South African Bantustan Research Articles

Overlying and muddled power: the Ciskei Bantustan’s disputed rural governance in the twilight decade of apartheid, c.1985–95

The paucity of writing on the rapid collapse of local administration within several South African bantustans gripped by the upsurge of civic mobilisation in the late 1980s remains one of the lacunae of the country’s late twentieth-century historiography. Land and governance within such enclaves had become a central issue as apartheid stirred up spatial and demographic calamity in its traumatic displacement and relocation of African households. The turning tide against the local administration of these reassembled human settlements during the 1980s disabled the vital cog of the state-appointed ‘tribal authorities’. Ciskei, which in the late 1970s was swiftly and arbitrarily consolidated under tribal authorities, was one of the bantustans caught up in the rising civic movement from the 1980s onwards. The overlying yet jumbled powers of such besieged tribal authorities, interfacing with the exuberant civic organisations throughout the 1990s, contributed to the advance of Lungisile Ntsebeza’s scholarship around land and rural governance in South Africa. He investigated simple, yet germane, questions such as who governs in the bantustans and how essential land and allied resources were to such disputed control. In honouring Ntsebeza’s scholarship, this article sketches out the history behind the overlying and muddled powers of these governing traditional authorities. It also explicates the myriad socio-political forces that underpinned the disputed nature of rural governance within the Ciskei Bantustan during the dying years of apartheid.

Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park by Jacob S. T. Dlamini

Reviewed by: Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park by Jacob S. T. Dlamini Stefan Norgaard Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park. Jacob S. T. Dlamini. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2020. Pp. ix+330, color illustrations, endnotes. $80.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-8214-2408-7. $29.56, paperback, ISBN 978-0-8214-2408-7. Kruger National Park (KNP) is the crown jewel of South Africa's national parks system and one of the largest national parks by area in the [End Page 84] world. KNP, Jacob S. T. Dlamini convincingly argues, is also a space that enlivens the contradictions and hidden stories of South African history, from colonialism to the present day. A key theme of Safari Nation is one that is echoed in other works by Dlamini, including Native Nostalgia and The Terrorist Album: for Black subjects, colonial and apartheid South Africa was "an arena of negotiation" (98), hardly fixed by the dualisms and neat categories as imposed by white rulers. In Safari Nation Dlamini traces the cracks in these supposed fixities: he follows the experiences, for example, of elite Black travelers and those granted "exemptions" to move freely in the colonial era; well-off subjects of former South African Bantustans who were able to visit KNP as if citizens of other countries; local-community neighbors still involved in disputes with the park into the twenty-first century; and multiracial groups of schoolchildren at the end of apartheid who visited the park together from urban cities. Tactics of accommodation and resistance help show how there is no one history of KNP, nor one Black experience of twentieth-century South Africa. Dlamini provided an engaging social history of KNP centering these many Black experiences. Scholars writing on South African Black livelihoods, he argues, too often foreground a narrative frame of dispossession. Dlamini does not shy away from discussing dispossession: he traces the story of Swazi chief Lugedlana Ngomane and the forced relocation of the Ngomane peoples, first in 1902 to accommodate reserve animals, and again in 1954 for a railway line to Mozambique. Yet in Safari Nation Dlamini transcends one-dimensional discussions of displacement, writing: "Scholars' focus on these narratives has blinded us to dimensions of the black experience of protected areas defined not by dispossession but by possession, not by hostility but by ambivalence—if not appropriation" (16). Accordingly, we might situate Safari Nation alongside other critical South African histories: Rueedi's (2021) work on the Vaal uprising, Phillips's (2018) articles on social class formation in Lebowa, and Nieftagodien's (2014) work reframing the Soweto uprising. Dlamini's discussion of Black presence in KNP reveals an extensive history of Black South Africans (and Mozambiquans) with many overlapping and conflicting relations to the park. KNP, after all, was fixed and bounded as a "state within a state" (21) but in practice has long functioned as a fluid zone of movement across regions and among peoples. This history engages those indigenous to the area, those traveling [End Page 85] great lengths and with great personal risk to visit the park, and those employed as domestic servants with the park, and as rangers tasked with overseeing it. The book is not structured chronologically but rather thematically, engaging poaching, migrant labor, and Black tourism (part I, chapters 1–4), and Black mobility, local-community engagements, and struggles and contestations with the park across history (part II, chapters 5–8). Dlamini also lays bare the "incoherence" of colonial and apartheid rule, with overlapping bureaucracies like the National Parks Board, the Native Affairs Department, and the Witwatersrand Native Labor Association (Wanela), each with distinct motivations and incentives toward KNP. Dlamini's engagement with former South African Bantustans and in particular the Gazankulu Bantustan abutting KNP is a strong point of the book. Dlamini combines an accessible overall framing of the homelands system with in-depth research that sheds new light on tourism, development, and ecological management as interests for Bantustans' governments. One of these former Bantustan leaders, Hudson Ntsanwisi of Gazankulu, was a conservationist thinking critically about political ecology and stewardship between KNP and Bantustans, and their overlapping ecological systems. Much as Dlamini explores how Bantustans...

