Pretty much as the tin says, how do you go about getting South Africa to set up its Bantustans as actual independent states that can successfully exist without South African subsidies and control and are recognized as independent states by the rest of the world? What impact would that have on South Africa and native Black South Africans? How large would the Bantustans end up being?
AHC/WI: South Africa sets up Bantustans to actually be successfully independent
- Thread starter Sevarics
- Start date
You need to give them even more cash, and they have to be in places with arable land etc. not the godforsaken parts of the country where they were in OTL. You would also have to rationalise them in terms of territory, they weren't even contiguous territories most of the time, Bophuthatswana is a great example.
I'd say that to be successful, Banthustans would, among another things, need to be larger, cover at least 50% of what constituted South Africa, and as it's always pointed, they would need to be territorially contiguous.
If plan is to just keep giving them cash, they'll never be successful or independent, no matter how much you fork over.
Boer property that would end up on Banthustan side of border would have to be guaranteed from expropriation (in short term completely guaranteed from seizure, in longer term guaranteed to not be seized without compensation), but Banthustans would still be able to tax them. No safety from expropriation, farmers and property owners would quickly liquidate their businesses to escape to white side of border, and Banthustans would end up without economy to build up from.
If plan is to just keep giving them cash, they'll never be successful or independent, no matter how much you fork over.
Boer property that would end up on Banthustan side of border would have to be guaranteed from expropriation (in short term completely guaranteed from seizure, in longer term guaranteed to not be seized without compensation), but Banthustans would still be able to tax them. No safety from expropriation, farmers and property owners would quickly liquidate their businesses to escape to white side of border, and Banthustans would end up without economy to build up from.
At least as far as Transkei and KwaZulu, I think if they ate up much more of Natal and had actual infrastructure investments, they could be slightly promising given that neither would be landlocked. A lot of them tried to make money through casino resorts, I think. Maybe they could invest in some ocean casino resorts to further pull in money?
What is the moral and logical premise under which Grand Apartheid--the name the Nationalist regime gave to the "Bantustan" project themselves--ought to work? What they meant to do is what they did. I think the OP implicitly acknowledges that this was dysfunctional, and I say obviously so for two reasons--one, the white supremacists in charge had no regard for the interests and rights of the majority they were thus handling, and thus two it was obvious from the get-go that these "bantustans" would not be viable in any sense at all.
The proper solution, from my point of view, would be to accept that colonial history had created a single nation comprising all inhabitants of SA, that like it or not were integrated by economic necessity, and therefore should enjoy equal civil rights in a democratic state. Any alternative to this is an acknowledgement, if not the justice of Nationalist (and others) racial segregationist claims, then anyway their determination to have it so. Any form of Apartheid is accepting the premise that races should be kept separated.
If I were an ASB in charge under some constraint to respect South African white racism as an inevitable fact to be worked with rather than a deplorable dysfunction to be cured, I suppose I would proceed like this:
In fact, colonialism had formed an integrated matrix, one in which Whites, as the Nationalist regime defined them, collectively enjoyed privilege, and some of whom enjoyed tremendous private wealth. And to be fair, they had brought with them the technology of European civilization which certainly did elevate the material standard of living of the whole nation, even to an extent the exploited non-White categories, though obviously to a far lesser degree than the exploiting invaders did generally. But the openly racist faction of the Whites were not the only ones with a beef about being forced to mix in day to day life; many though not all of the Native African peoples who had been resident on the land before the impact of European invasion had sufficient numbers to retain their separate identities. In fact the largest category of citizens divided up by racial criteria would be these more or less "pure" and separate tribal groups. Other categories under Apartheid existed though; "Coloured" people were racially mixed, mostly African with some European, and Indians and other Asians were relegated to a non-White and restricted category as well.
So, I would begin with the premise I have that the best thing would be an integrated Republic with its citizens all enjoying equal legal rights in a democracy, and first of all ask South Africans of all categories which among them would be willing to live in such a republic under those conditions, with no invidious racial distinctions recognized and ethnicity being a matter of personal history. I would not exclude some sort of affirmative action for non-whites to have opportunity to advance their relative economic status, since the collective history of exploitation is relevant. In this society, tribal African peoples would not have any particular legal claims over others; the territory is all shared. Whites of course might be reluctant to step forward to join this republic since they would have to share their wealth out as the developing political process might demand. But anyone who dissented from the Nationalist line on racial purity and separation could declare for the republic, and make a meaningful statement about their non-racism.
However many South Africans of all categories this number represents, they get that share of the total land and wealth of the RSA, and also the mantle of the name of "Republic of South Africa." Cape Town, I suppose, would be their logical center, but they start with all the land and the other categories get their 'Stans based on their historic claims balanced against technical viability. I believe the OP was talking exclusively about what I am here calling technical viability--by which I mean, does the land enclosed contain sufficient resources for the number of people it is meant to hold? But that's a red herring anyway; nations all over the world vary tremendously in their viability based on technical criteria. I think we all agree it is obvious that the Bantustans of OTL, had the Nationalist regime been strong enough to persist in perpetuating them, were at the extreme end of that spectrum, but really, what sort of line can one draw for minimal levels that some existing nation in the world is not below?
