5—
Leadership and Policy in the Emerging Homelands
The leaders of independent Africa dominate the political affairs of their own countries and peoples; the preferences of presidents or generals are more influential than the deliberations of elected legislatures. Consequently, patriotism is in many places equated with loyalty to a ruling party or a particular head of state. Some states are still governed by the politicians who, as nationalists during the colonial period, wrested power from Britain or France. Their direction of the anticolonial movements provided a legitimacy that was carried over into the period of postindependence and still persists. It reflected and still almost everywhere reflects the notion that strong undivided leadership is essential if the new states are to succeed in a potentially hostile and much more powerful world. The Republic of South Africa provides this external reality for the homelands, and their chief executives, like the earlier anticolonial nationalists, dominate their cabinets and legislatures. This dominance is to some extent a function of their own personalities, but the system of separate development, and the nature of the relations between the dependent proto-states and the powerful Republic, also encourages the exercise of power by a prominent few.
Since the homelands are subordinate polities, their political dialogues take place primarily with the dominant power. They focus upon the redistribution of power and resources and about how and when that redistribution will take place. Thus, it is incumbent upon the individually weak homelands to support their own men of stature in their dealing with the dominant Republic, a characteristic exaggerated by the novelty and non-African form of the homeland legislatures.
Since they also sit infrequently and are still constitutionally weak, the assemblies offer few constraints upon the actions of determined and able chief ministers. In their early debates members worried that criticism in the assemblies could weaken the hands of their leaders and unnecessarily divide the embryo states. The leaders of the homelands thus have a freedom of action with regard to the assemblies that they cannot yet expect with regard to solving the problems of their peoples. They control only specified areas
of policy and command few resources. Nevertheless, as Matanzima did originally, Mangope and Buthelezi have adroitly made use of the limited opportunities available to outspoken leaders by the logic of the policy of separate development. As chief executives of recognized political entities they have a freedom to speak critically that is rare for blacks within South Africa. The future of South Africa and its homeland policies could depend upon the extent to which it remains possible for leaders like Mangope and Buthelezi to articulate grievances and persuade the rulers of South Africa to improve the quality of life for all blacks.
Both Mangope and Buthelezi have attacked the South African social order as a whole and policies that affect their homelands in particular. Restrained in tone, Mangope has made his impact with the cutting edge of resolute understatement. Buthelezi has been strident, ironic, and importunate. The press, especially an English language press disillusioned with the official parliamentary opposition, has regarded Mangope and Buthelezi as "good copy." It has thus helped to shift the question of the homelands from the periphery to the center of South African politics. Mangope and Buthelezi address themselves as much to the white electorate and its leadership as they do to their own peoples; a large proportion of their speaking takes place before English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. They are, therefore, contributors to a South African debate involving more than their own homelands. Thus far successfully, they have gambled on the South African government's inability to hamper their activities without laying separate development open to the taint of cynicism and hypocrisy.
Constitutionally and politically, Mangope and Buthelezi have been placed in positions of considerable complexity. Holding great authority in relation to their own peoples, as shown by the weakness of organized opposition to them in the homelands, they spar in an entirely new way (for South Africa) with white rulers who have an increasing interest in ensuring the credibility, outside, as well as inside South Africa, of a contrived system. In 1975, too, as the Republic energetically sought to ensure détente in southern Africa by negotiating with Zambia and ending white rule in Rhodesia, so the success of separate development became more essential than ever before. Antagonizing the homelands, or slowing the pace of their political and economic growth, could deleteriously affect the relations of the Republic with black Africa. For the same reasons the government of the Republic began in 1975 to accede to some of the improvements in the South African social order demanded by homeland leaders.
Short of eroding their own power — indeed for the purpose of buttressing it — South African whites recognize the need to cooperate with the leaders of their black homelands if they are to enhance the likelihood of stability throughout southern Africa. From the overthrow of the Caetano government
in Portugal in 1974, South Africa has sought to buy time with space: i.e., to postpone a radical redistribution of power at home by accepting change in Moçambique, or even assisting it in Rhodesia. But events in Angola have increased the pressures on South Africa to achieve both a resolution of the long-standing dispute with the United Nations over Namibia, and to create a political order at home that would restore to South Africa some legitimacy internationally. Détente and separate development are complementary components of present South African policy; détente may not be achievable, even after the resolution of conflict in Rhodesia and Namibia, without drastic changes in the policy of separate development.
Homeland Leaders
Homeland leaders, especially Kaiser Matanzima of the Transkei, Cedric Phatudi of Lebowa, Hudson Ntsanwisi of Gazankulu, Lucas Mangope, and Gatsha Buthelezi have become major figures in South African politics despite the limited powers and poverty of their proto-states. Mangope and Buthelezi are poles apart in manner and method, but they have both learned to operate within, and to publicize, the constraints imposed on them by the South African system. Their demonstrated determination and magnetism enables them to dominate their own homelands, and so to represent the views of their peoples with force and conviction. By so doing they are able to urge the central government to narrow the gap between promise and performance. They have done so, as have other homeland leaders, by exploiting the rhetoric and logic of the policy of separate development, decrying inconsistencies, alternatively being moderate and radical and angry and restrained, and by welcoming concessions and demanding reasonable further progress.
Lucas Mangope
Chief Mangope was born in 1923 at Motswedi, north of Zeerust in the Transvaal. His father, a chief, sent him away to a school run by the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican monastic order of which Trevor Huddleston is the best known member. Mangope indeed credits Huddleston with a large measure of direct influence on his own life. In 1946, after more than a decade in schools run by the order, Mangope obtained a senior certificate (equivalent to an American high school diploma) from the community's St. Peter's School in Rosettenville (Oliver Tambo, a major ANC leader, long in exile, was a schoolmate), and then a junior teaching diploma at the Diocesan Teachers' Training College near Pietersburg. Meanwhile, he had been advancing in traditional rank, having become the leader of the Mathlatlhowa regiment of his own Tswana group. Between 1947 and 1949, he worked in the Department of Native Affairs. But in
1951, he returned to school, attending Bethel College near Lichtenburg in order to obtain his Higher Primary Teachers' Diploma. Having taught primary school in the 1940s, during most of the 1950s he taught in a secondary school in Motswedi (serving for several years as its principal) and in other secondary schools in Mafeking, Potchefstroom, and Krugersdorp.
By this time Mangope had become more heavily involved in administration and politics. When his father died in 1959, he became chief of the Motswedi-Barutshe-Boo-Manyane tribe and joined the Zeerust Regional Authority. He was appointed to the Bantu Education Advisory Board and the Advisory Council of the University of the North. When the Tswana Territorial Authority was formed in 1961, he became vice-chairman, advancing to chairman in 1968 and chief minister in 1972 with the evolution of his homeland. In these positions he steadily gained stature, employing solid, and until recently, undramatic qualities of patience and persistence in the pursuit of his own and Tswana ends. Much of his strategy has been based upon the acquisition of medium- or long-term rather than short-term results. A professed admirer of the doggedness of Afrikaners, Mangope well knows that endurance and integrity are essential if his objectives are to be achieved. Moreover Mangope, no less than other homeland leaders, knows that it will be difficult as well as essential for power to be redistributed in such a way that the economic and social development of his proto-state is least compromised.
Mangope has a significant advantage in his dealings with the Republic that is shared by few of the other homeland executives. He is fluent in Afrikaans, the language of negotiation and employment as well as the predominant foreign language for Africans of those portions of the western Transvaal and the northern Cape where most Tswana reside. As a school teacher Mangope specialized in the teaching of Afrikaans, his pupils one year even proving more proficient than all others in the Transvaal examinations. For this effort Mangope was awarded a trophy that is still a source of pride. Afrikaner journalists delight in his employment of their language and his ability to speak eloquently and knowledgeably of Afrikaner history. Sometimes, too, Mangope has praised the candor and trustworthiness of Afrikaners. He is a believer in reconciliation. He has rejected the white supremacy policies of the opposition United Party and criticized the Progressive Party (as it then was) because of its espousal of a qualified franchise.[1] He has condemned idealistic radicals, and once collected funds from his people for the "fight against terrorists." He urged his followers to attend festivals celebrating the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Republic.
[1] The Star, 20 Oct. 1971; Die Transvaler, 6 Nov. 1972. The Progressive Party combined with the Reform Party to form the Progressive Reform Party in 1975.
Like other homeland leaders, however, he has reacted to the altered climate of opinion in South Africa. In 1973, while deploring terrorism, he warned that bargaining had to be resorted to; "time is running out" he said. Soon after the Portuguese coup of 1974, he said: "Things will never be the same again in South Africa since the events in Lisbon." Linking the "certainty" of increased terrorism along the borders with the frustration and anger of "my own people" and the increasing militancy of young blacks, he put the issue starkly. "Can he [the white man] expect us to help him defend this country — and we are more than willing to do so — without knowing what our rights are?"[2]
However strong his criticism, Mangope's tone is always restrained. He frequently expresses an understanding of the Afrikaner predicament, even before audiences with whom it might not be particularly welcome. At an Institute of Race Relations conference he praised former Prime Minister Verwoerd's perseverance and vision: "He has brought us more years of precious time to sort things out than we are willing to give him credit for."[3] Given this record, it is hardly surprising that until mid-1973 the Afrikaans press lauded Mangope as a supporter of separate development. It is clear, however, that Mangope's visit to the United States in 1973 exerted a profound influence on him. After his trip he came into direct conflict with Prime Minister Vorster, who had threatened to prevent white opposition parties from inviting homeland leaders to their congresses. Mangope was forthright: "I am not going to be muzzled," he said, "not even by Caesar himself."[4]
Mangope's policies and public statements had grown increasingly critical from about mid-1972. On the occasion of the grant of self-government to Bophuthatswana in June 1972, he reminded a Tswana and Afrikaner audience that he had repeatedly affirmed his support for "the positive aspects of the policy of separate development with the emphasis on development." Under his guidance, the first annual congress of the Bophuthatswana National Party "accepted and firmly supported those aspects of separate development they regarded as positive."[5] But in his capacity of chief minister, now able to speak to white, especially Afrikaner, audiences, Mangope has raised major questions candidly. Before an audience of white students at Stellenbosch University he called for real sacrifices on the part of whites. "If it is really our honest intention to allow the policy [of separate development] to succeed then it is surely time for the whites to make some sacrifices," he
[2] Rand Daily Mail, 13 Sept. 1973; Oggendblad (Pretoria), 29 May 1974; Star Weekly, 13 July 1974.
[3] Lucas Mangope, "The Political Future of the Homelands," South African Institute of Race Relations (Johannesburg, 1974), mimeo., 2.
[4] Hoofstad (Pretoria), 25 Sept. 1973).
[5] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 2 June 1972; Mafeking Mail, 2 March 1973.
said. "I mean real sacrifices. Of course I understand only too well that the idea of voluntary sacrifice is the most difficult thing to sell to a privileged electorate. But that does not alter in any way the hard facts of the situation which has been reached in our history."[6] Early in 1973 he decried whites who remained unaware of the anger and bitterness that discrimination caused among blacks. After the proposed Bophuthatswana budget was drastically reduced by the Republic, he criticized separate development as such, but with a less abrasive tone. "It is my experience that most of the criticism of separate development has merit." He reminded the Department of Bantu Administration and Development that every time "Pretoria fails to fulfill the promises implicit in separate development it undermines the position of homeland leaders committed to the policy."[7]
It is impossible to decide the extent to which the utterances of homeland politicians, particularly those statements that are addressed to Republican authorities or to sympathetic journalists, are tactical in origin. In 1973 Mangope began to question the whole political basis of separate development. He shifted his emphasis from the necessity of collaboration, and from complaints about failures to perform, to an attack on the refusal of South Africa's rulers to consider devising a workable, single political system capable of embracing all the peoples of South Africa — the major premise of separate development. "Naturally," he concluded, "I would prefer to see social and economic equality in South Africa together with one-man one-vote participation for my people in the central political system. However, this is clearly out of the question right now."[8] "I don't think there is a better policy [than separate development] for the whites, but it is not so for the blacks. This is my opinion based on the way in which it is being carried out."[9]
Yet Mangope has courted Afrikaners and used their institutions as possible models for Tswana. He has appealed to leading Afrikaner industrialists for their assistance in establishing for Africans a Reddingsdaadbond , an organization set up in the late 1930s to promote Afrikaners in economic life. In his assembly he said that he envisaged his Tswana university as one to be modelled on Rand Afrikaans University, an Afrikaner institution.[10]
Mangope's recent speeches place him much closer in tone to Buthelezi, by whose example he has undoubtedly been influenced. On his return from the United States in 1973, Mangope suggested that South Africa pay
[6] Quoted in Die Vaderland (Johannesburg), 12 Oct. 1972.
