South African Bantustans: What "Independence" for the Transkei? http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nuun1976_37 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org South African Bantustans: What "Independence" for the Transkei? Alternative title Notes and Documents - United Nations Centre Against ApartheidNo. 26/76 Author/Creator United Nations Centre against Apartheid; Kirby, Alexander Publisher United Nations, New York Date 1976-10-00 Resource type Reports Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa 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 Racism. Mr. Kirby is an Anglican priest, a freelance journalist and researcher. Format extent 9 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nuun1976_37 http://www.aluka.org NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 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 Namibia, 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 Bantustan 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 Ciskei, 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 South African republic. 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 'Coloureds', 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 white people, 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, Botswana, 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 Union of South Africa 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.