2—
The Context of Political and Economic Development

The existence and configuration of the present South African homelands reflect long-standing conflicts between blacks and whites. Building on the "reserves," the government of South Africa has recently elaborated its policy of separate development in the direction of ultimately creating ten independent African states. It was only with that elaboration, however, that the development of these areas became urgent. Poor, overcrowded, generally lacking in resources, they present a serious challenge to black and white policy-makers in South Africa.

The Territorial Legacy

The location, size, and fragmentation of the homelands are products of the processes of the South African frontier during the nineteenth and their legislative confirmation in the twentieth century. As a result of a triangular conflict between settlers, Africans, and the British government, the policy of defining areas for exclusive ownership by Africans developed in various forms, first as a direct result of imperial intervention and later as a policy adopted by settler governments themselves. What had originally been a policy designed to protect militarily weaker groups became one to minimize the costs of government and to provide dormitories for families of migrant laborers. Consequently, settler governments developed an interest in preserving African landholding, and the internal frontiers of South Africa gradually attained some stability.

Although the policy of reservation secured at least some land to Africans, and, in the case of the former High Commission Territories, a territorial base for future states, fundamentally it was evasive and represented a response of expediency. Neither the imperial power, nor the settler governments, were evolving a policy that would give all people equal access to resources and opportunities. Nor were they ensuring through education that the technological gap between whites, on the one hand, and blacks, on the other, would be narrowed. The job market in modern sectors of the economy soon became racially structured, and education for Africans was left to

private institutions with limited power and resources. Frequently the declaration of reserves simply recognized the status quo or froze, temporarily, a distribution of land. For a period before 1913, some Africans were in a mildly favored position because they had land reserved to them and could also acquire land outside these reserves, especially in the Cape Province and Natal. The proclamation of a reserve, however, was no guarantee that the reserve would remain intact. Land continued to be taken from blacks and given to whites, sometimes as a punishment for rebellion, or as a means of rewarding cooperative whites.

The Tswana and the Zulu, no less than others, contended for land with colonial and republican frontiersmen. Pushed off the sweet grazing lands of the highveld by the Ndebele and other Nguni peoples, and then by the Voortrekkers searching for fresh pastures, the Tswana moved westward toward the edge of the Kalahari Desert. There they successfully regained some coherence. The voracious appetite for land of Afrikaners from the Orange Free State and the Transvaal led to a steady whittling away of the Tswana holdings. Fortunately, however, for the Tswana, there was a limit. In 1885, in order to forestall further expansion on the part of the Transvaal and the threat of the spread of German imperialism from Southwest Africa, Britain "protected" the largest portion of the new Tswana lands. (It thus provided a subsequent territorial base for an independent Botswana.) Other lands in Tswana hands remained outside the Protectorate but, with the grant of self-government to the Cape Colony in 1872 and the recognition of the autonomy of the Transvaal in 1881, much of these lands were lost. In 1897, for example, the Cape Colony opened Tswana lands to white settlement, partly as punishment for the Tswana rebellion of 1896. The Tswana were thus divided in three: those who remained under British imperial rule in the Protectorate were separated from those under the rule of whites in the Cape and the Transvaal. The Union of South Africa in 1910 brought the Tswana of the Cape and the Transvaal together under a single government without adding to their resources or power.

The Zulu resisted the thrust of whites, but encroachment on their territory was continuous. In the war of 1879, after initial success, they were defeated, their king was exiled, and their kingdom was broken up into separate chieftaincies. Encircled by republican and colonial frontiersmen, the Zulu steadily lost land, especially in the coastal areas most suited to the cultivation of cotton and sugar, later Natal's major crop. Even some foothills of the eastern plateaux—Zulu territory from Shaka's day—were alienated by whites. In 1904 extensive areas of Natal were thrown open to white settlement, the Zulu reserves being immediately diminished by 2.6 million acres; only 3.8 million acres remained.^[1] As a result the Zulu found themselves steadily pushed back

[1] Shula Marks, Reluctant Rebellion (Oxford, 1970), 127.

on to less desirable terrain where water was comparatively scarce, grazing poor, and agricultural conditions harsh.

Neither Bophuthatswana nor KwaZulu is a homeland in any meaningful historical sense, although the Tswana and the Zulu have both lived in these respective areas since the nineteenth century. Both territories contain places of traditional significance to their respective peoples, and both are consequently considered a part, if only a small part, of original, more extensive patrimonies. It would be difficult to find an African leader, traditional or modern, who regards the present borders of the homelands as legitimate, the size of the homelands as sufficient, or the fragmented quality of the homelands as satisfactory.

Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu have never been homelands in any demographic sense. If a homeland is supposed to be the Urheimat, the original gathering place of at least a substantial portion of a people, then neither Bophuthatswana nor KwaZulu qualifies or has ever qualified. Ever since they have been secured to black occupancy, the two homelands have encompassed only a proportion of the Tswana and the Zulu. The remainder have resided upon white-controlled land. At the beginning of this century as many Tswana and Zulu lived outside as lived within their homelands. Today 64 percent of the Tswana and 46 percent of the Zulu live outside their homelands.