Mix En Meng It Op: Emile YX?'s Alternative Race and Language Politics in South African Hip-Hop

Mix En Meng It Op: Emile YX?'s Alternative Race and Language Politics in South African Hip-Hop

Environment and development in the former South African bantustans

outh outh Africa's first fully democratic elections of 1994 were typified by a wave of optimism that its social and spatial history would be transformed to redress the inequities of the apartheid era. The rigid imposition of apartheid spatial planning deeply scarred South Africa's rural spaces, particularly those set aside for the majority African population. This was evident in the bantustans, or homelands, which were geographic utilized to segregate the population by the national government. Through an elaborate system of racial classification, the bantustans became pivotal to grand apartheid's vision of separate development and, as such, had significant impacts upon social and ecological landscapes. Although the bantustan system was abolished prior to the democratic transition, a sizable body of academic scholarship has asserted that this geography has left a lasting imprint upon rural areas (Levin and Weiner 1997; Weiner et al. 1997; Ramutsindela and Simon 1999; Ntsebeza 2000; Ramutsindela 2001; Ramutsindela and Donaldson 2001). Levin and Weiner (1997, 6) represented this view shortly after the democratic elections by provocatively asserting: 'South Africa's former homelands four independent states and six self-governing territories have now been officially reincorporated, but they continue to exist de facto. For most people living in these grand apartheid territories, political freedom has not changed their dire economic circumstances. They remain bantustans'. Similarly, Ramutsindela (2001, 180) argued that the bantustans 'had tremendous impact upon identity constructions, the socialization of people into space and the persistence of traditional authorities. All these have a direct bearing on the transformation to a non-racial and democratic South Africa'. The intention of this special edition is to present case studies from the former South African bantustans to examine how these geographies remain relevant in the contemporary era. Although it is increasingly common to assert the importance of the legacy of the bantustans to current issues, ranging from land reform, rural development, agrarian change and environmental degradation, the specific links between these processes and spaces have been under explored. The contributors to this volume work to address this oversight by presenting detailed research from the former bantustans of Lebowa, Gazankulu and KaNgwane to understand the trajectories of social and environmental change that accompanied the democratic transition. The papers in this special issue cover a diverse set of conceptual questions and methodological approaches; however, they share a commitment to examining livelihood systems, development processes, and environmental change within these territories. While it is readily apparent that the geography of the bantustans remains persistent, it is also clear from these papers that there are political, economic and spatial transformations occurring that have implications for the future of rural change and development. This special issue contributes to understanding these changes by assessing how new opportunities and systems are shaping and reshaping environmental and development processes in the post-apartheid era.

Transformation of residential planning in Umtata during the post-apartheid transition era

The political changes in South Africa after 1994 necessitated that the Bantustans, the main servers of apartheid planning, be re-incorporated into the mainstream of South Africa, implying the transformation of apartheid residential planning. Since then there has been much speculation about the type of transformation that would be implemented in the Bantustans to effect change in a non-racial South Africa. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of post-apartheid territorial restructuring in the former South African Bantustans. Examining and elucidating the manner in which the diverse social, economic and political factors have manifested themselves in the process of transformation of spatial residential planning in Umtata (the former capital city of the Transkei Bantustan) since 1994 is the central theme of this paper. Using property registers together with changes in legislative policies and land ownership, the transformation pattern was analysed in the former Bantustan capital city (Umtata). The findings indicate that the new South African policies and development strategies have been partially successful in eliminating the incongruencies of the past with regard to access to housing in Umtata. More critical is that this paper suggests that there still remains a greater challenge lingering from the influence of the Bantustan government in the city.

Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: a social history of the Ciskei 1945–1959, by ANNE KELK MAGER Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Oxford: James Currey, and Cape Town: David Philip, 1999. Pp. xx+249. £15·95 (pbk.).

<b>Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: a social history of the Ciskei 1945–1959</b>, by A<scp>NNE </scp>K<scp>ELK </scp>M<scp>AGER</scp> Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Oxford: James Currey, and Cape Town: David Philip, 1999. Pp. xx+249. £15·95 (pbk.).