[7] Quoted in The Star , 25 Jan., 27 March, and 28 March 1973; Rand Daily Mail , 29 March 1973.
[8] Quoted in The Star , 26 Jan. 1973. Reiterated in Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 5.
[9] Hoofstad , 23 Jan. 1974.
[10] Mafeking Mail , 19 April 1974.
Bophuthatswana R240 million over twenty years because its people "had never been paid adequately for their labor."[11] In 1976, in explaining his willingness to negotiate with the South African government over independence, he repeated the demand for compensation for the Tswana people, who by the "sweat of their brows" had helped enrich South Africa.[12] He has always justified cooperating with the Republic on the ground that separate development offers a means of gaining concessions for Africans. But the rate and magnitude of those concessions has disappointed him and he has deplored the way in which the policy has been implemented. Insisting by implication on an undivided South Africa, he has said, "In the country of our forefathers, and of our birth, the sharing of power is our inalienable right." In 1974 he protested at meddling in "matters of purely local politics" by Republican officials and reiterated his demands for substantial concessions of money and power "to ensure meaningful progress towards equal opportunity for people of all races in South Africa."[13]
Without substantial returns, Mangope (and Buthelezi) acknowledge the impossibility of winning over younger Africans, especially students, most of whom are hostile to separate development in all its forms. In these circumstances, where the caution of the dominant power precludes substantial immediate satisfaction of the expectations of their peoples, homeland leaders must skillfully orchestrate their rhetoric and activity. This is a performance at which Mangope has become particularly adept, stating major demands in tones of studied moderation that make his rare displays of anger all the more impressive.
Gatsha Buthelezi
Buthelezi's rise from comparative obscurity to national and international prominence has been rapid. From his reluctant acceptance of the position of chief executive councillor of KwaZulu in 1971 he has become a forceful spokesman for Africans generally, and one of the most frequently quoted men in South African public life. Consequently, his genius both for the artful isolation of inconsistency and the generous search for accommodation — for ways in which to make major concessions to the anxieties of whites — has been given ample exposure in the daily press. Without that coverage he could not have so captured the imagination of many whites. As a result, he has hastened the growth of a new kind of oligarchic, multiracial politics in which leaders of all white opposition parties, except those of the far right, have held discussions with him and with other homeland leaders. His efforts have also helped to bring the leaders of the homelands together politically and to
[11] Rand Daily Mail , 13 July 1973.
[12] Ibid. , 2 Feb. 1976.
[13] Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 5; Star Weekly , 6 July 1974.
force the pace of homeland political development. In all of these endeavors Buthelezi's charisma and self-confidence have provided a critical personal ingredient.
Chief Buthelezi was born in 1928 at the Ceza Mission Hospital near Nongoma, thereafter being taken, as was customary, to the royal kraal of his uncle, Ingonyama Solomon. There he grew up with others of princely lineage, including his cousin Cyprian, a subsequent Ingonyama. One grandfather was a chief councillor to the Ingonyama Cetewayo. The other, on his maternal side, was Ingonyama Dinizulu. The young Buthelezi went to primary school in Nongoma and to Adams College, the famed American-founded mission high school in Amanzimtoti, and then to Fort Hare University College. He studied history and native administration, but never completed the course. On the occasion of a visit to the college of a governor-general, he participated in a demonstration against an intrusion by "the rubber stamp of oppression." At first suspended, Buthelezi was expelled just before his final examinations. Only later could he complete his degree, at the University of Natal. He had hoped to go on to study law, but the pressures of family obligation were strong. On the insistence of Princess Constance Magogo ka Dinizulu, his mother (who remains influential today), he returned home. In 1953, aged twenty-six, he succeeded his father as head of the 20,000-member Buthelezi clan, with its headquarters at Mahlabatini. The white authorities were so concerned about his potential for leadership and troublemaking, however, that they confirmed him as chief only after a five-year probation.
Relations between the clan under his leadership and the government of South Africa have never been cordial. Buthelezi and his people resisted the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 — not without material cost. In a bold gesture early in the next decade, they even accepted a R320,000 agricultural betterment scheme only on condition that they themselves should pay for it (at a tax of R20 per person over two years). This may have been Buthelezi's idea. There was internal opposition, however, and only R10,000 was ever collected. The promised improvements should therefore have been defaulted, but, a second time, the government offered to pay for them. This time the tribe, in a voice echoed many times more recently by Buthelezi, said haughtily that if the government were impatient it could make the improvements on its own, "but the tribe would not accept [them] of its own accord."[14] Still later, the tribal leaders offered to implement the scheme, but only around Mahlabatini, where Buthelezi lived. There the betterment could be observed by the entire tribe. The government would not, in the end, accept this reluctant and conditional assent.
[14] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail , 19 June 1970.
Buthelezi and his followers remained obstructionist throughout the 1960s. (During the same period he was one of Ingonyama Solomon's closest advisors.) Only in 1968, after South Africa forcefully made its wishes known, did they finally agree to the establishment of a regional authority at Mahlabatini. Buthelezi became its chairman, making it widely known that he and his people, having never been consulted about the implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act, were merely obeying the law. "The Buthelezi tribal authority," he said, "feels that it is not under any obligation to register any acceptance or objection to the proclamation of the regional authority for the district, as the tribal authority is already fully cooperating with the department in the implementation of the Act."[15]
Since his expulsion from the college of Fort Hare, Buthelezi has managed to speak his mind without falling afoul of white authority. This says as much for his adroitness as it implies the government's awareness of his abilities and potential. He has tried on numerous occasions to deflect policy and to take advantage of mistakes made by officials. One of his stratagems is to make absolutely clear where power lies — as he did in the case of the regional authority at Mahlabatini, and as he did early in 1973 when he refused to discuss plans for land consolidation because his people had not been consulted about them. He is not deferential in fact-to-face contact with cabinet ministers, but he observes the courtesies of political combat. Unlike his ideological forbears, such as Chief Albert Luthuli, he is able to say much for which they were banned and detained, evidence both of the strength of his position and of a change in the political style of South Africa's rulers. But in his dealings with the government he has some serious handicaps. Unlike Mangope he speaks no Afrikaans and cannot similarly charm Afrikaners while simultaneously disagreeing with their policies; Buthelezi moves essentially among English-speaking whites and blacks hostile to separate development. He has close personal ties with members of the Progressive Reform Party and is a staunch member of the Anglican Diocesan Committee for Zululand. His multiracial prayer breakfasts extend this last dimension of Buthelezi's personality. He has criticized the United Party, and its plan for a federated South Africa — which should endear him to the government — but he has consistently excoriated all those, whoever they are, who would seek to perpetuate white supremacy in South Africa.
Buthelezi frequently replies to official pronouncements with asperity — in tones still not customarily employed by blacks when talking of and to whites. He reminds his listeners of the absence of choice for an African leader working within a system so dominated by the power of whites. He also urges progress. "When a man is reaching for the moon, we cannot be expected to move towards self-determination at oxwagon pace," an ironic use of an
[15] Quoted in ibid. , 19 June 1968; Survey of Race Relations, 1969 , 131.
Afrikaner cultural symbol. His strategy is to push incessantly, issue after issue, for the accelerated development of black interests within and without the homelands. He espouses multiracialism, professing to welcome whites in KwaZulu even if blacks remain unwelcome in the rest of South Africa. Buthelezi also has for many years preached nonviolence. "I have not deviated from my path of nonviolence" he said in 1975, "in spite of all the violence arrayed against us, as the powerless and voiceless people of this land. . . . Our people can never meet violence with violence, even if one assumes some wanted this. . . ." Yet "the whole system under which we are ruled as Blacks is structured on violence. It is a form of violence to forbid my children to go to a school of their choice because of their colour. It is a form of violence that I cannot enter the Post Office at Nongoma [through] a door reserved for Whites. . . . The influx control regulations and pass laws are a form of violence. . . . The whole colour bar system is based on violence and violence is used every day to enforce it."[16] Nevertheless, Buthelezi's stands on these and numerous other issues are less significant politically than the ways in which he enunciates them.
Although his is not the only African voice in South Africa — separate development has raised a veritable cacophony — he is the most widely known and admired of the black leaders, not merely among his own people, but among Africans generally. Although his very use of the platform provided by the government has led to his being attacked as a "stooge" by Africans inside and outide South Africa, he has indubitably become a "national" figure, looked to not only by most Africans, but by many in all the other groups in South Africa.
It is because Buthelezi so persistently addresses himself to the problems of South Africa, as well as those of KwaZulu, that he appeals to Africans and whites outside the homelands. He has raised the morale and enhanced the pride of all Africans. What may be termed his major constituency — urban blacks of many ethnic groups and liberals of all colors — works and lives outside his homeland. Politically, this is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, but of his popularity there can be little question. After touring the towns of the Reef with Buthelezi, a leading correspondent wrote of his inordinate, charismatic appeal. "At Kagiso, Ketlehong, Duduza and Mamelodi, Africans received him with a warmth I have rarely seen accorded to any other politician in this country. . . . In Soweto . . . Chief Buthelezi was cheered by thousands."[17]
[16] Gatsha Buthelezi, "Report Back to the Reef Africans on the Conference of Black Leaders with . . . Vorster . . . 1975," mimeo., 29; Natal Mercury , 11 May 1974.
[17] Tim Muil, Natal Mercury , 29 Oct. 1973. See also Lawrence Schlemmer and Tim J. Muil, "Social and Political Change in the African Areas: A Case Study of KwaZulu," in Leonard Thompson and Jeffrey Butler (eds.), Change in Contemporary South Africa (Berkeley, 1975), 120–121, for an opinion poll.
Buthelezi speaks with freshness on the issues of the day, frequently showing an acute sense of timing and a sense of irony welcome in tense and otherwise humorless political exchanges. Although sometimes a poor speaker, especially when reading from a prepared text, he has that dramatic attribute called presence. He is also proud and temperamental, "There are moments of brooding . . . glimpses of chilling pride, times when the cheeks are puffed out with anger or when the mouth is large with laughter, and just when you think he is all extrovert . . . you become aware that this is a very private man."[18]
Policies and Programs
Mangope and Buthelezi are not faced with the comparatively simple problem of wresting autonomy from a reluctant, distant, and reasonably benevolent imperial power that has lost the will to rule and can withdraw from overseas commitments without risking major political disquiet at home. On the contrary, they face an entrenched, cohesive oligarchy fearful of the consequences of change. They thus need to identify the intentions of their rulers and to modify them. By a lengthy process of defining and redefining the rationale for separate development and the terms on which the homelands should and will survive, Mangope and Buthelezi with some urgency are attempting to make separate development work for Tswana and Zulu. Without additional power and resources both Mangope and Buthelezi may become discredited and lose their legitimacy. Thus their attitudes and actions on specific issues reflect the unavoidable tension between the constraints of a patron-client political system and the imperatives of modern political leadership.
That tension is exacerbated by serious handicaps in the field of communication. Not only are homeland populations poor, dispersed in fragmented homelands, in cities, and on white farms, but the homeland governments do not yet control the effective dissemination of information. In a country with a largely illiterate population, radio is especially important, but in South Africa it is controlled by the state. Radio Bantu, an organ of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), concentrates on entertainment, and insofar as it deals with political issues at all, it propagates views favorable to the Republic. Occasionally, homeland leaders are interviewed on the radio, but they do not have regular access to it. It is not merely that homeland leaders lack such access: commentators on news programs directed to whites have attacked homeland leaders, and Radio Bantu programs have cast what Buthelezi, for example, has regarded as "slurs" on the policies of KwaZulu.