Until the coming of the union, although there was considerable variation in law and practice regarding land, each of South Africa's component provinces had set aside areas of exclusive African occupation. Small in the Orange Free State, these areas were more extensive and more fragmented in the Transvaal and Natal; and in the Cape Colony there was the large, consolidated bloc of the Transkei. In 1913 the new government of South Africa began the process of reconciling the different land laws of the provinces, a process that was ultimately to eliminate the favored position long held by Africans in the Cape. In dealing with land, the government accepted the proposals of the South African Native Affairs Commission (1903–1905), which had espoused territorial partition as the only basis for the development of South African society and politics. As far as the commission was concerned, the growth of a mixed society was to be avoided.

The passage of the Natives Land Act of 1913 did not emerge out of a desire to produce the territorial basis of a just, if segregated, society. Instead, it constituted a response to the expressed interests of white farmers, then the dominant group in South African politics, for continued access to supplies of low-wage labor. At the same time a class of South Africans then called "poor whites" was being forced off the land. The act was intended to minimize competition by forbidding Africans to purchase land or to offer themselves as sharecroppers on white-owned land. Certainly the evolution of black-run states was never envisaged, although the reserves were regarded

as places wherein "the native way of life," including limited application of indigenous law and governance, could be continued. The primary object of the act was to segregate. The secondary object was to limit the number of African families permitted to reside on white-run farms, particularly in the Transvaal.^[2]

The act designated 10.7 million morgen (22.5 million acres), or 7.3 percent of the area of South Africa, as reserves to be occupied and used by and for Africans; these 10.7 million morgen were the "scheduled areas." The crucial contribution of the law involved the distribution of land between Africans and whites. No longer to be left to the forces of the market, land distribution was regulated by law: Africans were prohibited from acquiring land outside the reserves. The act also provided for a commission to recommend additions for a final land settlement, but this part of the act was not carried out. The Beaumont Commission of 1913–1916 recommended areas to be "released" which would have given Africans an additional 8 million morgen, but the Native Affairs Bill of 1917, which embodied the Beaumont proposals, never emerged from a parliamentary committee. Thus the Natives Land Act of 1913 did nothing to consolidate the scattered parcels of what have since become—especially in the cases of the Tswana and the Zulu—fragmented and inadequate homelands.

Since Africans were accustomed to using land extensively, the Natives Land Act dramatically curtailed the traditional African reliance upon the availability of exploitable resources of land. By making no provision for the growth of the reserves commensurate with increased population, the act compelled Africans to employ land intensively both for farming and herding. It also encouraged the able-bodied to offer their services as migratory laborers, or to move permanently to the towns. Moreover, much of the land of the reserves was of deficient quality to begin with, or deteriorated quickly under the pressure of overgrazing. "Though there were tribes and portions of tribes that were well off," a social historian wrote, "the majority lived upon too little land to maintain them as in days of old. Even the . . . traditional allies and favourites of the Government choked upon their land. Such a crowding of men and beasts placed a severe strain upon the land that was left. . . . The breakdown of soil into sand, the replacement of nutritious grass by weeds, the disappearance of trees and shrubs, the scarring of the land could not withstand the pressure upon it of too many men and too many beasts."^[3]

These inadequacies of size and terrain, and their human consequences, were widely recognized. The density of population was at least four times

[2] Colin M. Tatz, Shadow and Substance in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 1962), 22.

[3] C. W. De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa, Social and Economic (London, 1941), 80.

greater (82.21 persons per square mile) in the reserves than in the white-controlled rural areas of the Union.^[4] The Native Economic Commission of 1932, appalled by what it had seen, testified to the already advanced deterioration of the reserves. "A Native area," the Commission reported in words equally appropriate today, "can be distinguished at sight, by its bareness. . . . Two areas with fertile valleys containing great depth of soil . . . show some of the worst donga erosion in the Union. . . . In the rest of the Union the same causes are at work . . . and they will inevitably produce the same effects in the near future—denudation, donga erosion, deleterious plant succession, destruction of woods, drying of springs, robbing the soil of its productive properties, in short the creation of desert conditions."^[5] Many Africans accepted the only option open to them: they moved off the land, flocking to the white-owned lands and the white-dominated cities. "One of the outstanding causes of migration from the reserves," wrote an anthropologist, "quite apart from recruiting, is the appalling shortage of land for native occupation. The Native reserves, at their present low state of development, are both overpopulated and overstocked; and as a result more and more people are tending to drift away."^[6]

In partial recognition of these realities, the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 envisaged the acquisition of 7.25 million morgen (15.2 million acres) for Africans, the "released areas" originally recommended by the Beaumont Commission, for a total of 17.7 million morgen (37.2 million acres) of the 142.5 million morgen (289.25 million acres) in the Union (excluding Southwest Africa). This transfer, had it been effected, would thus have placed only 12.4 percent of the total area of the Republic in the reserves. The act was also expected to eliminate competition between whites and blacks for land, and, in the areas scheduled to be transferred, whites were to be compelled to sell land to the Native Trust for inclusion in the reserves. "Black spots," i.e., areas of African occupation in the defined "white areas," would also have been eliminated. But returning lands from powerful whites to subordinate Africans was controversial, and the process of transfer was consequently delayed. The intervention of World War II further slowed the handover. By 1945 Parliament had appropriated only £6 million of the originally contemplated £10 million for the necessary purchases, and only about 3 million morgen had been added to the reserves. Sixty percent of the money had

[4] Edward Roux, "Land and Agriculture in the Native Reserves," in Ellen Hellman (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (Cape Town, 1949), 175.

