Lucas Mangope, a self-serving apartheid apologist and despot 1923-2018
● Lucas Mangope, who has died at the age of 94, was the president of what he pretended was an independent Bophuthatswana from 1977 until his overthrow in 1994 when his bubble was finally burst by South African foreign affairs minister Pik Botha, who told him in effect that the puppet show was over.
The writing was on the wall for Mangope from when the ANC began broadcasts in the mid-1980s calling for Bop to be made ungovernable.
Mangope, who had the lugubrious look of an undertaker, used his police ruthlessly to prevent this. On one day in March 1986, they opened fire on around 7 500 demonstrators, killing 11 and injuring more than 200.
He used mass detentions, torture, teargas, sjamboks and bullets to stay in power.
In January 1988, the ANC called for the homelands to be turned into “mass bases of the revolution”. The next month opposition leader Rocky Malebane-Metsing led a successful coup.
Mangope and his cabinet were detained. Coup leaders said his administration was corrupt and had rigged the 1987 election, in which his ruling Bop Democratic Party won 66 out of 72 seats.
It was only the second general election held since independence in 1977. The South African Defence Force reinstated him the same day and Malebane-Metsing fled to Lusaka.
After Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990, mass rallies under the ANC flag demanded Mangope’s resignation and Bop’s reincorporation into South Africa. Mangope said this wouldn’t happen “within a hundred years” and all hell broke loose.
Vehicles, government buildings and shops were looted and set alight, barricades were set up in the capital, Mmabatho, schools closed and 50 000- strong crowds marched through the streets.
Police opened fire, dozens were killed and many hundreds injured.
Mangope declared emergency rule, but the violence only subsided when the SADF held joint operations with its Bop counterparts.
In 1991, when Codesa 1 adopted a declaration of intent committing to an undivided South Africa, Mangope refused to sign. It would result in “the abolition of Bophuthatswana as a sovereign independent state”, he said.
In December 1993, South African citizenship was restored to all in the independent homelands, making it possible for them to vote in the April 1994 elections. The interim constitution stipulated that Bop would be reincorporated into South Africa.
Mangope said he wouldn’t surrender Bop’s independence, which had “served it very well”.
In March 1994, bolstered, he thought, by an alliance with other homeland leaders and far-right-wing groups including the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, he announced that Bop would not participate in the general elections.
This triggered further mass action. Barricades went up, Radio Bop was seized, schools closed and students rioted.
When Mangope refused to recognise the Independent Electoral Commission’s authority in Bop, IEC chairman Judge Johann Kriegler recommended that the Transitional Executive Council — which now called the shots in South Africa — and the government take “such actions as they saw fit”.
Mandela and FW de Klerk agreed that Mangope would be ousted, and the SADF was sent to the South African embassy in Mmabatho.
In response to an appeal from Mangope,
General Constand Viljoen led 1 500 of his Afrikaner Volksfront commandos into Mmabatho.
Although it had been told to stay away, the AWB arrived too, but fled after a skirmish with the Bop defence force.
When Mangope’s troops mutinied and refused to supply Viljoen’s commandos with the weapons Mangope had promised, they left and he was finally on his own.
A TEC delegation flew to his house, where Botha told him: “You have lost control, it’s over.”
When Mangope resisted, Mac Maharaj began cataloguing the reasons his reign had come to an end. His administration had collapsed, he said. There was no functioning civil service.
While he spoke, Mangope’s son, Eddie, told him in Setswana that the game was up. Mangope sighed and finally relented.
Mangope was born in Motswedi near Zeerust in what is now North West on December 27 1923.
He was a teacher for 10 years before going into politics. In 1972, he became chief minister of the Tswana homeland.
Considered a friend of the apartheid government, he gladly accepted “independence” when it was offered in 1977.
Bop consisted of seven separate enclaves. In spite of being the wealthiest homeland thanks to sitting on the world’s richest platinum deposits, it was financially dependent on Pretoria.
How much his people benefited from this is open to question.
Most of them worked for South African companies in Bop or elsewhere as migrant labourers and earned a pittance.
Mangope, on the other hand, did rather well. After being deposed it was found that he owned a fleet of 29 cars, including a range of BMWs, bakkies and a Buick, farms and other properties.
At a time when the average annual income per capita was around $400, he received a salary of $27 500 a year, plus expenses.
And nobody knew how much he made out of granting Sol Kerzner exclusive gambling rights for his Sun City casino resort.
After being deposed he formed the United Christian Democratic Party, which became the official opposition in North West in 1999.
By 2014, it had lost all its seats.
He is survived by his wife Violet, two sons and three daughters.