The African press in South Africa is limited and mostly owned by whites. Generally it takes a politically cautious line. The English newspapers, as an
[18] Tim Muil, "Gatsha the Conciliator," Natal Mercury , 15 Sept. 1973.
opposition press, have for a long time given coverage to African affairs, but usually only where they impinge on politics. Recently three newspapers—the Rand Daily Mail, The Star, and the Natal Mercury —appointed correspondents to deal with the homelands. More and more newspapers, including Afrikaans ones, have appointed reporters, some of them African, to deal with African affairs at greater length than has been customary. The African readership of English newspapers is large and that of African newspapers in English is growing, especially in urban areas. But there is virtually no circulation of newspapers in African rural areas, nor can any of these newspapers serve the practical political needs of homeland leaders or of their governments.
This lack of a range of media normally available to leaders in developed societies has been more keenly felt by Buthelezi than by Mangope. Buthelezi has threatened to use Radio Zambia or Radio Tanzania to disseminate his ideas, and he has tried to establish a broadcasting service of his own. In late 1973, however, the South African government refused to allow KwaZulu to open its own radio station on the grounds that the South African Broadcasting Corporation already provided a special service for Zulu.[19] Buthelezi has also considered establishing a weekly newspaper, to be called Iswi Lomnyana (The Black Voice), to interpret "ourselves and our actions as Blacks." The journal would publish articles on federating the homelands, language problems, modern medicine, the role of the church (Buthelezi is a devout Anglican), black traders, biographies of Zulu and Xhosa businessmen and cabinet members, and studies of the liberation of Africa north of the Zambezi. "We wish" he said "to introduce our people to unadulterated news of what goes on in independent Africa."[20] In the context of contemporary South Africa, this is a radical program, with its appeal to Nguni and to Africans as blacks, and the attempt to publicize both the history and the present-day activity of independent Africa. Much of the literature on independent Africa, both scholarly and polemical, is unavailable in South Africa.
Until homeland leaders control media of their own, they will have to exert what influence they can over contemporary affairs through the English and Afrikaans press. Buthelezi has been adept at using an opposition press only too willing to help him. He was the first African politician to institute press conferences after meetings of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly or Executive Council, and he frequently arranged for the appearance of articles on current issues. "I talk a great deal to newspapers" he said "because they are my only propaganda medium. I do not have the SABC."[21] From September 1973
[19] The Times, 22 Sept. 1973. See also Schlemmer and Muil, "KwaZulu," 118.
[20] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 17 March 1973.
[21] Quoted in Die Vaderland, 8 Feb. 1973.
Buthelezi began writing a regular twice monthly column entitled "Through African Eyes" for the "morning group" of newspapers—the Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), the Natal Mercury (Durban), the Daily Dispatch (East London), the Eastern Province Herald (Port Elizabeth), the Cape Times (Cape Town), and the Sunday Times (Johannesburg). He has, however, not been limited to exposure in the opposition press. Afrikaans newspapers frequently send reporters to interview him, and though they are critical both of his attacks on the government and the liberal company he keeps, they acknowledge his skill as a politician and the legitimacy of many of the points that he makes.
The efficacy for the homelands of this dependence on media controlled by others is not easy to estimate, though it is clearly of value to individual homeland leaders and to the newspapers concerned. For the homelands the benefits are indirect and long term: frequent exposure of black leaders speaking in anything but deferential tones is accustoming whites, English as well as Afrikaans speakers, to black politicians inside South Africa using the platforms made possible by separate development. As long as the press in South Africa remains comparatively free, homeland leaders can make their claims on the conscience of South Africa's rulers publicly, appealing in fact to constituencies other than those that they officially represent. Without this means of expression, homeland leaders would be far weaker in negotiation with the Republic because the grievances of their people would be less widely known. Furthermore, few of the policies being discussed would have been subjected to an explicit African response. The willingness of the press to publicize such responses forces those in authority to acknowledge or deny grievances, and, often, propose remedial action. Publicity may, in fact, encourage give and take, and progressively change the relation of patron to client states from one of administrative command to one of political bargaining.
This constant discussion of issues and canvassing of alternatives may well play a major part in initiating change in the direction of mitigating the inequalities of power. Homeland leaders are interested in the whole range of political issues and would clearly like to make these matters of negotiation soon.
Federalism
Federalism has its attractions for many South Africans. Whites who oppose the present government have seen the uses to which a unitary constitution can be put by a stable, ethnically-based party representing a minority of the total population but a majority of the racially defined ruling group. Politically active blacks who hope to achieve a redistribution of power peacefully see in federalism a realistic device that could allay the fears of the dominant
white electorate. Proponents of federation or confederation envisage some kind of institutional linkage of the black homelands with the white-dominated heartland. Such an arrangement would inevitably enhance the potential power of the homelands and provide a broader forum for the political aspirations of blacks. In particular it could define the relations between the various political units more precisely instead of leaving formally independent homelands dependent upon the informal goodwill of a powerful neighbor that no longer rules.
Buthelezi discussed the redistribution of power at the national level as early as 1971. He then proposed a national convention of all races in order to seek a political "modus vivendi." But Vorster rejected the idea, claiming that he did not believe in "umbrella bodies." In a 1973 meeting with the prime minister, Buthelezi made similar suggestions with the same result. During the same month, however, in response to pressure from the United Nations, South Africa agreed to consider establishing a multiracial council for Southwest Africa (Namibia). Buthelezi and prominent Afrikaner nationalists asked why South Africa should not also create a multiracial council.
Early in 1974 Buthelezi reminded an intellectual audience that separate development presented an ideal opportunity for the construction of a federal edifice "in which Black and White fulfillment can be justly reached." According to his scheme separate autonomous black- and white-run states would be linked federally and would cooperate on matters of common concern.[22] "It seems obvious," he said, "that a federal formula of the kind that raises the whole issue of power at the centre should be avoided. . . . It should be possible to establish a common machinery for certain matters without raising the hardy annual of demand for control of a central Parliament. This issue, which bedevils any mutual understanding and mutual confidence, could at least be postponed for several generations. During that time," he continued, "mutual confidence could grow to a point where agreement could be reached at the centre as well." If the Republic were prepared justly to establish constituent independent states (presumably with territory and resources greater than the present homelands) then interracial tensions would be reduced and South Africa could decrease its expenditures on defense. Under this scheme the central federal authority would still control fiscal matters in order to "preserve the essential dynamism of the South African economy." Influx control and pass laws would disappear, but in the heartland blacks would still be "guests." There would be state as well as a common federal
[22] Later Buthelezi addressed the technical problem. "It is true that, legally speaking, States must be in existence before they federate. But my argument is that we were not consulted at the time of union, and we can [make] reparation for this gross omission by looking at the new formula for a future South Africa together, with no party expecting any other to swallow holusbolus what they have dreamed up unilaterally." Quoted in Natal Mercury, 9 May 1974.
citizenship, and each of the states would control its own internal affairs, make its own constitution, and so on.
Except in terms of the economy, external defense, and foreign affairs, Buthelezi envisaged a comparatively weak federal, more a confederal, government. "It should be possible," he concluded, "for Homelands policy to be used as a basis of a formula for the South Africa of the future." But South Africa would have to move quickly and boldly to establish its credibility. Subsequently, Buthelezi told the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly that federation had been proposed in good faith. "In spite of all that happens to us we still love our country too much to want to see it destroyed."[23] Speaking during the same month, Mangope said that he would welcome the gradual strengthening of federal ties in the economic sphere, in terms of security—federation "would serve as a formidable bulwark against aggression, terrorism, and infiltration"—and in the educational and cultural spheres as well. An educational and cultural federation could promote "higher training standards," especially at the university level, and the "best spirit of good neighbourliness."[24]
Federating the homelands themselves has also appealed to African leaders. Buthelezi and Matanzima have proposed a federation of their territories that could serve as the nucleus for a political association of all of the homelands. Matanzima has even suggested federating with Lesotho and Swaziland. Although not as yet enunciated in any detail, these proposals accurately reflect an awareness by blacks of their relative powerlessness—of their being divided instead of united. Joining the Transkei and KwaZulu, and thus 37 percent of the total de jure population of South Africa, is a rational response to the perceived limits of separated self-government and to the contemplated future constraints placed upon the relations of homelands with other homelands. "It seems, as far as politics are concerned, the majority of White people unite on fundamental issues, although they have different backgrounds and languages. We would be fools if we didn't follow the good example they have set," said Buthelezi. On a platform in Cape Town he and Matanzima both pledged themselves to "black unity."[25]
A federation even of all of the homelands would be an alliance of the weak against the strong. As a legitimating device it would recognize the validity of a single black nation counterposed against the white nation that, despite
[23] Gatsha Buthelezi, "White and Black Nationalism, Ethnicity, and the Future of the Homelands," The Alfred and Winifred Hoernlé Memorial Lecture, South African Institute of Race Relations, Johannesburg, (Jan. 1974), mimeo. Buthelezi said that he had made most of the same suggestions in writing to Vorster in March 1973 without receiving any reply. The final quotation is from Natal Mercury, 9 May 1974.
[24] Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 7.
[25] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 4 April 1972 and 19 Feb. 1973; Die Transvaler, 15 Sept. 1972.
a deep cultural division, rules South Africa. A black federation could also be consistent with the policy of separate development, but it has been South Africa's avowed aim to divide, not unify its blacks. The minister of Bantu administration and development made it clear in 1973 that the homelands would need the cooperation of the Republic if any federal union were attempted prior to independence.[26] In 1974, when the leaders of the homelands backed a federal solution to the race problem of the Republic "within a single economically indivisible country," the prime minister said that blacks could rule their enclaves but whites would continue to rule South Africa.[27] Even so, the central government has not prevented the leaders of the homelands from acting more and more in concert.
Late in 1973 both of these federal notions were explored by eight of the nine homeland leaders (accompanied by a retinue of seventy councillors and advisors) in an unpredecented "summit" meeting at Umtata. They agreed to federate their own states after independence. Matanzima said that they wanted "one black nation and not weak tribal groups divided along ethnic lines." Ntsanwisi, the chief minister of Gazankulu, said that black freedom was of paramount importance. "We must deemphasize all things that separate us and rather emphasize those things which unite us." Buthelezi promoted both a federation of blacks and his pet scheme of federating multiracially. At one point he made a "papal appearance" on a balcony of the Transkei Hotel to give a clenched-fist, black-power salute to the cheering crowds below. Hailed by Matanzima as the "Lion of the East," he told them that "we are doing the same thing as the banned African liberation movements, but we are using different methods. Through this unity, as sure as the moon is in the heavens, we shall liberate ourselves. With power and with God on our side we shall overcome."[28]
Buthelezi's fervor, if not his form of words, was shared by all the black leaders at Umtata. Mangope initially subscribed to the conclusions of the summit. Within a week, however, he had declared that the decision to move toward federation was "shooting at the moon." Federation, he said, would not come about in his lifetime. And he criticized the press for giving too much publicity to Buthelezi.[29]
Mangope had long been cool to the idea of a black superstate. The peoples of the Transkei and KwaZulu are Nguni, speaking mutually intelligible languages. Together they comprise over half of the African population of South Africa, whereas the Tswana comprise only 11 percent of the total.
[26] Botha, quoted in Die Transvaler, 16 Feb. 1973. But see Schlemmer and Muil, "KwaZulu," 132.
[27] The Times, 18 Nov. 1974.
[28] Quoted in The Economist (17 Nov. 1973), 66; The Times, 9 Nov. 1973.
[29] Quoted in Natal Mercury, 19 Nov. 1973.