[5] Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Economic Commission (Pretoria, 1932), paragraphs 71–74, quoted in H. T. Andrews et al. (eds.), South Africa in the Sixties: A Socio-Economic Survey (Johannesburg, 1965).

[6] Isaac Schapera, "Present-day Life in the Native Reserves," in Isaac Schapera (ed.), Western Civilization and the Natives of South Africca: Studies in Culture Contact (London, 1934), 45.

acquired only 40 percent of the land. "It appears," said the chairman of the Native Affairs Commission, "that the European community is not prepared to honour its promises."^[7] In late 1974, 20 percent of the quota land of 1936 remained to be acquired.^[8]

Recently the issue of land consolidation has once more been prominent, with the government announcing in 1975 yet another final land allocation. The government has repeatedly stated that it will not consider increasing the 1936 quotas.^[9] It is not intended that the homelands in total can comprise more than 13.7 percent of the area of the Republic, whenever the process of acquisition, swapping, and "black spot" and "white spot" removal has been completed. Homeland leaders have repeatedly said that they would not consider accepting independence without major territorial concessions. Whether the government will eventually be compelled to make concessions on land in the hope of making independence more acceptable is a question for the future.

Meanwhile, African populations have increased through natural causes and the Republic remains determined to restrict their flow to the towns and to "resettle" at least some Africans in the homelands. Consequently, densities have increased and, overall, the agricultural condition of the homelands has deteriorated. The insufficiencies of the original reserves are now even more pronounced than they were in 1936.

The Physical Setting

Leaders of the homelands have recently been informed of the future extent of the land resources of their territories. The latest consolidation proposals neither alter by very much the arable land and other natural resources available to Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu nor affect their limited access to South Africa's roads, railways, power systems, or seacoast. Moreover, the implementation of these plans will take at least ten years.^[10] In the interim the governments of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu will face difficulties in planning, and homeowners, businessmen, and farmers threatened by removal may be reluctant to invest in or even to maintain their properties.

The basic structure of the consolidated homelands is ruled by four principles: adherence to the total area set aside by the land acts of 1913 and 1936 as distributed to each of the homelands; desire to reduce the number

[7] Quoted in Roux, "Land and Agriculture," 174.

[8] See Survey of Race Relations, 1974, 181.

[9] See e.g. ibid., 183.

[10] For the latest proposals, see Republic of South Africa, House of Assembly Debates (14 May 1975), cols. 5926–5937 (hereafter cited as House of Assembly Debates ).

of parcels to as few as possible; maintenance of corridors for the Republic's rail, road, power, and communication lines; and continuance of control over existing and planned ports. If present policy is sustained Bophuthatswsana and KwaZulu will remain fragmented. They might gain somewhat more farm land, but existing industries and mines in the new areas would remain indefinitely controlled by whites.

The homelands have limited access to the outside world. Bophuthatswana is far from the sea but it is close to large urban areas, with an arm of the territory reaching to within thirteen miles of Pretoria. Some of its sections also share a border with Botswana. Much of KwaZulu lies along the Indian Ocean and the government of that homeland naturally covets good access to the sea. But the Republic currently plans to limit that access and to maintain the more developed and developable stretches of the coastline (and corridors along the main rail lines) in white hands. Accordingly, only near Umkomaas in the south, near Richards Bay in the center, and in the extreme north might the homeland be permitted direct access to the sea. Richards Bay would remain part of the white-controlled section of Zululand despite KwaZulu's insistence that Richards Bay is and should be its natural port. without it, although KwaZulu shares potentially valuable land frontiers with Swaziland and Moçambique, the homeland's leaders consider their country virtually landlocked.

In addition to limitations of resources and uncertainties having their origin in the policies of the dominant political system, there are other important structural constraints (discussed at greater length in ch. 6). Residents of all the homelands are dependent fiscally and monetarily on the Republic. They import and export through the Republic and derive most of their consumables from the same source. They are employed prominently in the white sector of the Republic, at least 1.25 million Tswana and 2.0 million Zulu residing there. All the homelands depend almost exclusively upon the Republic for capital and technical assistance. Most of all, the homelands exist without many of the policy options open to former colonial territories. Collectively they are an integral part of the Republic's program of separate development. The segregation of the larger economy—with all of its obviously limiting consequences for growth—is theirs too. In addition to their individual deficiencies, whatever the character of independence each homeland will bear the burden of political and social inequalities.

