthly the New Internationalist said in an editorial (February 1976): "It is as if the British Government were to say to the Scottish Nationalists: 'Yes, we agree that you should govern yourselves and will give you the Shetland Islands* in which to do it'. " "Independence" for the Transkei and for the other nine homelands will amount, in fact, not to the granting of real rights there to their people, but to the permanent witholding or rights in South Africa itself. It will oblige them to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. The Transkei is unviable The Transkei is unviable on the South African Government's own terms. Its land is poor and overcrowded. Most of its people live in poverty, the relief of which depends largely on their participation in the hated migratory labour system. They are subject to constant upheaval and resettlement elsewhere, and many have undergone this process more than once. They are ruled by white South Africa through white administrators who are nominally controlled by black chiefs, themselves out of touch and out of * the Shetlands are a small, bleak archipelago off the Scottish mainland, and represent a very meagre share of both the area and the wealth of the Scottish nation. sympathy with their people. There is not nearly enough employment for all, nor any prospect of there being. The Transkei depends on South Africa for most of its money. In return for the cash and the jobs it provides to the Transkeians, South Africa gains a client state, a steady stream of migrant workers, and freedom henceforth from the obligation to give any form of political rights to Blacks throughout most of its territory. To those who argue that Matanzima and the leaders of other Bantustans know all this perfectly well already, that they are simply waiting for "independence" to strike out on their own and build true economic and political freedom, there are two answers. One is that, with the possible qualified exception of Buthelezi of KwaZulu, none of the Bantustan leaders, nor any of their colleagues, has yet given any serious sign of being anxious, let alone able, to throw off the South African yoke. They would hardly have reached their present eminence if they could not be trusted to play the white man's game, even after he has slipped the leash. The other answer is this: even if Buthelezi, or anyone else, is sincere in planning to build a viable and truly after "independence", the sheer physical facts - of poverty, shortage of land, lack of jobs, dependence on migratory labour, etc. - mean that the odds against untying South Africa's apron strings are so long as to be beyond reckoning. Other Bantustans are r.ven less viable And if the Transkei is not viable, there is even less chance that any of the other Bantustans, for which it is supposed to be pioneering the path to independence, can ever attain viability themselves. None of them ever constituted so much of a recognizable entity as the Transkei did before and since the arrival of the Whites. All, unlike it, are new creations, born of the planners' minds. Only three of them will, after consolidation, have a single piece of territory: will be in two pieces, in four, the Ciskei in five, Bophuta Tswana in six, in seven, and KwaZulu will be expected to build a sovereign state out of no fewer than ten separate pieces of land. Five of the other Bantustans have a higher population density than the Transkei, though only one has a larger area. Consolidation, planning, resettlement and the like have so far involved the movement of about 6.27 million Africans, with still greater numbers awaiting upheaval. The bald facts are endless, and endlessly repetitive, telling time and again the same story: of 'native reservations' being pushed headlong towards a sham independence. The Transkei cannot be viable, and no more can the other Bantustans. They cannot be stagingposts on the road to liberation. As '' wrote in the SASO Newsletter (September/October, 1972), there is a belief "That something can be achieved through a systematic exploitation of the Bantustan approach. The argument runs that all other forms of protest, disagreement and opposition are closed to Black people and that we can call the bluff of the white government by accepting what they give and using it to get what we want. What most people miss is the fact that what we want is well known to the enemy and that the Bantustan theory was designed precisely to prevent us from getting what we want. The authors of the system know it best and they give us any concessions we may demand according to a plan prearranged by them. When they created these dummy platforms, these phoney telephones, they knew that some opportunists might want to.use them to advance the Black cause and hence they made all the arrangements to be able to control such 'ambitious natives'. Matanzima and Buthelezi can shout their lungs out trying to speak to through the phoney telephone, no-one is listening in Pretoria because the telephone is a toy". Bogus independence The burden of what I have said so far is that the "independence" on offer to the Transkei and the other Bantustans from Pretoria is entirely bogus. But whether or not the Bantustan policy can work or not is immaterial, because it should not work. It should fail because it is from start to finish a racist policy designed to meet white needs and without taking black wishes and needs into the slightest account. It is an anti- Christian policy in its promotion of the supposed interests of one racial group at the expense of another, and in its basic belief that race, that ultimately meaningless characteristic, should be the arbiter of all of life. It is designed to givelIThites peace of mind and of body and the continued enjoyment of one of the highest standards of