"Swamping" is a sensitive issue among Tswana, having been raised publicly by Maseloane, and Mangope was subject to some internal pressure on this issue both before and after the summit conference.[30]
As an ethnic nationalist, Mangope naturally fears for the autonomy of the Tswana. "I have been entrusted," he once said, "with the task of serving the Tswana people, and, therefore to do what I regard is in the best interests of Bophuthatswana, and nothing else."[31] Chief Pilane, however, has consistently been in favor of black unity and claims to have raised the issue of federation in 1967. "I was called to Pretoria," he said, "where I was given a tongue lashing by officials of the Department of Bantu Administration . . . [and] warned never ever to think that Africans of this country could work together politically."[32] Mangope is closer to Maseloane than to Pilane on this issue. "Separate development," he has said, "has stimulated the sense of identity of the Tswana people, and I regard that as a positive aspect of separate development. . . . We are completely aware that we will be a minority group in a federation with the governments of larger groups, and we shall not like being in a minority."[33] Both before and after the summit he stated his preference for federal ties to neighboring Botswana, rather than to the other black homelands, a preference that Vorster welcomed in 1975.[34] Nevertheless, throughout 1974 and 1975 he joined Buthelezi, Matanzima, and the others in joint meetings and took part in the formulation of joint approaches to the government of the Republic.[35] Temperamentally and philosophically inclined to go his own way, Mangope has not always done so.
In such discussions federation has at least two meanings: (1) institutionally it is an arrangement linking established governments and, (2) politically it is a synonym for black unity. Although Mangope has sometimes been hostile to federation in the latter sense, he has not been invariably opposed to federation as an institution, provided Tswana interests could be preserved—the classic stance of small and weak states. In 1973 he said that he preferred some kind of multiracial council capable of ironing out difficulties in the practical implementation of separate development prior to any federation. But later he began to favor federation in the form of a redistributive device: "The positive aspects of separate development could be revived if the homelands could form a federation with white South Africa, a federation of real
[30] Mafeking Mail, 29 March 1974.
[31] Quoted in Die Transvaler, 15 Aug. 1972.
[32] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 10 Aug. 1972.
[33] Die Transvaler, 19 Nov. 1973.
[34] The Times, 17 Feb. 1975. The Government of Botswana officially wishes no ties to an independent Bophuthatswana.
[35] Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 6.
equality where all were represented in the federal authority."[36] He declined to participate in a multiracial conference on federation held immediately after the summit, but he associated himself with Buthelezi's position in favor of federation in early 1974. When he was attacked in the assembly shortly thereafter for allegedly going beyond his mandate in calling a summit conference, he linked the issues of federation and independence. The conference did not bind the Tswana people, he said, and if Tswana were thinking of independence, leaders would have to think about independence as well as federation. "Even after independence we may have to federate with white South Africa for economic and defence matters."[37]
Mangope's position is complex, and his caution is based partly on a concern for Tswana identity, partly on a temperamental inclination to go his own way, and partly on political pressures within Bophuthatswana. His apparently foot-dragging stance has not reduced his willingness to take common action with other homeland leaders. He played a major role in convening the historic first summit of black leaders; he takes part in formulating joint approaches to the government of the Republic; and he agrees fundamentally with Buthelezi in seeing federalism (however the definition of it fluctuates) as a device for redistributing power and resources. The differences between him and Buthelezi stem ultimately from his perception of himself as the leader of a people who are a minority in a double sense, i.e., as a political minority suffering discrimination in the existing social order and as inevitably a minority in the new society that would follow any major redistribution of power.
It is clear that independence and federation are closely related in the minds of Buthelezi and Mangope. For Buthelezi they tend to be mutually exclusive alternatives, believing as he does both in multiracialism and in the essential unity of South Africa. In a major speech in Soweto to 10,000 Africans in March 1976, he called for an abandonment of separate development and for majority rule.[38] Mangope, on the other hand, has followed the Transkei in opting for independence. In November 1975 he called a special meeting of Tswana chiefs, headmen, and their representatives—not a meeting of his party or his assembly—at which a resolution was passed in favor of independence. Five days later he secured a majority at the annual congress of the Bophuthatswana Democratic Party, and ten days later, by a party vote, secured the assent of the assembly.[39] In February 1976 at a meeting of 450
[36] Rand Daily Mail, 15 March, 1 Aug. 1973; The Star, 27, 31 March 1973; interview with Rotberg and Butler, New York, 15 April 1973.
[37] Mafeking Mail, 29 March 1974.
[38] The Times, 14 March 1976.
[39] Survey of Race Relations, 1975, 135.
Tswana in Soweto, he disclosed that he had discussed independence with the government, including compensation for low wages in the past, protection of Tswana in South Africa along the lines accepted by the European Economic Community for each other's nationals, and more land. On the same day, both opposition parties attacked him for supporting independence.[40] For Mangope, federation is a condition to follow independence, if at all. For Buthelezi, independence is to be avoided altogether.
Land Consolidation
Of the tangible matters at issue between the Republic and Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu, land consolidation and the acquisition of land illustrate better than any other the extent to which homeland leverage is still limited. For at least sixty years the availability of good, arable land has been a major grievance of the Tswana and Zulu. The Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 promised some amelioration of existing difficulties, but those promises have never been completely fulfilled. Now that the logic of separate development assumes and decrees that these homelands will have to provide for a growing number, perhaps even a growing proportion, of all Tswana and Zulu, there is less land available per person than ever before. Yet land is a sensitive subject for blacks as well as for whites, and is seen by many as a precondition for the economic and political development of the homelands.
The central government has long been aware that Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu are too small, too fragmented, and too poorly endowed with arable land to provide for a rising standard of living and increased agricultural productivity. The Native Trust and Land Act aimed to add to their areas and reduce their fragmentation, but essentially it only rationalized an existing system of reserves. It did not provide, and was not intended to provide—as homeland leaders point out—a territorial base for embryo nations. Nor did the Republic's consolidation proposals of 1972 and 1973 ameliorate the problem. Representing unsatisfactory compromises from both planning and geopolitical points of view, they pleased few. The journal Woord en Daad ("Word and Deed"), the mouthpiece of the Afrikaanse Calvinistiese Beweging (Afrikaans Calvinist Movement), was outspoken in criticism of the government. The proposals, it said, "led to serious doubts about the credibility of the policy of separate development and the honesty of the Government, and consequently of the whites."[41]
Because the Republic's proposals for consolidation conformed only to the
[40] For both meetings, see Rand Daily Mail, 2 Feb. 1976.
[41] Quoted in ibid., 13 July 1973. The Mafeking Mail, 18 June 1973, was also critical. "This is a long, long way from pleasing anybody," it said of the Bophuthatswana consolidation scheme.
overall land totals of the 1936 act, there was no prospect that they could satisfy the homelands. Land is, after all, both an ideal and a real issue. It has the historical overtones of conquest and deprivation, and the present-day starkness of distress—of overcrowding, poverty, and enforced resettlement. Yet the suggested consolidations provided for little redress or relief, the promised reduction of Bophuthatswana to six large blocs and KwaZulu to ten coming without any substantial addition to the area of the homelands and with serious disruptions to the current settlement patterns of both blacks and whites. Moreover, when introducing the proposals, the government could give no precise indications of their timing and/or their cost. "I cannot," M. C. Botha told Parliament, "even give a rough estimate of the time or the money involved."[42] At the 1975 level of central government expenditure for white-owned land being transferred, all of the hectares scheduled to be handed over to blacks should be purchased by 1990. A rapid, generous consolidation into single homelands would have been of considerable value to the South African government for public relations purposes; a delayed and limited consolidation was of little value at home or abroad.
When Botha announced the consolidation proposals for Bophuthatswana in 1973, he conceded that Mangope would "probably be a little disappointed."[43] The segments of the homeland would be reduced from nineteen to ten and a total of 352,000 hectares of African land (94,000 in the Transvaal and 258,000 in the Cape) would be given to whites. In return Bophuthatswana would receive 605,000 hectares of white-owned land (218,000 in the Transvaal and 387,000 in the Cape), for a net gain of 254,000 hectares. More than 120,000 Tswana would have to be uprooted and moved. Upon his return from a visit to the United States in 1973, Mangope was more than a little disappointed. He denounced the proposal as a sham. Chief Maseloane had voiced the same sentiment when the proposals were announced.
Earlier Mangope's government, supported by Pilane, had put forward its own consolidation scheme that involved the shift to Africans of many millions of hectares of white-owned land, the transfer to black rule of a half million whites, and the annexation of the white towns of Kuruman, Taung, Warrenton, Vryburg, Delareyville, Lichtenburg, Mafeking, Koster, Rustenburg, and Zeerust. Mangope made it clear that he had no objection to whites staying in the homelands and becoming citizens. The result was a unified parallelogram stretching from Warmbad, north of Pretoria, to the border of the Orange Free State, near Christiana, and westward north of Postmasburg to the border of Botswana. The northern border of the homeland would be Botswana. In size, this consolidated territory would be larger than the
[42] Botha, quoted in The Star , 28 April 1973.
[43] Quoted in ibid. , 26 May 1973.
Map 5.1
proposed consolidation of bophuthatswana. Sources: Republic of South Africa,
BENBO, Bophuthatswana Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976); Muriel Horrell,
The African Homelands of South Africa (Johannesburg, 1973).
Orange Free State. Mangope said at the time, "I do not think that we would be satisfied with anything less as a basis for independence."[44]
For KwaZulu the complicated process of rearranging the map includes the transfer of 300,000 hectares of African land to whites and the addition of 463,000 hectares, including only 227,000 hectares of the lands promised in 1936. Of the land offered to KwaZulu, 239,000 hectares are to be taken from state-owned territory, the remainder, presumably the more arable lands, are to be purchased from white farmers. The net gain to KwaZulu is 163,000 hectares, including the R100 million Jozini Dam irrigation scheme on the Pongola River. (The Jozini project is itself controversial, experts being unsure of the fertility of the Makatini flats, which are meant to be irrigated by the waters of the Pongola. Swaziland has also demanded compensation for upstream flooding to be caused by the dam. At the moment the project has been stalled and the dam has not been allowed to fill.) Although the Republic has agreed to transfer white-settled Port St. Johns to the Transkei, the consolidation proposals deny KwaZulu the port city of Richards Bay and a potential port on Sordwana Bay. They also deny KwaZulu the income-producing Hluhluwe game reserve, but transfer the Umfolozi game reserve to the homeland. During the election campaign of 1974, the deputy minister of Bantu administration and development indicated that Eshowe, once the administrative capital of Zululand, could eventually be transferred to KwaZulu, but he was overruled by Vorster at another political meeting. Moreover, some of the proposed consolidations consist of the artificial connection of enclaves by long isthmuses. As the united Party's leader in Natal commented, the proposals promised fragmentation, not consolidation. "This," he said in Parliament, "is a debate about partition."[45]
Buthelezi had rejected similar consolidation proposals throughout 1972 and early 1973. No plan made by whites without intensive consultation with Africans could, he made clear, hope to meet with Zulu favor. Nor could the wholesale dislocation of Africans be justified unless whites were equally affected. When the provisional plan was issued he said that no government of KwaZulu could possibly allow its name to be associated with the upheaval of 133,000 Zulu for the sake of a meaningless consolidation. "If the Government is going to move these people, it is not with our co-operation. We prefer that they are left alone and not uprooted until a plan is produced which is acceptable to all races in Natal." He went on: "The world can now witness that we were not consulted in these plans, that we reject them, and that what is allocated to us by Whites is done by naked baasskap because all that matters to the Nationalist Government is White supremacy."[46]
[44] See ibid. , 14 April 1973.
[45] Radclyffe Cadman, quoted in the Sunday Times (Johannesburg), 10 June 1973.
[46] Quoted in The Star , 20 April 1973.
Map 5.2
proposed consolidation of kwazulu. Sources: Republic of South Africa,
BENBO, KwaZulu: Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976); Muriel Horrell,
The African Homelands of South Africa (Johannesburg, 1973).