As potential producers of cash and subsistence crops, both Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu are poorly endowed. Spread over three provinces, Bophuthatswana, the largest of the homelands, captures much local variety within its borders. Bophuthatswana nonetheless is for the most part flat, dry, and unsuited for mixed homestead farming. Most of the homeland lies in a zone of deficient soils, low and unreliable rainfall (twelve to twenty inches over

five months), and high temperatures. Around Kuruman, in the west, the land is near desert, and, accordingly, sparsely populated. The heart of the region — near Taung, along the border with Botswana, and north of Rustenburg and Pretoria — receives light rainfall adequate for grazing and on-and-off cropping, but insufficient for settled farming. In fact, there is a close and probably not coincidental association between the northern and western edges of the Republic's maize belt and the southern and eastern bounds of Bophuthatswana. (The small Thaba 'Nchu fragment of the homeland, which is surrounded by the Orange Free State, is better suited to agriculture and herding than most of the homeland.) The homeland's territories are crossed by several rivers (the Great Marico, Molopo, Hartz, Kuruman, and Notwani), but their flows are irregular and do not provide much potential for irrigation. There is a small amount of irrigation at Taung, and in the Bafokeng and Odi II districts springs and streams provide some dependable water. Elsewhere the ground water potential is poor. A number of earth dams and some windmill-fed stock tanks provide water for livestock. The major crops are maize, wheat, vegetables, groundnuts, tobacco, and fruit.

There are nineteen tracts of Bophuthatswana. If and when this number is reduced by consolidation, most Tswana will still find themselves without immediate access to road, rail, telephone, and power facilities. In 1974, for example, there were 397 miles of main roads, only a very small part of which were paved, and several thousand miles of minor roads and paths. Railways cross sections of Bophuthatswana but were designed to serve whites in centers of population rather than Africans in the countryside.^[11] Those homeland Tswana who reside in the areas of dense habitation near Pretoria, Rustenburg, and minor towns can depend upon limited bus service, but their rural compatriots must do without. Telephones are few and electricity is virtually nonexistent. Although the most well arranged of all the homeland growth centers is located in Bophuthatswana's Babelegi, near the main highway north from Pretoria to Pietersburg, internal industrial development is still in its infancy.

Bophuthatswana straddles the rich mineral-bearing rock formations of the Transvaal. The Impala and Union mines, near Rustenburg, produce large quantities of platinum. Chrome is mined nearby, and elsewhere in the homeland there are smaller worked deposits of vanadium, asbestos, iron ore, limestone, granite, manganese, salt, and calcite. Prospects for the discovery of exploitable gold and diamonds are good, a major gold-bearing reef having been discovered in 1975. For the most part the present and potential mines are all situated on African lands, but the homeland government has received

[11] Republic of South Africa, Bureau for Economic Research re Bantu Development (hereafter cited as BENBO), Bophuthatswana, Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976), 15–17, 64–65.

no direct benefit from them. Mineral rights are vested in the particular local Tswana-speaking groups (like the Fokeng in the case of the mines near rustenburg) that control the favored area, in white individuals or companies, or in the Bantu Trust, an agency of the Republic. Exploration and development are regulated by the white-directed Bantu Mining Corporation.^[12] Thus homeland governments have received none of the revenues from mining and exercise no control over mineral leasing or exploitation. If there were a transfer of mineral rights to the homeland governments, for Bophuthatswana the resulting income could appreciably improve the standard of living of its inhabitants and provide much of the capital needed for development.

KwaZulu's physical profile is virtually the opposite of Bophuthatswana's. KwaZulu is the most fragmented of all of the homelands, being composed of twenty-nine major and another forty-one minor enclaves scattered widely over Natal. It thus reflects the diversity of that geologically and climatically complex region. Much of KwaZulu is hilly or mountainous and best suited for use as pasture or forest.^[13] Temperatures are moderate in winter, except at the highest elevations, and warm to hot in summer. Rainfall is dependable, averaging from thirty to forty-five inches in most of the homeland, and is well distributed throughout the year. Yet the combination of steeply sloped terrain and often heavy showers means that much of the land is susceptible to erosion, especially in those areas where overgrazing and overcultivation have been forced upon the population by increasing numbers.^[14] However, the Pongola, the Tugela, the Mzimkulu, the Mkomanzi, and a number of minor rivers and streams provide potential for irrigation.^[15]

[12] But see C. P. Mulder, "The Rationale of Separate Development," in Nic J. Rhoodie (ed.), South African Dialogue: Contrasts in South African Thinking on Basic Race Issues (Johannesburg, 1972), 54. "Mineral rights," says Mulder, "belong to the group in whose area the minerals are found. Already gold and platinum have been discovered in Bantu homelands, and belong to the Bantu nation in question, in this case the Tswana, who draw the mining royalties." Mulder's statement is not accurate in relation to current practice; it may be a statement of objective. See also below, 129, 216.

[13] Union of South Africa, Summary of the Report of the Commission for the Socio-Economic Development of the Bantu Areas within the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1955), 50 (hereafter cited as Summary of the Report ). The commission, usually referred to as the Tomlinson Commission, estimated 58 percent of the African areas of Natal were unsuited to agriculture.