The etiquette of state-building and modernisation in dependent states: performing stateness and the normalisation of separate development in South Africa

The paper reflects upon the continuing allure of state-building and modernisation in peripheral, `new' states and regions. The central argument is to suggest that our understanding of the conflicts surrounding `nation-building' can be improved upon by looking at one of the most powerful symbols of the neo-colonial, economic and institutional dependency and territorial artificiality of the `nation-state'- the South African Bantustan. As enforced state-hood projects, their `newness' and illegality in the eyes of the international community suggest that the Bantustans provide a particularly striking evocation of both the limits of state-building and, above all, the significance of recognition for `newer' states. Efforts to overturn the illegal status and non-recognition of one `independent' Bantustan, namely Bophuthatswana, therefore, illustrate what are widely held to be the modern attributes and evolutionary etiquette (`growth', `building', `development') that need to be `performed' in order to legitimise or normalise a state internationally. To be given a `voice' internationally, states are seemingly required to enact state-hood and sovereignty through a range of normalising rituals associated with state-building. In this case- study, strategies promoting neo-liberal development policies and also clandestine diplomatic and economic manoeuvres were believed by the regime to deliver international recognition. Directed at locating Bophuthatswana within its place in the world, these strenuous efforts also show how crude territorial `divide and rule' tactics alone were not responsible for underpinning the apartheid project. Rather, spaces were provided for discourses and practices of state-led `national' development in the Bantustan periphery. Thought to deliver normality for the renegade Bophuthatswana state, these international and local policies exacerbated and induced further a range of crises at the heart of the Bantustan strategy and apartheid modernisation more generally. These debilitating, and in Bophuthatswana's case, disastrous, tensions between the internal and external realms of state-building point to a more general need to rethink alternatives both to neo-liberalism as well as the rituals associated with state- building.

Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959

Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959

Shorter notice. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959. AK Mager

Shorter notice. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959. AK Mager

Shorter notice. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959. AK Mager

Shorter notice. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959. AK Mager

Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959

Mapping, boundaries and contested structures: defining the borders mapping the family - the creation of Zwelitsha the people get fenced patriarchs, politics and ethicity. Subjectivities, gender regimes and resistance: gendering identities between childhood and adulthood independent women and youth in the city of East London sexuality, fertility and male power educating an elite - gender regimes and resistance.

Making sense of the character of change in ugandan society

This is because the policy making and implementation process within the Ugandan state has been taken over by donors and also that the recurrent and development budget is financed through foreign aid. According to Himbara and Sultan, the Ugandan state and society can be likened to an intemational bantustan because just like South African bantustans were dependent on the South African state for funds, Uganda is dependent on foreign funds and the role of it state has been reduced to mere enforcement of law and order.

THE LABOUR MARKET AND TRADE UNIONS AT THE SOUTH AFRICAN PERIPHERY: LESOTHO AND TRANSKEI

LESOTHO, WHICH ACCEDED to internationally recognized political independence in 1966, and Transkei, which became the first South African bantustan to progress to (internationally unrecognized) independence in 1976, both served historically as labour reservoirs for the South African mines, agriculture and industry, offering minimal formal employment opportunities for their territorial populations. Likewise! from the moment of independence in both cases, the new governments came to pursue a development strategy which, whilst still seeking to maximize the export of labour, simultaneously sought to attract manufacturing industry by reference to the low cost, docility and easy availability of workers. However, some way down the road, things were to go rather awry, for in later years both territories were to experience significant labour turmoil and the

Households and gender in a South African bantustan

Households and gender in a South African bantustan

Imagery, Symbolism and Tradition in a South African Bantustan: Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Inkatha, and Zulu History

During the precolonial period Zulu identity was based on a set of cultural markers defined by the royal family. But European linguists extended the borders of Zulu, as a written language, to include the peoples living to the south of the Tugela river in the colony of Natal. Folklorists, anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists, as well as European employers, adopted this view of the Zulu as a people or Volk. Following the defeat of the Zulu kingdom in 1879 and the decline of the royal family, migrant workers increasingly returned home with this new notion of what it meant to be Zulu. This essentially European interpretation of the word was embraced and spread by Christian converts who, in the twentieth century, sought to mobilize an ethnic political following. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi has continued with this tradition. In his speeches he represents the Zulu in primordial terms as a bounded group that historically has occupied both Natal and the old precolonial kingdom. The bantustan of KwaZulu, delineated and defined by the policy of apartheid, is presented as the natural heir to the Zulu kingdom, and the Inkatha Freedom Party is portrayed as the guardian of the essence of Zuluness. An attractive historical self-imagery encourages people to define themselves in an exclusive manner as Zulu. Firm values and standards provide an ontological security and a network of assistance for sons abroad. Through a martial imagery, Buthelezi has represented the seven million Zulu as historically the most powerful obstacle to white supremacy. But since the resurgence of nationalist politics in the mid-1980s, and especially since the democratization started in 1990, Inkatha has attempted to attract the Zulu as a people in opposition to the ANC and their allies. This has most visibly resulted in a violent struggle for power; but it has also led to a virulent struggle over what it means to be Zulu. As South Africans scramble for new ways to resolve the crisis in their country, historians scramble for new ways of looking at the society that gave birth to this crisis. During the 1970s the decolonization of Anglophone history was marked by a long debate between liberal and neo-Marxist, or radical, historians.' More recently this debate has waned as the sharper edges of the two 1. On the development of liberal historiography, see C. C. Saunders, The Making of the South African Past (Cape Town, 1988). Neo-Marxist and Afrikaner historiography are more fully treated in K. Smith, The Changing Past: Trends in South African Historical Writing (Johannesburg, 1988). The radical approach is well covered by a special issue of the Radical History Review 46/47 (1990). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.156 on Thu, 15 Jun 2017 18:02:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