Buthelezi objected strongly to the Republic's retention of Richards Bay. "If the . . . Government seriously wanted KwaZulu to be a viable state," he pointed out, "then Richards Bay should be our port so that we have an outlet to the sea and a possibility of getting anywhere near economic viability."[47] (Woord en Daad agreed. "How did the Trekkers and the old Transvaal Republic not strive and struggle for an outlet to the sea? How bitterly unjust did we not find it . . . ?")[48] Various Zulu spokesmen and several white politicians also noted that the consolidation proposals had allocated the best African-owned sugar cane areas to whites. Blacks, said a United Party legislator from Zululand, who had "farmed sugar cane for generations," absurdly were being moved to new blocks of land where "growing sugar was impossible."[49] Two academic observers reported that the proposals would not improve KwaZulu's economic base or give it real prospects for "meaningful independence. . . . A politically independent KwaZulu that is not enlarged, enriched and consolidated will be a thoroughly nonviable state, overly dependent on White South Africa, impossible to adminster and burdened with a depressing man-land ratio."[50]
Dladla joined Buthelezi in condemning the suggested plan. "The present generation of Whites," he said, seems "determined to dispossess us of everything that constitutes wealth in order to keep us in semi-slavery conditions." Specifically deriding plans to remove Africans from lands along the Drakensberg escarpment and the upper Tugela River, he said that it was time that whites are "told in no uncertain terms that we, as Black people of this country, deserve a fair distribution of land." If, he went on, "the Government is prepared to move 100,000 people in order to please 90 farmers and gain a few votes from the United Party, we want them to know only the barrel of a gun will move us from our land and heritage. . . . We will not rest until justice is done to the Black man." Later Dladla rejected a specific portion of the plan with blunt words. "The Government wants to strip us of our land and force us on to barren land which will compel us to work for farmers. The Government is making our people into cheap labour units and we will not tolerate this."[51]
The debate over these proposals took three years. The issue became a major one with the publication of the first proposals in mid-1972, the final proposals being accepted by resolution in Parliament only in May 1975. Long before this date Buthelezi, using the stratagem of refusing to be
[47] Quoted in ibid., 20 Jan. 1973.
[48] Quoted in ibid., 12 June 1974.
[49] Cadman, quoted in ibid., 17 Feb. 1973.
[50] Alan C. G. Best and Bruce S. Young, "Homeland Consolidation: The Case of KwaZulu," South African Geographer, IV (1972), 68–69.
[51] Quoted in The Star, 9 June 1973. See also Dladla, again quoted in Natal Mercury, 27 Dec. 1973.
associated with proposals on which he had not been consulted, urged Vorster to stop the limited consolidation of KwaZulu. "Since no meaningful consolidation would be achieved," he said in March 1973, he was against the plan. He could not accept the responsibility of moving thousands of people. "We asked . . . the government," he told the press, to "drop its policy of trying to consolidate KwaZulu . . . [instead] of trying to lead us to independence as a state in separate blocs."[52] Vorster's reaction to Buthelezi's dissatisfaction was conveyed to President William Tolbert of Liberia. KwaZulu, Vorster said bluntly, would never be consolidated into a single territory, even though the process of consolidation would continue.[53]
Only after being satisfied with regard to land, Mangope and Buthelezi have reiterated often, can attention ever be given to independence. Without sufficient land, independence would be a mockery. Mangope has called for "a more fair and just sharing of the land." The 1936 Act, he has said, in no way provided for future independent sovereign states. "Any continued references to this act in the context of Homeland consolidation has the taste of a dishonest subterfuge, and will do untold harm."[54] "We will not be eager to receive independence," Buthelezi said, "if it will be in the spirit of 'Since you want independence, take and starve.'" He later made it clear that the Zulu were not so "naive as to participate in a scheme to defraud us by asking for so-called independence, before land consolidation and without [the] purchase of foreign territories within our boundaries."[55] He said that the Zulu had never wanted South Africa to be chopped up into homelands, but since they had been they should realistically reflect former territories.[56] Subsequently, at a meeting of homeland leaders in late 1974, everyone (except Matanzima) explicitly rejected independence for their territories until they had been consolidated and provided with a viable economic infrastructure.[57]
The issue between the government, on the one hand, and the homeland leaders (except Matanzima), on the other, had not been resolved when the consolidation proposals were accepted by the Republican Parliament in 1975. At issue between them was the government's insistence on linking land to the ethnicity and the race of the groups and individuals who were to own it. Hence the homeland leaders have repeatedly pressed, as an alternative to independence, for a federation of properly consolidated homelands that would be based on territorial, not on ethnic and racial criteria. At a summit meeting with the prime minister in January 1975, Buthelezi reiterated the link between consolidation, independence, and political rights. Homeland
[52] Quoted in The Star, 31 March 1973.
[53] The Times, 17 Feb. 1975.
[54] Mangope, "Political Future of the Homelands," 5.
[55] Quoted in The Star, 14 Sept. 1971; Rand Daily Mail, 26 April 1972.
[56] The Star, 5 April 1975.
[57] The Times, 18 Nov. 1974.
leaders, he said to a huge gathering in Soweto, "did not want the homelands to be given independence as they were now. . . . They would remain poor states forever dependent on crumbs from the Pharoah's table." Unless the homelands were enlarged and properly consolidated, the only alternative was for Africans to be represented in the central Parliament.[58] In April he emphasized the egalitarian and historical bases of the claim to more land: "Either South Africa converts to one man one vote or it fully recreates the former homelands as consolidated economically viable units."[59] But the proposals went through Parliament essentially unchanged. They gave little comfort to the homeland leaders, and apart from achieving a considerable reduction in the number of homeland fragments, did little to alter the territorial bases of the respective homelands. If the territorial settlement remains as set out in 1975 proposals, the Republic's government may find that major concessions in other areas of policy will be necessary if separate development is to remain credible.
Industry and Commerce
Since the homelands are seriously underdeveloped, alternative modes of growth must be provided if static or declining trends in agricultural productivity are to be arrested. In an industrializing society like South Africa there are more options than there are in purely agricultural or pastoral societies. Yet it is precisely the limitation of so many of these opportunities — the control of the movement of labor and differential access to credit, markets, and education — that so hinders African development. Official barriers to investment of white capital in the homelands contribute to this backwardness, although the barriers have been lowered steadily since 1968. Moreover, even if there were no barriers, capital would still have to be lured into the homelands with the kinds of incentives — railway rebates, inexpensive premises, tax holidays — now being offered by the government of the Republic to entrepreneurs in and out of white South Africa. Although originally favoring border industries to growth inside the homelands, the central government now encourages both forms of development.
Mangope and Buthelezi naturally prefer industrial growth within the homelands to development outside their borders. They would also like to abandon the government's "agency" system, according to which entrepreneurs receive medium-term leases to sites within the homelands and are required ultimately to promote the takeover of their enterprises by Africans. Mangope and Buthelezi support the unfettered inflow of whites and their capital on a direct basis, but, if sufficiently utilized, the agency method also has potential advantages. Several homeland leaders have in this connection
[58] Star Weekly, 15. Feb. 1975; Survey of Race Relations, 1975, 27.
[59] Star Weekly, 5 April 1975.
allowed their names and faces to be used by South Africa to advertise investment opportunities in the homelands. Throughout 1974 and 1975 the advertisements appeared in prestigious overseas newspapers and newsweeklies. "Make no mistake, we're not the only people you help when you start your factory in our country," said one version, quoting Buthelezi. "First and foremost, you'll be helping yourself." Matanzima assured apprehensive capitalists that nationalization of investment or impediments to the free remittance of profits were both impossible. "South Africa is the only country where you can participate in the profit-potential of Africa without capital risk," he was quoted. Together with Phatudi, the chief minister of Lebowa, and Chief Wessels Mota, the chief executive councillor of Basotho Qwa Qwa, they urged foreigners to site their factories and service industries exclusively in the black homelands.[60]
Buthelezi has also denounced the withdrawal of foreign capital from South Africa in other overseas advertisements. "What we need is not disengagement," he said, "but full foreign participation in South Africa's overall economic development to create more jobs, higher wages and better training opportunities. I am no apologist for apartheid, but a realist who knows that a job may make the difference between living and starving for many Black families in South Africa."[61]
In addition to investments on the most advantageous terms possible, the leaders of the homelands naturally want to negotiate those terms themselves rather than having to accept what South African agencies offer. Mangope and Buthelezi specifically wish to diminish the role within their own homelands of the Bantu Investment Corporation. Neither has affection for its policies, Buthelezi having accused the corporation of neglecting Zulu development. He has challenged it either to accept Zulu representation on its board or "for God's sake let them get their hands off our money."[62] Mangope and Buthelezi have both urged the central government to establish Tswana and Zulu development corporations to replace the Bantu Investment Corporation and to be responsible solely for the promotion of economic growth in the two homelands. They wish these new corporations to be representative of the ideas of Tswana and Zulu, and not of whites. (The Xhosa Development Corporation has been unpopular in the Transkei because it is dominated by whites and because it rarely consults the leaders of that homeland.)
[60] Full page advertisement in The Economist, 27 April 1974. The same, or virtually identical, advertisements appeared in The Times, New York Times, Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), and many other newspapers and journals.
[61] The Washington Post, 26 Sept. 1973.
[62] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 9 July 1971.
Mangope and Buthelezi were responding to the demonstrated dissatisfaction of their peoples with the actions of the Bantu Investment Corporation. In 1974, D. P. Kgotleng, a member of the Bophuthatswana Legislative Assembly, complained that the corporation had neglected to advertise businesses when they failed and fell into the corporation's hands: "This policy must not be applied only when it is in favor of Whites. It should also be applied when it is in the interest of Blacks."[63] In the same year the corporation, with the approval of the government of KwaZulu, tried to sell its wholesale grocery-operations in Umlazi to a white-owned private firm. But the Umlazi Traders' Association and the Zululand African Chamber of Commerce protested vigorously and the sale was rescinded. The businessmen of KwaZulu made it clear that they would no longer support "ventures which were allegedly for the benefit of the Zulu businessmen but without the involvement of the Zulu traders at a decision-making level."[64]
In mid-1975, the Bantu Investment Corporation announced that it was forming the Bophuthatswana National Development Corporation, and Bophuthatswana thus became the first homeland to have its own investment institution. (The Xhosa Development Corporation has since 1968 encouraged Xhosa businessmen in both the Transkei and the Ciskei.) The board of directors of the new corporation was to be composed of five Tswana members named by the Bophuthatswanan government and five white directors selected by the South African government. A similar corporation was to be set up for KwaZulu. Buthelezi reacted strongly, protesting the exclusion of homeland cabinet ministers and the low proportion of blacks as members.[65]
Above all Mangope and Buthelezi decried investment strategies prepared for Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu without consultation with themselves or the homeland assemblies. On his return from the United States in 1973, Mangope had welcomed the passage of legislation facilitating investment but in 1974 he deplored the lack of consultation with homeland leaders. "People will absorb and implement change only to the extent to which they take part in it."[66]
"Give the Zulus the right," Buthelezi has said, "to make their own decisions, and development will follow." He sees no reason why KwaZulu should not obtain loans from overseas similar to those received by Malawi from South Africa. "People," he spoke of foreigners, "tend to laugh off separate development if they are told that none of the homelands has any machinery to negotiate with industrialists and overseas agencies." Pretoria must no longer insist upon prior approval of foreign aid, he said, or upon its being processed
[63] Mafeking Mail, 14 June 1974.
[64] Natal Mercury, 10 April 1974.
[65] Survey of Race Relations, 1975, 148.
[66] Ibid., 1973, 211.
through the Republic rather than its being channelled directly to a homeland.[67]
The Urban Dimension
One of the major objectives of separate development is the creation of clearly defined political orders, each with its own territory and each sovereign in its own area. But the presence of a majority of South Africa's blacks in the white-controlled heartland compromises that policy and provides homeland leaders with a legitimate claim to speak on behalf of urban blacks.
In early 1975 the summit meeting of homeland leaders and the Republican government was devoted to the position of urban blacks. Buthelezi made a major address on the subject soon after, explicitly adopting the form of a parliamentary representative speaking to his constituents and speaking throughout of himself as an African, not a Zulu leader. "A Report Back to the Reef Africans . . ." was a challenging speech, acknowledging limited progress and asking urban Africans to let their leaders know what they felt future strategy ought to be.
The relationship between homeland leaders and the urban Africans is a complex one involving serious problems for both sides. By working within the policy of separate development, however reluctantly, homeland leaders expose themselves to the attack that they are "stooges" and are serving Republican, rather than African, ends. This is a particularly serious issue for urban Africans who clamor for rights where they live today, not where they, or their ancestors, formerly lived. By speaking on behalf of urban Africans, the homeland leaders inevitably compete with the black leaders who are again appearing in the cities and who have yet to be given an institutional base comparable to those of the homeland leaders. Thus, on occasion, urban blacks have denied that they are represented by homeland leaders and have appealed for homeland status to be accorded to cities like Soweto — an appeal that the government has firmly denied. In 1973, P. M. Lengene, former chairman of the Soweto Urban Bantu Council, pointed to the fact that the majority of homeland assemblies were appointees of the government. "Do you call this a Government of the people or a Government appointed by the central Government? Do you expect the black people to have confidence in such a Government?" After the second summit meeting in January 1975, blacks, often members of Urban Bantu councils, criticized the homeland leaders for excluding urban blacks from their "team" to meet the Prime Minister."[68] It was doubtless in response to this kind of criticism that Buthelezi spoke so strongly in his "Report Back." "Some blacks," he said,
[67] Quoted in Rand Daily Mail, 17 July, 22 Dec. 1972.