[14] "Statement Summarizing Major Points Emerging During the Proceedings of the Conference: Toward Comprehensive Development in Zululand" (1972), Durban, University of Natal, Institute of Social Research, mimeo., 2. See also Gatsha Buthelezi, "Kwa-Zulu Development," in B. S. Biko (ed.), Black Viewpoint (Durban, 1972), 50.

[15] For an examination of the resources of the Tugela Basin, see E. Thorrington-Smith, Towards a Plan for the Tugela Basin (Pietermaritzburg, 1960). For an appraisal of irrigation generally, see L. P. McCrystal and Catherine M. Moore, "An Economic Survey of Zululand" (Durban, 1967), mimeo., 22.

The northern section of the homeland, between the Indian Ocean and Moçambique and Swaziland, consists of very lightly populated, sandy, reputedly unhealthy coastal flats. Smaller segments are located west of Pietermaritzburg in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains, where there is some farming and cattle grazing. In the hilly central Tugela River region cattle and light cropping are the mainstays of subsistence. An expansion of irrigation here would permit more intensive farming. The belt of rolling terrain just inland from the coast includes some sugar cane holdings (most of South Africa's sugar estates are owned by whites) and offers conditions of greater agricultural promise. In some places in the lowveld of northern Zululand cotton can be grown. In addition parts of KwaZulu are suited for producing vegetables for urban markets. In the coastal strips and the southeastern region between the coast and the Drakensberg, pineapples, avocados, and bananas are grown. The mistbelt of the area supports plantations of black wattle, from which tan-bark and tanning extract are produced. There are small African pine and bluegum timber plantations, some experimental sisal and phorium tenax (flax, a jute substitute) estates, and limited fish farming. On dry lands the Zulu now grow corn, sorghum, beans, peanuts, white potatoes and sweet potatoes, tobacco, bananas, and pulses.^[16]

KwaZulu's mineral wealth has not been fully surveyed, but is probably limited. There are known deposits of coal, gypsum, limestone, and kaolin. A small tourmaline mine is operating. In 1972 leases were granted for the mining of kyanite and magnetite, and the Bantu Mining Corporation has searched for vanadium and assisted a sand-extraction project near Pinetown. A major coal deposit was found near Nongoma in 1975. An industrial park has been established near Isithebe, north of Durban. Several small fabricating firms have located at this growth point, but there is room for many more.

Like all of the homelands and many less developed countries, KwaZulu has a poorly developed infrastructure.^[17] This, as much as any single cause, hinders the development of agriculture and industry in the homeland. Major rail and road arteries run along the coast and north from Durban through the white corridors. A new highway and a new railway bisect KwaZulu from Richards Bay to Vryheid, but both were designed to serve the economy of the Republic. There are 958 miles of road in KwaZulu, of which half are main roads with gravel or tar surfaces. In 1966 Natal had 22 road miles per 100 square miles of territory, but Zululand had only 7 road miles per 100 square miles of territory, figures that are unlikely to have been much altered in the last ten years. There are thirty-seven miles of standard gauge rail lines, not

[16] For geographical material, see Monica Cole, South Africa (London, 1966); Summary of the Report; BENBO, KwaZulu, Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976), 16–19.

[17] D. Hobart Houghton, "Apartheid Idealism versus Economic Reality," in Rhoodie, South African Dialogue, 292.

including the new Vryheid-Richards Bay line, which runs for sixty miles through the homeland.^[18] Most of KwaZulu is not yet connected to the national power grid. Few of the population centers within the homeland have extensive telephone service.

Population and Manpower

South Africa expects the homelands to provide the ultimate refuge, though not the regular residence, for all those who speak the indigenous languages of earlier, larger, less crowded "authentic homelands." This allocation will apply even to those who may have stemmed from such homelands generations ago. Consequently, despite limited natural endowment, and, thus far, restricted authority over their own development, the homelands are expected to provide for growing populations without enlarged areas. According to the 1970 Census, there were 600,000 Tswana (predominantly Fokeng, Rolong, Hurutshe, Kwene, Tlokwa, Kgatla, and Tlhaping) in Bophuthatswana and 2.1 million Zulu in KwaZulu. Of the 1.1 million Tswana living outside the homelands, 600,000 or 54 percent lived in urban townships, and 500,000 or 46 percent in the Republic's rural areas. One million Zulu, or 53 percent, lived in urban townships, while 900,000 or 47 percent were located in the Republic's rural areas. Roughly 35 percent of all South African Tswana, and 50 percent of all Zulu lived in the homelands in 1970.^[19] (The population of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu combined is equivalent to about 28 percent of the total population of all the homelands, the citizens of Transkei numbering 1.65 million, or another 10 percent). In the 1970s, even if these two homelands were to be isolated from the Republic, their resident populations would still prove too small to provide sufficient markets or manpower bases for autonomous, internally directed development. By the end of the century, however, the Tswana in South Africa will number about 4 million, the Zulu 10 million. At least 2 million people will inhabit Bophuthatswana in the year 2000. Similarly, within KwaZulu there will be 5 million people or, if the borders are redrawn to include the African townships around Durban and other cities, substantially more. At the same time the white population of the Republic will only be about 7 million; the entire African population — all individually then subjects of homelands — will number 37 million.^[20]

[18] BENBO, KwaZulu, Economic Revue, 74–75; McCrystal and Moore, "Economic Survey," 86.

