The Ciskei Versus the Transkei in Historical Perspective
It is impossible to say with any certainty why the Xhosa-speaking people have been divided between the two rival Bantustans of Ciskei and Transkei. The most common popular explanation is that this is an example of 'divide and rule', and that its main purpose is the preservation of East London and the white corridor. I do not agree. The division of Bophuthatswana into six pieces has never posed any problems for its white neighbours, and the South African government has stated with apparent truth that it would not oppose a merger. The separation of the Ciskei from the Transkei is more probably the result of the sort of political accident which can occur in even the best-regulated of societies.
After the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act in 1959, Dr Verwoerd, the arch-proponent of the grand apartheid design, was keen to present the world with a practical demonstration of the wisdom of his policies in the form of an independent homeland. The Transkei was almost perfect for his purposes. It was a large contiguous territory, ethnically homogeneous and largely rural, governed by hard-line pro-government chiefs such as Kaiser D. Matanzima and possessing in the Transkeian Territories General Council a vaguely representative body which
could, when suitably adjusted, serve as a fig-leaf for autocratic control. The Ciskei was totally different. It consisted at the time of a number of distinct black 'reserves' interspersed in patchwork style with pockets of white-owned farms and towns. Even in the rural areas, elected headmen had largely replaced hereditary chiefs, and the most visible and articulate spokesmen of black interests lived in towns and wanted nothing to do with the so-called Bantu Authorities. Whereas the Transkei was virtually tailor-made for apartheid-style independence as early as 1963, the Ciskei obviously still had a long way to go. In the urgency which surrounded the launching of the Transkei—Self-Government in 1963 and 'Independence' in 1976—the problem of the Xhosa communities of the Ciskei was temporarily shelved, and when it finally recalled itself to official attention, it did so as a separate problem.
The Ciskeian government grew out of the old Ciskeian General Council established in 1934.[13] In 1961, this was reconstituted as the Ciskei Territorial Authority under the Bantu Authorities policy, and Proclamation R143 of 1968 created an Executive Committee of six ministers and the basis of an autonomous civil service. The first Chief Councillor was Justice Mabandla, chief of the Bhele Mfengu people. In 1972 Lennox Sebe, a member of the cabinet, broke with Mabandla and started his own political party, the Ciskei National Independence Party (CNIP). This was victorious in the 1973 elections, largely due to the connivance of the South African electoral officers. Mabandla's party, the Ciskei National Party, crumbled away in the face of Sebe's impregnable position. Two other opposition parties were started, but neither got off the ground. In 1978 the remaining opposition members, including Mabandla himself, crossed the floor and the Ciskei officially became a one-party state. After a rigged referendum in December 1980, the Ciskei accepted South Africa's version of independence in December 1982.[14] Prophetically, the new Ciskeian flag collapsed the first time it was raised. Mounting opposition in schools, streets and factories led the President to confer increasingly arbitrary powers on his half-brother, Charles Sebe, the commander of the dreaded Ciskei Central Intelligence Service. Charles's power grew steadily for about eighteen months until his vaulting ambition, in the form of an assassination plot, brought his downfall in June 1983. Shortly thereafter, the violent attempts of the Ciskeian authorities to suppress a bus boycott in Mdantsane precipitated a bloody conflict between government and people.[15]
Ever since the fall of Charles Sebe, President Lennox Sebe has ruled alone. Rumours concerning the poor state of his health and the unusual medication he is said to require are fuelled by the fact that, alone in the entire Ciskeian cabinet, the Minister of Health is usually a white. The dissolution in 1985 of a Committee of Four, which screened development proposals before they reached the President's eyes, opened the way for a number of highly dubious entrepreneurs, many of them Israelis, who milked the Ciskeian government for two straight years.[16]
The meteoric promotion to the rank of Major-General of Sebe's only son, Khwane, leads one to suppose that the President is grooming him for the succession. His last rival, Lent Maqoma, was dismissed from the cabinet in January 1985. After the effective suppression of his Ciskei People's Rights Protection Party, Maqoma fled to the Transkei where he plotted the overthrow of the Sebe dynasty with the help of the Matanzima brothers. A spectacular double coup in September 1986, which effected the kidnapping of Khwane Sebe to the Transkei and freed Charles Sebe from his maximum security prison, was nullified in February 1987 when a daring attack on Sebe's presidential palace was foiled by his guards. The South African government intervened to end the squabbles of its
vassals. The Transkei was warned off, and Lennox Sebe's position in the Ciskei now seems stronger than ever.[17]
These are the bare bones of the Ciskei's political history. We now turn to the role of ethnicity in shaping the course of these events.