[68] Star Weekly, 3 Jan., 15 Feb., 5 April 1975.
"baited in the main by the white press, took it upon themselves to question our credentials for speaking for our people here. . . . I dispute that there is any blackman who is not acquainted with the whole impact of black oppression."[69]
Neither Mangope nor Buthelezi has yet been effectively challenged in their own homelands or in the cities. Urban leaders have not yet developed a political or institutional base comparable to that of the homeland governments, partly because government policy has been hostile to the development of an urban African political system. At a "Black Renaissance Convention," organized by black theologians near Pretoria at the end of 1974, there was considerable debate on homelands and the policy of separate development, both of which were attacked, particularly by delegates from the South African Students' Organization and from the Black Peoples' Convention. One former homeland minister was prevented from speaking, after the passage of a motion labelling him as a "protagonist of separate development."[70] And in February 1976 Mangope was bluntly told by T. J. Makhaya, mayor of Soweto, "We in the urban areas are not interested in splinter groups in the Black nation — we want homeland leaders to represent all the interests of all the Black people of South Africa."[71]
Mangope and Buthelezi have not been backward in seizing opportunities to intervene forcefully on behalf of their subjects. Buthelezi has long been an articulate advocate of the rate for the job, and both he and Mangope have advocated higher wages and the right to strike. In an angry exchange with white industrialists in 1973, Mangope demanded that they pay minimum wages to their employees of R80 a month, a figure approximating the then-recognized poverty datum line.[72]
The wave of strikes that engulfed Natal in 1973 offered a major test of homeland external relations. As 60,000 Africans withheld their labor in Durban, Dladla, then KwaZulu's councillor for community affairs, intervened in their behalf and, by his presence, made KwaZulu's interest in improved wages and conditions of service widely known. When 500 workers struck the aluminum smelter at Richards Bay later in the same year, he appeared at the plant and indicated that requests for Zulu labor would in the future be channelled through his office, a threat to the established order that was reinforced during the textile strikes in Durban in 1974. However, the KwaZulu government does not yet control the recruitment of labor.
[69] Buthelezi, "Report Back," 6.
[70] Rand Daily Mail, 17 Dec. 1974; Report on The Black Renaissance Convention, held at Hammanskraal, 13–16 December 1974, mimeo.
[71] Rand Daily Mail, 2 Feb. 1976.
[72] Pretoria News, 17 March 1973.
South Africa has not openly challenged these homeland initiatives. In fact, it has pursued a more flexible course. As a response to the wave of industrial unrest, South Africa passed legislation for the first time making it possible, under stringent conditions, for Africans to bargain collectively — but not to establish formal trade unions — and thus, legally, to strike. The homelands were thus associated favorably with a limited expansion of the rights of urban Africans. As Harry Oppenheimer, chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation, commented in 1974, the policy of separate development had had effects probably not foreseen. "Far from bringing about a real separation between black and white, it was simply bringing about a situation in which tribal authorities would play an increasingly powerful role in relation to industry in the white-controlled urban areas."[73]
Even more striking, in 1974 and 1975 the leaders of the homelands began bargaining as a group directly with the government of the Republic for improvements in South African life. As a result of what were described as "brutally frank" discussions between Vorster and Botha and seven of the homeland leaders in early 1974, the Republic promised to reexamine the utility and validity of influx control and pass law regulations, and to appoint a committee jointly with the leaders to investigate the fairness of African tax contributions to the revenues of the Republic. Although there was no immediately positive result of this meeting, and the members of the tax committee have yet to be appointed, a second meeting between Vorster and the homeland executives took place early in 1975. The homeland leaders demanded that blacks be allowed to own homes in white urban areas; that the rights of black traders be increased; that influx control be abolished; that black physicians in government service receive the same pay as whites; that the power of black urban councils be strengthened (Buthelezi urged the government to declare Soweto a black homeland); that the homelands be permitted to decide upon the medium of elementary school instruction for their "citizens" in white South Africa; that ethnic residential grouping in the African townships be abandoned; that Africans be permitted to form trade unions; and that political prisoners be released and exiles be allowed to return home. Vorster only agreed, however, to reconsider restrictions on African businessmen, to think about removing some of the inequities in the existing influx control arrangements, and to consider ending the ban on property leasing by Africans in the urban townships.
Because Vorster offered contingent rather than tangible concessions, his pledges of reform in some areas of hardship caused by the apartheid system disappointed the homeland leaders. He had earlier contended that the policy of the Republic was differentiation, not discrimination. Discrimination, he
[73] The Times, 9 May 1974.
had told the leaders of the homelands, would be removed but political power must and would remain in white hands. Power shared was power lost.[74]
Buthelezi, the most outspoken of the leaders in Cape Town, stormed out of the 1975 meeting and handed the press a copy of a memorandum that he had read to Vorster: "We have been prepared to endure abuse" he had told Vorster, "in the hope that the government's policy may be a road to real fulfillment for Blacks. If this road . . . is leading only to a cul-de-sac, then our only alternative is to seek fulfillment not in unreal 'separate freedoms' but in . . . the only seat of power which is Parliament." He went on. "I feel that it is my moral duty . . . to point out, the only logical alternatives we have, if we do not want our people to resort to civil disobedience and disruption of service in this land. Not that I intend leading my people in this direction at the moment [a phrase the Prime Minister was quick to condemn], but . . . I should point out that if no meaningful change is forthcoming for them . . . this will come as a logical alternative. . . . I cannot be expected to successfully ward off the venting of pent-up frustrations . . . if the government continually fails to offer [my people] anything meaningful." The time to "deliver the goods" had come. Otherwise disaster could not be avoided. The next day Buthelezi said that blacks must discuss "other means of taking the initiative and impressing their demands upon the Republic."[75]
These threats — only an escalation of Buthelezi's characteristic stridency — may have fallen on closed ears. But four months later the South African government announced a series of reforms. Henceforth urban Africans could "own" their homes, if not the land on which their houses were situated. This ownership consisted of thirty-year leases only, but it overturned the Republic's formerly rigid refusal to give any semblance of permanency to the stay of blacks in the white heartland. All residential security for blacks was hitherto supposed to be available only in the homelands. Moreover, the thirty-year leaseholds can be bequeathed or sold. Since 1967 black residents of the sprawling dormitory townships that surround South Africa's major cities could only rent a home, month by month, with no security of tenure. If they lost their jobs, they could be evicted immediately. If they died, their widows and families had to leave. Additionally, Vorster said that urban traders were to be permitted to deal in a wide range of commodities previously excluded. Instead of being restricted to the sale of "essential day-to-day needs," they were to be allowed to sell furniture, open department stores and banks, and so on. Black businessmen were now to be permitted to own their own premises, to enter into partnerships or companies, and to establish more than one type of business. Black physicians, lawyers, and other professionals
[74] Ibid., 18 Nov. 1974.
[75] Buthelezi, "Report Back," 20–21; African Research Bulletin (1–31 Jan. 1975), 3495.
would, for the first time in nearly a decade, be allowed to open consulting rooms in the black residential areas. In October, however, the concessions on property rights were qualified by requiring applicants to take out homeland citizenship. This restriction was strongly attacked. Ntsanwisi said that homeland leaders had not been consulted about the change, and had certainly not suggested it.[76]
Despite the limited nature of the changes announced, South African ministers clearly regard the summit meetings as an institution capable of development. Botha linked the concessions directly to the earlier discussions with the leaders of the homelands. "Good results," he said, came from "constructive dialogues" with the leaders and were "proof of the government's sincere intentions, in accordance with its principles and policy, to come forward with further adjustments."[77] In so doing the Republic openly recognized the necessity of further concessions and the increasing importance of the homelands at a time when South Africa was attempting to enhance its credibility in Africa. It might be argued that recognition of the homelands by outsiders is one of the major objects of the détente policy; recognition could hardly be gained if the homeland leaders were seen to have minimal impact on policy. Although influx control and other forms of apartheid have not as yet been reformed, nor the sensitive question of black political rights in the South African heartland discussed seriously, Vorster has unquestionably given the leaders of the homelands renewed opportunities to negotiate with the government and influence the trend of future policy.
Education and Manpower Training Policy
The African areas of South Africa have long suffered from educational as well as economic neglect. The peoples of the homelands are thus conscious of the need for better educational facilities and particularly for training that will allow them access to better paying jobs in the homelands and the Republic. The leaders of the homelands are as aware as were their counterparts in colonial Africa of the crash measures that will be needed to overcome the vast educational deficits of their states. Without such measures, accelerated political and economic development will be impossible.
Compared to whites in South Africa, the educational disparities of Africans are glaring. In 1973/74 South Africa expended for education about R29 on each African child, R110 on each coloured child, R141 on each Asian child,
[76] Survey of Race Relations 1975, 26, 82–3; Star Weekly, 6 Dec. 1975. After the Soweto riots of 1976 the central government withdrew the homeland citizenship requirement for urban leaseholds.
[77] The Times, 7 March 1974, 23, 25 Jan., 3 May 1975; The Economist, 1 Feb., 10 May 1975.
and R483 on each white child.[78] School for white South African children is compulsory and free, and school books are provided without charge. For Africans schooling is voluntary (there have never been sufficient places to make it compulsory) and, in relation to African incomes, expensive, although recently there have been moves to abolish the shocking inequity of making African parents pay for school books. If the educational equipment and physical facilities available to whites are compared with those available to blacks the disparity becomes even more glaring. As Buthelezi reminded a university audience, "while South Africa violates the ideals of Western culture, it poses simultaneously as the bastion of Western standards in Africa. . . . The [unequal] spending on education . . . is not for most South Africans a question of conscientious scruple."[79]
Mangope and Buthelezi have frequently noted the lack of resources devoted to African education. Both homelands budget large proportions of their expenditures on primary and secondary training, although they are finding it difficult to increase the quality of education given. In 1973 Mangope told his assembly that 40,000 extra Tswana children would qualify for additional school places; they would require 900 new teachers and classrooms, even averaging 40 children per class. How were the staff and buildings to be provided? By 1973 educational spending in Bophuthatswana had risen sharply, comprising one-quarter to one-third of the homeland budget. In the same year education accounted for the second largest proportion, about 23 percent, of KwaZulu's R46 million budget. Only the amount devoted to works was larger. By the fiscal year 1975/76, the amount budgeted had risen to R18.5 from R10.7 million, although the proportion going to education was only 20 percent of total spending. In 1974 KwaZulu's councillor for education reported that the homeland lacked 1,000 classrooms and had a serious shortage of teachers. He doubted if his department could attract "the right kind of degreed teacher" until salaries, determined by the government of South Africa, were raised substantially.[80]
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the Republican government centralized its control over African education. At the beginning of 1954, responsibility was given to a division of the old Department of Native Affairs, and in 1958 this unit became a separate department. Power over education had been held by the four provincial governments and by a large number of
[78] Survey of Race Relations 1975, 214. The figures for African children are based on those in "white areas." If the figures included homeland children the disparity would be even more glaring; if expenditure on education were related to population rather than school population, the disparity would be more glaring still.
[79] Quoted in Die Transvaler, 26 Aug. 1972.
[80] For expenditure on education in Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu, see Table 6.6. For Nxumalo's speech see Natal Mercury, 15 May 1974.
church organizations representing South African and external denominations. The movement of authority was not exclusively upwards, however, for integral to the government's program was the devolution of some control to school boards and committees consisting of appointed representatives of the local African communities. There was a good deal of resistance to this reorganization, however, since the entrenched interests gave way with little grace; on the other hand, the central government did little to ease the transition and, in the process, extinguished some of the brightest fixtures of private African education. In particular, vocational and technical training, adult education, and university education were severely retarded. The advancement of the homelands has suffered as a result of critical shortages of trained manpower.