[19] C. J. Jooste, "Background Data" in C. W. H. Boshoff (ed.), Bantu Outside Their Homelands (Pretoria, 1972), 10. See the recent full summaries in BENBO, KwaZulu, Economic Revue, 20; idem, Bophuthatswana, Economic Revue, 18.

[20] The growth of the white population includes the addition of 30,000 immigrants per year. The natural rate of increase will fall from about 1.5 percent to 1.2 percent by the year 2000. The African population will grow at about 3 percent per year in the same interval. See J. L. Sadie, Projections of the South African Population (Johannesburg, 1974), tables 2 and 8.

This rapid expansion of the African population will generate a corresponding growth in the labor force. In the 1970s the African male labor force has been increasing at a rate of over 100,000 a year. If females are included, more than 150,000 new African workers will seek employment each year of the next decade.^[21] Thus, because of the numbers of children already born and the difficulty of reversing demographic trends quickly, the economies of the homelands and the Republic must generate employment opportunities at very high rates to the end of the century if widespread unemployment and extreme discontent are to be avoided. Further, if Africans are to improve their standards of living in real terms, these new jobs must be more productive and higher paying than existing ones. Yet already there is considerable unemployment and underemployment among Africans as well as a backlog of mature workers who seek active employment. South Africa's economic plan estimates a national growth rate, in real terms, of nearly 6 percent — sufficient, it says, to absorb new and hitherto unemployed Africans.^[22] With continued separate development, a very substantial portion of this new employment must be generated within or adjacent to the homelands. But to do so implies a shift of private and state expenditures in the same direction and the concomitant relative decline of established urban centers like Durban and Johannesburg, with resulting alterations in white patterns of living and working. Support for separate development and industrial decentralization also means that African workers will need to be increasingly better educated and trained than they are at present.

The anticipated growth in the overall African population, and in the numbers expected to live in the homelands, will put additional pressure upon territories already poorly endowed and limited in size. High and rising population densities, although not necessarily deleterious from the economic point of view, do preclude several obvious patterns of development. Dense populations cannot be expected to revert to primarily pastoral or agricultural ways of life. Bophuthatswana has the lowest population density of all the homelands, with only 61 people per square mile. But most of the homeland is arid, being suited only for light grazing and intermittent cultivation. In KwaZulu there are already 173 people per square mile, the highest density of all the

[21] J. A. Lombard and P. J. van der Merwe estimate an annual increase of the male African labor force of about 113,000 annually in the mid-1970s. ("Central Problems of the Economic Development of Bantu Homelands," Finance and Trade Review, X [1972], 7 and table 5.) If one-third as many women as men want jobs, this would mean there are 150,000 new African job-seekers every year. The plan for 1972 to 1977 estimated that there would be 6,471,000 African workers in 1977 and that the African labor force would be growing at 2.8 percent per year, or by 181,000 workers at that time. Republic of South Africa, Department of Planning, Economic Development Programme for the Republic of South Africa, 1972–1977 (Pretoria, 1972), 39.

[22] Economic Development Programme, 1972–1977, 44–45.

homelands. This is a very high figure for rural Africa and KwaZulu's prime arable land, especially along water courses or in the valleys, holds far higher populations. According to calculations based on the 1970 census, three Zulu districts have population densities per square mile of arable land of more than 3,000 people. Four districts have average densities per square mile of over 400 people.^[23] In such circumstances, rural densities per square mile approach the crowded levels of Java and Haiti.

The Tswana have lived traditionally in clustered-site dwellings and are now heavily concentrated in official housing and shanty settlements close to Pretoria, Rustenburg, and Mafeking. Only about 25 percent of the populations of Bophuthatswana and about 10 percent of KwaZulu are officially considered urban, but the statistics seem to underestimate the extent of real agglomeration in both homelands. Even in rural areas, such as those around Taung, concentrated villages rather than dispersed settlements are the rule. In 1976 there were fourteen towns in Bophuthatswana, four with populations between 20,000 and 50,000. Mabopane, near Pretoria, probably numbers over 100,000 if the squatters of adjacent Winterveld are included, and GaRankuwa, eighteen miles from Pretoria and six miles from Rosslyn, is probably as large. Tlbabane and Temba each have about 25,000 people. In KwaZulu there are twenty-three towns, with five more under construction. Umlazi near Durban numbers over 150,000, and three more are in the 30,000 to 60,000 range.^[24] Many more Tswana and Zulu live and work in white towns and cities than in the homelands and many of the residents of the rural areas of the homelands commute, migrate, or at least visit the urban centers. A majority of the populations of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu are thus already living in urban areas or are in close contact with urbanized life.