‘From confusion to Lusaka’: the youth revolt in Sekhukhuneland

After a series of rebellions in the 1950s, the South African Bantustans remained largely quiescent. Only after the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983 did rural areas once more become the scene of widespread protest and resistance, as revolt spread from the townships to remote villages in the Bantustans. However, rural organisation was a much neglected issue in the programme of the UDF's national leadership. The process of rural mobilisation in the Transvaal Bantustans owed more to local youth initiatives than to any planning or co‐ordination on the part of the UDF leadership. This article examines the role of the UDF in Lebowa, focusing in particular on youth movements in Sekhukhuneland.

Health and human rights in a South African bantustan

South Africa has stripped blacks (the majority population) of democratic rights and, over a period of 300 years, deprived them of their land; this dispossession culminated in 3.5 million involuntary removals of black South Africans to overcrowded and underdeveloped bantustans, on which a pseudo-independence is being conferred. Blacks are denationalized and disenfranchized in South Africa and their mobility is strictly controlled by the pass system, but their situation is even worse in the so-called ‘homelands’, where repression has replaced the rule of law. This paper presents a case study of health and human rights in the Ciskei, a bantustan that became ‘independent’ of South Africa in December 1981. It documents severe deprivation widespread malnutrition and gross violations of human rights.

Vulnerability to impoverishment in South African rural areas: the erosion of kinship and neighbourhood as social resources

Opening ParagraphSince 1960 several million Africans have been relocated in South Africa, mainly from the common (or ‘white’) area to the so-called ‘homelands’. This process of relocation is still under way, and precise enumeration of the numbers of people who have been and will be affected is impossible. Estimates vary according to the definition of ‘relocation’: it is apparent, for instance, that official sources define the process as narrowly as possible in order to minimize the numbers involved. There is abundant evidence, however, that relocation has taken place on a vast scale, and that the process has generally resulted in increased poverty and misery for its victims (Surplus People Project, 1983). Kane-Berman has recently argued that the South African Bantustans are, at present, not so much reservoirs of a reserve army of labour as dumping grounds ‘for people who have little chance of obtaining employment anywhere’ (1981: 29). From having been sub-subsistence dormitory areas for labour migrants, they are rapidly becoming places to which the structurally unemployed are being permanently consigned.

‘Developing’ the Urban Informal Sector in South Africa: The Reformist Paradigm and its Fallacies

Development and ChangeVolume 15, Issue 4 p. 517-550 ‘Developing’ the Urban Informal Sector in South Africa: The Reformist Paradigm and its Fallacies Paul Wellings, Paul Wellings Research Fellow in the Development Studies Unit of the University of Natal, Durban. He has published work on education and regional inequality in Kenya, and development policy in Lesotho where he taught at the National University from 1980to 1982. His current interests include aspects of ‘development’ in the South African bantustans and the political economy of Lesotho.Search for more papers by this authorMichael Sutcliffe, Michael Sutcliffe Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Natal, Durban. His current research includes an analysis of worker– and community–based social movements in South Africa.Search for more papers by this author Paul Wellings, Paul Wellings Research Fellow in the Development Studies Unit of the University of Natal, Durban. He has published work on education and regional inequality in Kenya, and development policy in Lesotho where he taught at the National University from 1980to 1982. His current interests include aspects of ‘development’ in the South African bantustans and the political economy of Lesotho.Search for more papers by this authorMichael Sutcliffe, Michael Sutcliffe Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Natal, Durban. His current research includes an analysis of worker– and community–based social movements in South Africa.Search for more papers by this author First published: October 1984 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1984.tb00195.xCitations: 25 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume15, Issue4October 1984Pages 517-550 RelatedInformation

Organization of African Unity: Resolution on Non-Recognition of South African Bantustans

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.