At present it is not clear what the ultimate division of educational responsibility will be among the local committees, the homeland departments, and the Department of Bantu Education. The homelands exercise only a circumscribed control over educational budgets and policy. There exists, however, a bona fide division of power between the department, the homeland governments, and the local committees and boards. At least for the present, the Department of Bantu Education will continue to control the rate and direction of educational expansion and will possess reserve discretionary power to intervene in virtually all details of the operation of schools, including the ability to bar or dismiss an individual teacher without a hearing or statement of cause. As the autonomy of the homeland departments increases along with their ability to manage their own affairs, it will become less likely that these reserve powers will be exercised capriciously. The specific tasks of the department include development of syllabi, administration of examinations, issuance of certificates, determination of educational methods, guidance of professionals, and maintenance of standards. Educational finance, which since 1972 has been a charge against the Republic's general revenue account, remains subject to the white Parliament, although it now flows through the homeland governments. There exists an appointive Advisory Board for Bantu Education consisting of fifteen African educators and citizens who meet with the policy makers of the department.
The homeland education departments are responsible for building and maintaining school buildings, employing and paying teachers, furnishing and equipping buildings, and controlling school boards. At present, white secretaries head the education departments of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu and most of the senior inspectors are white. In the homelands, local school committees oversee each community school. In KwaZulu, they are composed of five members elected by parents and four named by the circuit inspector.[81]
[81] Bantu, XXII (July, 1975), 12–13.
Within the homelands, training of specialized kinds is carried out by the Department of Bantu Administration and Development (African agricultural extension officers); the Department of Bantu Education (primary, secondary, teacher training, and vocational); the Bantu Investment Corporation (management and business skills); the semiautonomous universities (academic and professional training); private firms (on the job, apprenticeship, and subsidized training); and private groups. The governments of Bophuthatswana or KwaZulu do not yet control, although they may influence, the decisions taken by these organizations.
As is the case with other aspects of resource management for development, control over education and training rather quickly passes beyond the homeland government into the formal and informal networks of the white governmental system. If the homelands' educational policies are to be coordinated with the human resource requirements of the South African region, this coordination will have to take place at the upper levels of the white bureaucracy. The Bantu Investment Corporation's industrial development program, the growth of border industries, and the expansion of the core economy are generating demands for more and better trained black manpower that far exceed the present capacity of homeland and other training agencies. So long as there is no comprehensive manpower policy for the South African regional economy, the individual homelands will experience difficulties in determining their training priorities. Any steps that they take can be vitiated by programs adopted by other homelands, the Republic in its training of urban blacks, or even by foreign states such as Lesotho. Parallel training schemes may generate oversupplies of labor in some fields and insufficient supplies in others.
KwaZulu has established a KwaZulu Planning Committee to oversee economic, educational, and social planning. The committee is chaired by Buthelezi and includes the six directors of the KwaZulu departments, representatives of government development corporations, and several consultants from outside the central government, among them Professor Lawrence Schlemmer of Natal University and Lawrence P. McCrystal, a professional planner. Its role as a planning body is unclear, because its effective scope is limited to those educational and training programs under the homeland's jurisdiction. Only agencies of the Republic are in a position to develop a regional manpower policy and implement it, presumably after consultation with the homelands and adjacent countries. The minister of Bantu education is also the minister of Bantu administration and development, but there is little formal overlap between the two departments. The Department of Planning makes only broad African labor force and employment projections in drawing up its annual six-year plan. The Decentralization Board has responsibility for guiding the reallocation of industry and jobs to
border areas. Then there is a high-level, interagency committee to coordinate training and labor policy. Nonetheless, South Africa has no national manpower policy.
A good deal of growth in African education has taken place in the past ten to fifteen years. Most of the problems of African education are as much the result of the rapid expansion of enrollment and the woeful shortage of money, teachers, and schools as they are of any failures of vision or execution on the part of the responsible officials. Table 5.1 illustrates how rapidly the South African black school population has increased. From 1955 to 1973 the African population rose by 61 percent, but student enrollment more than tripled in the same period. The numbers of schools and teachers have not, however, fully kept pace. The supply of teachers has risen to an index of 265, and the student-teacher ratio has deteriorated from about 40:1 in 1950, to 46:1 in 1955, and to 58:1 in 1967; the ratio was also 58:1 in 1973. The number of schools has nearly doubled since 1955.
In order to squeeze the maximum number of students into the available facilities, many schools have gone to double sessions, especially in the early
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grades. In these cases a single teacher instructs morning and afternoon classes, sometimes allowing them to overlap in one huge session for an hour or so at midday. Each class receives less attention than it would in a regular program. Some schools follow the platoon system, in which buildings are used in the morning by one group of students and their teachers and in the afternoon by a second group. Teacher training programs are not providing sufficient new teachers to close this gap, and many unqualified persons occupy staff positions. In Bophuthatswana in 1970, 831 of 3,907 teachers in public schools did not possess minimum qualifications. In 1975 Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu supported special programs to upgrade the abilities of underqualified teachers. But it has proven difficult to train qualified teachers at a rate sufficient to match the increase in the numbers of students in the lower and intermediate programs.
One of the great wastages acknowledged by all who study African primary educational systems is the very high rate of students leaving school. It is believed by many that those who depart before completing even the lower four grades reap little if any benefit from their education and represent a complete cost loss to the system. Whether this is so or not, statistics attest to the porosity of the school system. Table 5.2 traces the year-by-year progress of several entering classes through the system. The 1955 cohort numbered 283,000 in its first year, but shrank as it progressed. Only 72 percent of the group entered Substandard B, 69 percent Standard I, and 58 percent Standard II. Similar patterns held true for the classes of 1960, 1963, 1965, and 1967. The proportion of students advancing through the first four grades has not changed much, but from Standard III on subsequent classes show higher continuation rates. The pressure to provide additional teachers and schools is intensified by the growing number of entering students, reflecting population growth, and by the increased tendency for students to stay in school for longer periods.
It is difficult simply to explain high attrition rates. Many students help their parents with domestic and farming chores. As they get older, the income that they can earn is needed by their families. It is also costly to maintain children in school. Overcrowded conditions, underprepared and overworked teachers, and to some extent the nature of the courses, which tend to be academic and derivative of European materials rather than attuned to indigenous and rural life, are negative factors. Nonetheless, the educational system is a channel to better jobs and higher incomes and parents and students are willing to make considerable sacrifices to obtain an adequate education. At the end of Standard II an examination is held. Steady enrollment deterioration continues throughout the next four years, until the completion of the eight-year primary program. Here again there is a screening examination and only eight of every 100 students who enter primary school progress into secondary education. There is some evidence that the number
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of Africans promoted has not always been determined exclusively by merit. To some extent, the Department of Bantu Education has suggested a proportion of passing marks, in effect setting a ceiling on the number of African students who can proceed. The chief reason for so doing is apparently the shortage of space. In Form V only 12 percent of those who entered Form I remained, and less than one out of every 100 initial entrants survived. Insofar as enough time has elapsed to tell, the more recent classes appear to be following the same general progression. There is, however, a tendency for a higher fraction of students to advance into secondary education and, as the size of the entering classes rises, this has a large multiplicative effect on secondary enrollments.
Gaining a relatively unfettered control (given a limitation on expenditures) over the curriculum and staffing of their schools has been one of the popularly appealing aspects of homeland autonomy. It has enabled the governments of Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu, following the example of the Transkei in 1963, to switch the languages of the first eight years of primary school instruction from the vernacular to English. The policy of Bantu education, instituted in 1953, required six years of mother-tongue instruction and then dual-medium education in secondary school, half the subjects being taught in English and half in Afrikaans. Yet this early compulsory instruction (consistent with the Afrikaner position with regard to their own education) in an indigenous language has been seen by blacks as a means of denying Africans equality of opportunity in the South African employment market. A mastery of Western languages and Western subjects is viewed as the key to personal and national advancement, and the earlier attempted the better.
The KwaZulu councillor for education and culture explained that Bantu Education "has caused perennial difficulties in communication between tutor and student at high school and university. A solution to this problem lies in the early familiarisation with the new medium as was the case prior to the advent to Bantu Education." KwaZulu passed legislation in October 1973 to provide for the teaching of all ordinary subjects only in English, not in Zulu, from Standard III through secondary school. Bophuthatswana decided in 1974 to follow the same course, though there the issue of medium of instruction is complicated by the presence in Bophuthatswana of many Africans from other ethnic groups. Some of these groups have insisted on the use of their own language medium, a posture that the Republican government would surely support. A Tswana opposition legislator has also pointed out that it is surely unwise for children to grow up in Bophuthatswana with no knowledge of Tswana. He therefore supported compulsory instruction in Tswana, a view supported by a Bophuthatswanan minister.[82]
[82] For KwaZulu, see "Education Manifesto," 1973, mimeo., 4; for Bophuthatswana, Mafeking Mail, 25 Jan., 3 May 1974.
The problems of medium are not only those of the primary schools—where "mother-tongue instruction" is the issue. Under Bantu Education, high school education is equally in both of the original official languages—English and Afrikaans. Tswana children, and indeed citizens of the homeland, are thus placed not in a bilingual but in a trilingual environment, all official documents being printed in English, Afrikaans, and the relevant homeland language, and the same three languages are taught both as subjects and used as media in school. Inevitably parents and educators have complained, pointing out that in white, Asian, and coloured schools the "fifty-fifty" rule between English and Afrikaans for high school instruction is not followed.
In educational policy, as with regard to political and economic questions, homeland leaders are attempting to extend their power and act as spokesmen of urban blacks. If Zulu in Soweto are citizens of KwaZulu, surely its government should have a say in the education of urban black children? KwaZulu has pressed its claim for a common medium of instruction for all Zulu, wherever they may be. Urban blacks, at meeting after meeting have, usually without reference to the homeland governments, pressed for the early introduction of English in their school systems. But the central government has stuck to its decision that from 1975 mother-tongue instruction in the cities would be used to Standard V, a concession from its earlier insistence on Standard VI. Thereafter, in the white areas, the choice of medium would be made by the secretary of Bantu education.
This issue is by no means resolved and the complexities of educational administration are bound to increase. If Buthelezi, who has been more insistent than Mangope, should obtain a major concession regarding medium of instruction it will demonstrate the extent to which the logic of separate development and repeated public pressure by homeland leaders can enlarge the reach of homeland rule. At the summit meeting with homeland leaders in March 1974, Vorster ordered an inquiry prior to discussion at the next meeting. In January 1975, at the second summit, there was a confrontation on the fifty-fifty issue, with Buthelezi demanding a timetable, and Botha arguing that the matter "could not be rushed." "I denied that I wanted the matter 'steamrollered' but that schedule for fixing it up needs to be set down," said Buthelezi later.[83]
Apart from the debate over the languages to be used in instruction, the homeland governments have had to deal with the provision of education to their burgeoning populations. Student enrollments are rising in the primary, secondary, and technical-vocational schools of both homelands, as shown in Table 5.3. In Bophuthatswana, lower primary enrollment rose by 9.8
[83] Buthelezi, "Report Back," 15.
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percent between 1972 and 1974, and the number of higher primary students grew by 16.4 percent. Primary education expanded by even larger percentages in KwaZulu. The tendency for students to remain in school longer, and the growing pressures of larger primary classes, have substantially raised the number of students in secondary education classes. Forms I to III and IV to V show gains of 32 to 52 percent in the two-year interval. Growth in technical and vocational education has also been substantial. It should be noted, however, that only about 1 percent of the students in the two homelands in 1974 was enrolled in Forms IV to V, teacher training or technical-vocational programs.