The age and sex structure of the homelands has significant implications for their economic and political future. One of the major reasons why the homelands have such weak, underproductive economies is that able-bodied men are temporarily or permanently absent in the white areas. High proportions of older men, women, and young children remain behind in the rural areas of the homelands, producing little and relying on remittances from family members working in the Republic. The male: female ratio in Bophuthatswana is .88:1 and in KwaZulu it is .75:1, ratios that underline KwaZulu's greater dependence on migrant labor.^[25] If and when border industries are

[23] Taken from the 1970 census and reported in Lombard and van der Merwe, "Central Problems," 34, table 9.

[24] Republic of South Africa, Department of Statistics, Population Census, 1970; Population of Cities, Towns and Rural Areas (Pretoria, 1971), 50; BENBO, Bophuthatswana Economic Revue, 1975, 28; idem., KwaZulu Economic Revue, 1975, 32.

[25] For Bophuthatswana see BENBO, Bophuthatswana Economic Review, 1975, 22; for KwaZulu see idem., KwaZulu Economic Revue, 1975, 24.

established in number and/or the homelands entice large-scale industry into their own territories, these imbalances may change. At present, however, employment opportunities in the Republic draw and are expected to continue to draw young adult males away from Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu with a rhythm and on a scale that has only intensified in thirty years.

One measure of the contemporary population imbalance is the adult male dependency burden (persons up to fourteen years of age divided by males from fifteen to sixty-four years of age). This proportion suggests how many young nonproductive dependents an adult male must support with his labor. It does not include adult females or aged dependents. The average white male worker in South Africa supports 0.9 young dependents. The average Tswana male in an urban area supports 1.2 to 1.7 dependents. In the rural portions of Bophuthatswana the dependency burden grows to 3.5. For Zulu males the pattern is similar, with a rural homeland dependency factor of 3.3.^[26] It is thus obvious that the population composition of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu militates against easy development and places a special burden on the governments of both homelands. For example, both are or will be forced to respond to the needs of residents who cannot easily pay for the kinds of costly services—housing, education, medical attention, and social welfare benefits—for which demand will increase as numbers and expectations grow, and which yield no immediate economic gains.

The quality, as judged by levels of nutrition and morbidity, as well as the density and age and sex composition of a population, affects its capacity to respond to developmental opportunities. Homeland populations lack piped water, adequate sanitation, and ready access to doctors, nurses, and hospitals. Judged by the standards of other developing nations, intake levels of calories and protein are low and deficiency diseases like kwashiokor, marasmus, and pellagra are common.^[27] Even in the cities African children suffer from dietary shortcomings: one study of an urban sample concluded that 80 percent of African schoolchildren were undernourished; another study gave a figure of 86 percent as judged by weight.^[28] Infant mortality rates in the homelands are high—at least 128 per 1,000 people, where under 27 per 1,000 is a sign of a healthy population.^[29] The average heights and weights of homeland African

[26] Lombard and van der Merwe, "Central Problems," 33.

[27] See P. J. Pretorius and H. Novis, "Nutritional Marasmus in Bantu Infants in the Pretoria Area," South African Medical Journal, XXXIX (1965), 237–238, 501–505; F. W. Quass, "The Nutrition of Preschool and Primary School Children," ibid., 1137. See also M. E. Edginton, J. Hodkinson, and H. C. Seftel, "Disease Patterns in a South African Rural Bantu Population," ibid., XLVI (1972), 974.

[28] See J. V. O. Reid, "Malnutrition," in Peter Randall (ed.), Some Implications of Inequality (Johannesburg, 1971), 38.

[29] J. G. A. Davel, "The Incidence of Malnutrition among Bantu Children," South African Medical Journal, XXXIX (1965), 1148. See also Alexander R. P. Walker, "Biological and Disease Patterns in South African Interracial Populationsas Modified by Rise in Privilege," ibid., XLVI (1972), 1128, where the overall rural Bantu figure is given as 82 per 1,000. The American figure is 20 per 1,000, and the figure for the Netherlands, a low of 13 per 1,000.

children place them in the third percentile when they are compared with American children, although the average heights and weights of African elite children compare favorably with American norms.^[30]

Even without the kind of detailed figures that are rarely collected in the underdeveloped parts of the world, it is clear that the human resource capabilities of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu may be affected by presently irreducible nutritional impoverishments. They, in turn, directly, contribute to retardation and, probably, to an overall energy deficit. "TB (in Bophuthatswana) is like the common cold," wrote one doctor. "If a patient comes in suffering from an ingrowing toenail and you're fool enough to x-ray him, you find he's got TB. . . . Malnutrition weakens the people to such an extent that they catch it as easily as a cold."^[31] Thus the future of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu cannot help but be influenced by the low levels of nutrition and life expectancy that are a feature of homeland life and that, in the short run, affect productivity, receptivity to innovation, and potential political change.