living in the world, by decreeing that Blacks in 'white' areas simply do not exist except as units of production. World-wide opposition to the Bantustan policy There is opposition to the Bantustan policy from within and outside South Africa. The black liberation movements inside South Africa, the Pan-Africanist Congress and the African National Congress, have consistently opposed the Bantustan policy - in fact they led the resistance to it over the last two decades. They now find themselves banned, their leaders imprisoned. Their members outside South Africa continue to lead the struggle, and to speak for the African people to the outside world. Three hundred delegates attended the Black Renaissance Convention in Hammanskraal from 13 to 16 December 1974: they included many church people and members and supporters of the Black People's Convention and SASO. The declaration

-6- adopted by the Convention reads in part: "We, the Black people of South Africa, meeting at the Black Renaissance Convention in December 1974, declare that: (i) we condemn and so reject the policy of separate development and all its institutions; (ii) we reject all forms of racism and discrimination. We dedicate ourselves towards striving for: (i) a totally united and democratic South Africa, free from all forms of oppression and exploitation; (ii) a society in which all people participate fully in the Government of the country through the medium of one man, one vote; (iii) a society in which there is an equitable distribution of wealth; (iv) an anti-racist society". A resolution passed by the Convention declared that "legalized is a threat to world peace and (we) therefore call upon all the countries of the world to withdraw all cultural, educational, economic, manpower and military support to the existing racist Government and all its racist institutions". Organizations which had shared in preparing the Convention included the Inter- Denominational African Ministers' Association, the Association for Educational and Cultural Advancement for Africans, the Mission and Evangelism Division of the South African Council of Churches, the Christian Institute, the in Africa (NGK-in-Afrika), and the Roman Catholic Church. A year later the Black People's Convention held its congress in Kingwilliamstown, with over 100 delegates present. The Southern African News Agency (an independent body of freelance journalists) reported: "Government-created platforms were strongly condemned by the BPC. They were said to be created to divert the energies of Blacks 'from the true struggle for National liberation to racialist, tribalist and divisive political undertakings which at best kept the real goal of total liberation out of the immediate sight and attention of Blacks, and at worst served to bolster the white racist rfgime' .... Blacks were 'cheated' into participating in these because of built-in safeguards which made it impossible for any Black person using them to liberate themselves. The creation of these (Government platforms), the BPC felt, was to 'hoodwink' the international community into accepting the racist policy of the white r6gime as a 'sincere' programme designed in the interest of Blacks, and that any participation in these was only lending credibility to their fraudulence, to the detriment of the Black people. The BPC rejected these and opted to operate outside their framework as a true political movement which believes that 'Blacks have an inalienable right to determine their destiny', and further asserted its conviction in the solidarity of the Black community irrespective of ethnic origin, prescribed residential areas or religious 'affiliation ..." " Mrs. Winnie Mandela, wife of the imprisoned (whose release from Robben Island Matanzima had tried to secure on condition that Mandela accepted appointment as Attorney-General of the Transkei: his offer was refused), was quoted in the Guardian (li May 1976) as saying that: "there would be no basic changes in South African white attitudes in the next four years, but 'the black people have on unifying factor - oppression by a white minority'. The creation of 'dummy institutions such as the homelands' was an attempt to weaken this black solidarity in order to divide the people." And the irrepressible 'Frank Talk' wrote: "At this stage of our history we cannot have our struggle being tribalized through the creation of Zulu, Xhosa and Tswana politicians by the system. These tribal coccoons called 'homelands' are nothing else but sophisticated concentration camps where black people are allowed to 'suffer peacefully'. Black Deople must constantly pressurize the Bantustan leaders to pull out of the political cul-de-sac that has been created for us by the system. Above all, we Black people should all the time keep in mind that South Africa is our country and that all of it belongs to us."

-9- incorporated into a body of fully-fledged, self-reliant, semi-independent provinces or.. States comprising an ultimate South (or even Southern) African Federation instead of being destined to remain the financially mendicant, economically dependent (though constitutionally and politically pseudo-independent) ethnic fiefdoms officially envisaged at present". The independence on offer to the Transkei is a spurious form of decolonization, on the terms and in the interests of the colonizer. The whole Bantustan concept is rooted and grounded in the concept of racial separation, of apartheid, and its success would serve to entrench apartheid as nothing else can. Those who look forward to the day when the whole of South Africa will be a multi-racial state, and not a supposedly multinational one, should realize that international recognition of an "independent" Transkei can only push that day still further into the future. ***