Increasing enrollments have necessitated the augmentation of schools and teachers. In Bophuthatswana, the number of primary schools rose from 589 in 1970 to 682 in 1974, and in KwaZulu the increase was from 1,345 in 1972 to 1,448 in 1974. In 1974 there were 80 secondary and teacher training schools in Bophuthatswana, compared to 51 in 1970, and 110 in KwaZulu, compared to 87 in 1972. The numbers of teachers have risen only commensurately. Pupil-teacher ratios, a good measure of the quality of education, have remained very high in both homelands. At the primary level in Bophuthatswana, for example, there were 64 students per teacher in 1973 versus 66 in 1970. During the same period, secondary and teacher training instructors have had to cope with an average of thirty to thirty-two pupils per teacher.[84]
Although universal literacy, and at least a basic grasp of enough arithmetic, health, and "social survival knowledge" to function in South Africa's complex modern society are the immediate goals of homeland education, the needs of the Republic and homelands for more sophisticated skills are pressing. It is difficult to obtain a clear overview of the existing secondary and other advanced training programs and determine their economic importance for the two homelands. Tswana and Zulu may be trained elsewhere and those who are trained within the homelands often move onto the national labor market.
Teachers are prepared at seven schools in Bophuthatswana. There is a small number of girls learning dressmaking or preparing to be preschool assistant teachers. KwaZulu has four teacher training schools: at Amanzimtoti, Madadeni, Eshowe, and Appelbosch, and a fifth is being built.
Advanced skill training is also provided by the homelands. In Bophuthatswana ten institutions offer trade and technical instruction; there are six such schools in KwaZulu. Technical and trade courses cover such subjects as applied mechanics, building construction, technical drawing, carpentry, masonry, welding, electrical wiring, automobile repair, and plumbing.
[84] BENBO, Bophuthatswana Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976), 47–9; idem., KwaZulu Economic Revue, 1975 (Pretoria, 1976), 54–57.
Additionally, colleges at Taung in Bophuthatswana and Empangeni in KwaZulu graduate agricultural and veterinary service officers. The Bantu Investment Corporation provides business schooling at Temba, near Babelegi, in Bophuthatswana. Preemployment training for factory workers is offered at Babelegi and at Isithebe, a growth point in KwaZulu. Here, and in border industrial zones adjacent to the homeland, the Department of Bantu Education provides guidance to private industrialists who perform the actual instruction and are granted subsidies to cover their expenses. In some cases the department builds and equips industrial educational centers to supply graduates to clusters of nearby businessmen who share the operating costs. All of these various courses of training are in great demand, and there is certainly no evidence that sufficient facilities are being provided by the homelands, the Republic, or private concerns. The dispersal and small scale of most schemes is not conducive to quality instruction or low costs per graduate. The proliferation of many small manpower training projects by the uncoordinated white developmental bureaucracies in the homelands and urban areas cannot meet the manpower needs of South Africa or the homelands.
Mangope and Buthelezi recognize the necessity of the expansion of the universities. In 1974, of 111,000 university students in South Africa, fewer than 8,000 were black.[85] Neither Mangope (who has had a son at Turfloop) nor Buthelezi has any affection for the homeland universities, established under the Extension of University Education Act of 1959 and administered by the Department of Bantu Education. They are explicitly excluded from the purview of the homeland governments by the Bantu Taxation Act of 1971.
The university system has experienced rapid growth and a broadening of programs. The universities of Zululand at Ngoya and the North at Turfloop, where Tswana and others may attend, were established in the 1960s. Africans may also take correspondence courses from the University of South Africa. A few attend the Natal Medical School with Asians and coloureds. A few blacks attend white universities for courses of study not available in the homeland institutions. Between 1960 and 1974, the student populations rose sharply from 80 to 1,509 at Turfloop and from 41 to 1,003 at Zululand. The usual range of liberal arts and science subjects is provided, and there are some professional programs in law and forms of engineering and practical science. Table 5.4 lists the numbers of graduates by degree.
Given the universities' regional identifications, there is more diversity in the composition of the student bodies than might be expected. In 1973, only 172 (17.6 percent) of the 979 students at Zululand came from KwaZulu. The
[85] Rand Daily Mail, 4 Feb. 1975.
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urban areas of Natal and the Transvaal accounted for a strongly preponderant three-quarters of the enrollment, and although many were Zulu, others were not. All the other homelands were represented, and there were students drawn from Namibia (Southwest Africa), Malawi, and Rhodesia. Similarly, while students from Lebowa are the main homeland component at the North, the other homelands, the Republic, and foreign nations sent students in sufficient quantity to produce a truly cosmopolitan student body. Of the 1,274 students, 142 (11 percent) were from Bophuthatswana.[86] Unlike primary and secondary education, which are oriented in the direction of reinforcing black linguistic and cultural differences, higher education is considerably more integrative of black communities. The homeland universities are the only places in southern Africa where relatively well-educated young Africans from all political entities are brought together.
Students show a preference for specialization in arts and education rather than science, mathematics, and commerce-administration. In 1973, 62 percent of the students at Zululand were in arts or education; 11 percent were in commerce-administration, and 8 percent were in science. At Turfloop 56 percent were in arts or education, 10 percent in commerce-administration, and 22 percent in science.[87]
The emigration of many university teachers, the reluctance of non-South Africans to take positions in the Republic, and the proliferation of white universities have badly strained the supply of academic talent available in South Africa. Even in these circumstances the staffs of the North and Zululand have remained predominantly white since their inception. The University of the North began with 5 African lecturers of a total of 26; in the early 1970s there were 28 Africans on a staff of 98. At Zululand, initially 3 of 18 teachers were African, the numbers changing in 1974 to 15 of 88. In 1974 it was reported that 6 of 94 professors at Fort Hare, Zululand, and the North were black; 15 of 142 senior lecturers and 53 of 139 lecturers were black. There may have been a modest increase in black staff at the junior level.
Although the quality of faculty at the black institutions is widely criticized, a more serious problem is their small scale and their isolation from each other, from other institutions of higher learning in South Africa, and from the intellectual community. The etiquette of apartheid is observed in relations between black and white staff, and between white staff and administrators and students. Such attitudes are incompatible with the spirit of university education and the logic of homeland development. Under such strained circumstances, it is not surprising that, despite the risks of suspension and arrest involved, students at the African universities have engaged in numerous
[86] Bantu Education Journal, XVI (Sept., 1974), 28.
[87] Ibid.
protests during the last several years. Authoritarian paternalism, social apartheid, and the lack of black faculty and administrators contribute to friction and an atmosphere of mistrust and hostility.
Unrest and poor morale at the University of the North in 1974 and 1975 became so serious that the South African Government appointed Justice J. H. Snyman as a one-man investigative commission. His report, issued in early 1976, reported that black students and faculty were discontented, especially about social apartheid, discrimination in salaries (especially the "inconvenience allowance" paid to white staff), limited black participation in decision-making, and continued white dominance of the faculty. Snyman recommended more autonomy, equalization of salaries and promotional opportunities, and greater black control. He further recommended that postgraduate students be allowed to attend white universities. These recommendations were emphasized in the Jackson report of 1976, the nominal brief of which had been the Africanization of the university but which ranged far wider and underlined the necessity of whites assuming a subordinate role in the education of Africans.[88] Their comparatively cosmopolitan students, the erudition of their black students and faculty, and their rapid growth in size are likely, however, even if the Snyman proposals are accepted by the Republic, to continue to make the African universities focal points for the expression of black dissent and hopes for change in South Africa.
One major problem is that adequate Ph.D. training for Africans is scarce in South Africa.[89] This shortage of higher-level schooling not only retards the Africanization of college faculties, but makes it impossible to secure sufficient trained staff and sophisticated expert advisors for the homeland governments and their leaders. Chiefs Mangope and Buthelezi have very little intellectual talent—economists, public administrators, management experts, engineers, or agricultural technicians—from whom they can seek assistance when they negotiate with or make appeals to the Republic's bureaucracy. The expertise of the Republic's agencies may be one of their principal means of dominating homeland developmental decision-making in the early phases of self-government.
The shortage of facilities affects not only the production of Ph.Ds to staff research and teaching institutions, but the professions like medicine, where on-the-job training is not nearly as feasible as it is in accountancy and law. Recently, expanded provision was made through an outgrowth of Mangope's attempt to found a university. In 1972, seeing little likelihood of the University of the North adequately serving the needs of Bophuthatswana, Mangope opened a fund to try to raise money for his own college. This
[88] Star Weekly, 14 Feb. 1976; for the Jackson Report, see ibid., 28 Feb. 1976.
[89] See also above, 47–48.
became unnecessary, however, when the central government decided to open a university in GaRankuwa, a major Tswana township outside Pretoria. The new university will, aided by the faculties of Pretoria and Witwatersrand, open in 1978 and provide medical training.[90]
Several changes of policy are implied in the structure of the new university. Both English and Afrikaans universities are to be associated in curricular planning and in representation on the Council, the governing body of the university. Hitherto English universities have played little part in homeland development. The governments of the homelands will be given representation on the Council. Furthermore, the new university is to be a statutory institution, a device which may ensure considerably greater autonomy than that enjoyed by the existing homeland universities. However, the government is still insisting on segregating students according to race: at the end of 1975 it was announced that the Natal Medical School, which had accepted coloured, Asian, and African students, would be closed to Africans once they had a medical school of their own.[91]
The question of control of homeland universities has long been an issue. Until the announcement of the new medical school and university in Bophuthatswana, the Zulu were marginally better placed than the Tswana because of the existence of the University of Zululand. But the government of KwaZulu has not influenced the running of its university. Leaders of KwaZulu have complained that the university's Council has no Zulu members, and that its black advisory council has no power. KwaZulu would obviously want to revamp the educational approach of this university. But legislation passed by the Republic's Parliament in 1973 reiterated that government's intention to retain control over the universities. At the same time, in another enactment, Parliament permitted African universities to open branches or tertiary campuses. It extended to them the right to lend or borrow money and made it possible for the councils of the universities to assign functions to committees with "full power of action."[92] This act permits the siting of branches of universities in urban areas, like Soweto, or in the heart of a homeland. It does not provide, however, for the exercise of control by homeland governments over the universities in their own areas. It remains to be seen whether the Snyman recommendations will persuade the central government to improve relations between the universities and the homeland governments, and as the Jackson report recommended, allow the universities to develop close ties with the communities they are designed to serve.
[90] Mafeking Mail, 3 May 1974; Star Weekly, 10 May 1975, 3 Jan. 1976.
[91] Star Weekly, 27 Dec. 1975.
[92] House of Assembly Debates (12 Feb. 1973), cols. 454–455.
Mangope, Buthelezi, and Separate Development
This examination of selected issues highlights the similarity of the views of Mangope and Buthelezi. Implicit in every stand they take is a disagreement with the premises of separate development. On the issue of power, both leaders want a redistribution in favor of their own people and of Africans generally. Both want a redistribution of resources and opportunity, whether it be land, jobs, education, or the general rights of their citizens in the South African cities. Both argue for consultation before decisions are made affecting their people, rather than the familiar South African pattern of deciding first and then simply informing Africans of changes in policy, or refusals to alter policy. If an overall label had to be affixed to their approach it would be liberal, not socialist. They are the inheritors of the traditions of the African National Congress—of an inclusionist liberalism with deep roots in South Africa. They want to minimize racial difference, enhance equality, and obtain more equitable sharing of national income and resources.
There are differences, too. There is a consistent anxiety to preserve Tswana identity in the actions of Bophuthatswana's leaders, which can be seen in their stands on federalism and on the medium of education. Mangope has argued that the arousing of Tswana nationalist feeling is a positive achievement of separate development, a point-of-view Buthelezi is unlikely to share. Mangope is in many respects closer to Matanzima than he is to Buthelezi in willingly using the language of ethnic nationalism. Buthelezi, a leader of the largest African group, understandably puts his appeal in the most general African terms. Furthermore, a major portion of the Zulu are not separated from him by an international boundary, i.e., if he were to think in ethnic terms his major potential allies are inside, not outside, South Africa. Moreover, he is the leader of one of the most homogeneous of the homeland populations, only about 2 percent of the population being Africans from other ethnic groups. Bophuthatswana, however, has a non-Tswana African population of about 284,000, roughly 32 percent of its total homeland population. Mangope therefore faces an entirely different political problem. His potential allies are the Tswana of Botswana. But until there are substantial concessions to Bophuthatswana, concessions that differentially favor it over KwaZulu, Mangope will have more to gain from common action with other homeland leaders than he will from attempting to go it alone.