The Political Past

Since 1910 Africans throughout the Republic have suffered the imposition of constraints without the extension of many new rights. The Africans in the Cape have been the most affected: until 1910 they exercised the franchise subject to qualifications of literacy and of property or income; their vote had been important in about twelve constituencies. In 1910 they lost the right (which had never been exercised) to membership in the House of Assembly of the Cape Colony, and their votes were not counted in the allocation of seats between the provinces in the constitution of the Union. In 1930 their vote was further devalued by the extension of voting rights to white women; it was devalued yet again in 1931 when the property and income qualifications for voting were removed for whites only. In 1936 Cape Africans lost the right to vote on the common voters' roll and in exchange, were given three parliamentary seats to be filled by whites.

The impact of these changes on the Tswana and the Zulu was different. The Tswana of the Cape lost such political rights as they had had. Africans, and therefore the Zulu, in Natal before the Union, had had the right to vote, but the conditions were so stringent that in 1909 only six Africans were on

[30] P. M. Leary and D. Obst, "The Use of Percentile Charts in the Nutritional Assessment of Children from Primitive Communities," ibid., XLIII (1969), 1165–1168.

[31] Dr. Donald Mackenzie, head of St. Michael's Mission Hospital north of Kuruman, quoted in "Starvation in South Africa," Rand Daily Mail, 11 Nov. 1969.

the voters' roll. The South Africa Act of 1909 therefore affected law rather than practice in Natal. Zulu traditional government had been broken up in the immediate aftermath of the war of 1879, and after the Bambatha rebellion of 1906, their king, Dinizulu, was exiled to the Transvaal, where he died. No major change followed. Indeed, for both Tswana and Zulu, constitutional developments after 1910 notably worsened their positions only if they had acquired rights through residence in the Cape.

The Representation of Natives Act of 1936 gave Africans in the Cape three white members of Parliament, and Africans in the other provinces four white senators, all chosen by a complex system of indirect election. Limited and segregated though it was, the act gave Africans throughout South Africa increased representation in Parliament. While the system lasted, eloquent white spokesmen ensured that some African grievances were brought to the attention of legislators in a way they had not been before 1936. This was small compensation, however, for the disparities between black and white participation in electoral politics. The steady elimination of Africans from political roles held in common with whites without the elaboration of new structures in, and concession of new powers to, the African areas, was a development analogous to the closing to Africans of the market in land in 1913 without at the same time increasing the size of the reserves.

It is the urban Africans who have been most conspicuously disadvantaged by South African constitution making. As in the case of their rural brethren, they originally possessed limited freedom to acquire property in all of the provinces except the Orange Free State. The Urban Areas Act of 1923 extended territorial segregation from the countryside to the towns, and the notion that Africans were "temporary" residents of the urban areas began to find its expression in law. Advisory boards were set up to represent the views of township residents. They were usually under the chairmanship of a white location superintendent and did little beyond noting grievances, having no power to do anything about them. Yet the urban black populations continued to grow, attracted by new opportunities in industry and commerce that, despite the constraints of legal and customary color bars, were preferable to farming in the reserves or working for white farmers. Before 1948 virtually no institutional provision had been made for urban Africans nor were any links provided between the peoples of the cities and the reserves.

When the National Party came to power in 1948 it was able to build upon a long and cumulative tradition of segregation in South African politics and decision-making. From that time it embarked upon a systematic program intended to "retribalize" Africans, to eliminate all participation by Africans, Asians, and coloureds in the disposition of power at national or local levels in the white areas, and to develop new, ethnically-based institutions in the

African areas. These new institutions were ultimately to represent all Africans of a particular ethnic group no matter where they lived.

This institutionalized ethnicity, not of their own making, presented homeland leaders with certain opportunities. Despite their long involvement in an urbanizing economy, the development of a tradition of African, not ethnic, nationalism, and the close links of their homelands to the modern Republic, the Tswana and the Zulu in the 1970s and 1980s may be able to draw upon their own traditions of incipient modernization in the nineteenth century, while avoiding the danger of serving the needs of the Republic more than those of black South Africans. The very emphasis by the government of the Republic on ethnicity, on the historic struggle of Afrikaners, and on the legitimacy of the white presence may encourage the Tswana and the Zulu not only to question the boundaries of the homelands, but to rely upon their past for inspiration and example. There are in both Tswana and Zulu history examples of adaptive modernizing leaders—"conscious social planners" in the case of the Tswana, great military innovators in the case of the Zulu.^[32] At certain periods in Zulu history there was considerable mobility and men of talent were able to rise in the service of the king. Reluctantly accepting white rule, Tswana and Zulu entered the modern economy, at the same time preserving some traditional institutions in the reserves. When the logic of apartheid gave them an opportunity to do so, Tswana and Zulu leaders with traditional and modern credentials attempted to use an imposed system to increase the power of their peoples. These new leaders may thus be able to set the politics of their societies in the mainstream of their own traditions at the same time as they struggle for a greater share of South Africa's power and wealth.

[32] For details, see Isaac Schapera, Tribal Innovators: Tswana Chiefs and Social Change, 1795–1940 (London, 1970), 251–257; Max Gluckman, "The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa," in M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1940), 39, 44–45.