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BantustanBantustan refers to any of the territories designated as tribal "homelands" for black South Africans during the Apartheid era. The term "bantustan" was first used in the late 1940s and was coined from Bantu (meaning "people" in the Bantu languages) and -stan (meaning "land of"), and was based on Hindustan. It later became a disparaging term used by critics of the Apartheid-era government's "homelands". These homelands were allocated to blacks by the white Apartheid government of the Republic of South Africa and were designated to become independent states under a plan called "Separate Development". This plan would have given independence to blacks in these newly created tribal states, while stripping them of their South African citizenship, leaving whites as the majority in South Africa. Originally, there were to be about ten Bantustan-Homelands. These small, quasi-sovereign regions were established under the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act, and began to be given "independence" in 1976. The founders and implementers of the Apartheid doctrine promoted the idea of Bantustans vigorously, but they never gained the recognition of the international community, and were mostly despised by South Africa's blacks. They were unpopular among the latter because of a number of reasons: - The boundaries of the Bantustans were drawn to exclude economically valuable land.
- The large number of reassigned citizens combined with the small area allocated to the Bantustans meant that the citizen to land ratio was severely disproportionate to that of South Africa.
- Citizenship of the new territories meant losing citizenship of South Africa, where the majority of candidates for reassignment of citizenship lived and worked. This would cause them to lose what few rights and privileges they had as citizens of South Africa.
The white government had exempted 13% of its territory from white settlement, and transformed this land into regions of black home-rule. Then they officially bestowed independence on these regions (the "homelands"), retaining the other 87% as white territory. The black South Africans were divided (sometimes incorrectly) into ethnic groups which were assigned certain homelands. The government's motivation for the establishment of these states was to stem the pace at which white people were becoming a minority in South Africa; this demographic crisis was to be averted by turning a part of the black population of South Africa into foreign nationals. In the majority of these transfers of citizenship, the individuals assigned to homelands did not live in or originate from the small areas which the homelands encompassed. The first Bantustan to became operational was the Xhosa Transkei under the leadership of Chief Kaizer Daliwonga Matanzima in the Cape Province. Perhaps the best known was the Zulu KwaZulu in Natal Province, headed by a member of the Zulu royal family, Chief Mangosuthu ("Gatsha") Buthelezi in the name of the Zulu king. In all there were ten Bantustans. Four of them were granted full independence by South Africa (the so-called TVBC states of Bophuthatswana, the Ciskei, the Transkei and Venda). The other six had certain forms of self-government. These were: Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa and QwaQwa. Lesotho and Swaziland were not bantustans, but are internationally recognized independent countries, and are former British possessions. Of note is the way the borders for these territories were drawn. They were broken up into numerous enclaves, and the boundaries between these were very convoluted. In fact, the South African embassy to Bophuthatswana had to be moved when it was discovered it was accidentally built in South Africa. With the demise of the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the end of white rule, the Bantustans were dismantled as the country was constitutionally redivided into new provincial governments. During the 1980s, these bantustans, particularly the Transkei and Bophuthatswana, became centers for casino gambling, which was illegal at the time in South Africa. The Sun City mega-resort and others in the Bantustans are the results of this. These resorts were destinations where the white minority went to participate in entertainments that were considered immoral in South Africa. Among liberals, the word Bantustan has become something of a pejorative when describing a country or region that lacks "legitimacy" or power, viewed as a form of national or international gerrymandering. List of South African Bantustans
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