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.