This isn’t the SA we chose
SOME people think of Bantustans as parts of South Africa where Africans were “dumped”. The areas were African villages, occupied by the aborigines of Africa, spread across the country, where industrial development, aka colonialism, had not taken place.
Industrial development had mostly followed the discovery of minerals. Africans in villages where minerals were discovered were so overwhelmed by the development, that they ceased to recognise the place as their own.
Some Africans in the non-industrialised parts moved to the industrialised parts. Areas where the minerals were discovered still had indigenous African villages. The colonialists were successful in alienating such Africans from ownership of land.
In their natural habitat, people lived on the land, produced their own food and owned their own livestock. Those who left had been seduced by the promise of a “civilised” way of living. Others went or were forcibly recruited to work in the mines.
All the areas of dominant African habitation were part of what was created as South Africa. They were within the borders defined by the colonial masters. They had to abide by laws not of their making.
When the apartheid government carved up South Africa to create Bantustans, it selected areas substantially occupied by Africans that were underdeveloped. Should any mineral be discovered or some profitable project require any part of a Bantustan, Africans would be shifted. Bantustans and the “new” South Africa were imposed on Africans, to fool the world that Africans did have a franchise.
Those who would lead the Bantustans and the “new” South Africa were selected by the apartheid regime, assisted by the West. Negotiations for the establishment of the Bantustans and the “new” South Africa took place between the apartheid regime and Africans selected by the apartheid regime.
There was never a referendum to determine the citizen’s take. The apartheid government that did away with apartheid had been elected by white people and were given a 62% mandate in a whites-only referendum in 1992. The people in Bantustans were not consulted. Similarly, Africans in the “new” South Africa were not consulted about the form the country should take. Decisions were made with Africans the regime had hand-picked.
Voting in 1994 had nothing to do with approval. It is about conformity.
The Bophuthatswana Bantustan presents another irony. There are similarities in so far as corruption and nepotism is concerned. Bophuthatswana seems to have excelled in the provision of education. Economically it seems to have been a haven for entrepreneusr. All this amid the stench of corruption.
On the other hand, the new South Africa started by closing teacher training and nursing colleges. Schooling continued on a downward path. Education collapsed in the townships and was salvaged by apartheid-designed white schools affordable to a few. Crime escalated. Entrepreneurship died as those with potential found comfort in the “easy” BEE participation that was partisan. Millionaires mushroomed among the ruling elite without an upside for the economy or job creation. Corruption brought the state to the brink of bankruptcy.
Those in the wrong platform of Bantustans appeared to have done better than those at the helm of a democratic South Africa.