This justice-minded ASB is going to do the job based on a head count. It is not a simple process, because all forms of wealth have to be evaluated against the possibility of the technical operations necessary to realize them. If a diamond mine that goes two miles deep requires high tech supportive services, and it is on land allocated to a nation that has neither the capital wealth to maintain these nor the trained people to operate it, the wealth of the mine output, which would count if it were run by people who could run it, does not count. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the land in terms of the capital wealth that is distributed upon it. Now in fact I disbelieve that any of South Africa's national claimants would be unable to operate particular machinery; they can always be trained to do so. The real question is do they have the capital to do it? It would not be my ASB's philosophy to simply expropriate everything and distribute it all equally, but if a resource that is counted toward a tract of land's countable wealth does require some operating capital, and the particular people being given this land as their claim come up short, then the ASB would take the necessary amount from the current owner of the asset to permit the new owners to operate. That might be 100 percent of the old owner's investment, or less.
In dividing up the land, the various Native African (aka "Black" in official apartheid terminology) tribes get first claim. We locate the major centers where any portion of them living more or less traditionally, with a minimum of interference, might exist, and also their historic range at the time they were confronted with European power, and using judgement determine a center for their claim, and working out from that center keep annexing land, of whatever race's current ownership, until sufficient shares of national wealth as we attribute it to land parcels have been allocated in proportion to their numbers. Numbers which, remember, have had any people of their tribes who would prefer to live in the integrated republic subtracted. In the course of this of course legions of people of other ethnicities will be displaced. Note that it might be that before a given territory has expanded enough to have its share of carrying capacity, other claims of other tribes might start to overlap--this means a border has been created, and that the particular tribes, perhaps all of them, that have run out of land need to be given a secondary center from which additional claims can expand. The outcome is either that the tribe is split between two or more different territorial states, or one government is over discontinuous territories.
Now who are the "tribes?" They might not just be Native African groups. Certain peoples deemed to be collectively in the "Coloured" category have a long established historical identity; they too might claim territory. Racist whites who have refused to consider the opportunities the integrated society offers might be regarded as tribes too, and required to choose a center from which their proportional claims extend. The Voortrekker republics seem likely indicators of where this center may be, with a second White Bantustan perhaps centered on Natal, if some other group doesn't take priority.
The economic viability of each group is assured by a fair and careful accounting of the resources of the land allocated, including capital investments necessary to realize particular values, and with due discounting for resources that tend to be depleted. Ideally each group forms a continuous and compact area. The integrated republic that all of these enclaves are carved out of, including a few reservations for uncompromising white supremacists, forms the matrix that gives each of them access to the world; rights of trade are considered when allocating the wealth of each subgroup.
This process involved a tremendous wealth transfer from the owners of assets expropriated by the process of land allocation to the majority of the separated peoples, who average poorer than the national average--but of course the white supremacists would take a tremendous hit as most of their property would be elsewhere than they are assigned to, and they'll only get the average collectively. That in my view is the price they pay for their dream of racial purity, and if they don't like it they can reconsider whether membership in the mixed and restriction free general republic is so bad after all!
Integrated republic citizens are going to have their lands with associated capital wealth largely expropriated and redistributed too. But enough should be left over, bearing in mind that neighbors who are destined for the reservation nations will leave the value of what they own behind them in the unassigned larger republic.
So, if we imagine such a process happening, this gives the shape of "bantustans" that are viable, if we remove white supremacists to their own concentrated reservations! The actual process of defining them and population exchange might be less ASB than I described, but this layout is the goal, if we continue to "respect" the idea of Grand Apartheid.
Quite obviously, the Nationalists had no intention of doing anything like this. They ruled out the possibility of an integrated republic on what they held were deep principles, which they projected onto all people of European extraction whether these individuals all believed it or not. They claimed by far the lion's share of the national wealth for themselves, and it seems plain to me the major motivation of carving off separate territories for different historic tribes was not in respect of their independent nationhood and agency, but a crude application of "divide and rule." By turning Xhosa against Zulu, the probability of the Native Black majority simply ruling was pushed back. Where, in the Grand Apartheid scheme, would the millions of "Coloured" live? Apparently they'd go on being dependent and subjugated on nominally White ruled land. What about non-European immigrants such as South Asians? For that matter, there was historically some controversy among Nationalist category makers whether Jews should be regarded as "White" or not!
Now, if one is not so idealistic or one might say, moon-beamy, as to demand the national wealth get evenly distributed, is there some middle ground of viability between the OTL Nationalist scheme and the sweeping and vast partition of South Africa into dozens of fairly large, capital-intensive, contiguous and racially "pure" mini states embedded in a cosmopolitan matrix I offer as "fair?" I daresay there is, but every hectare of land taken from the tribal territories to shrink them toward the OTL offer, every capital-intensive productive facility moved to White-run RSA territory from the tribes, every subdivision of their land and every step away from the larger matrix of RSA from the ideal integrationist republic toward a white supremacist regime writ large, is a step away from both justice and viability. If the ZuluStan or Bophusatswana is embedded in a racially integrated RSA, their options to communicate with the larger world are not prejudiced; if it is within a White Supremacist RSA they clearly are. Some may denounce the extremism of allocating all the national wealth on a one person, one share basis and argue that it was the European influx who created a lot of that wealth. That is a deep argument about who creates wealth and how they do it. Against this without getting into all that I can point out that the invaders most certainly did expropriate the land, and that the other categories their racist system wishes to define clearly deserve some level of compensation.
The fact is I think the creation of "Bantustans" was a terrible idea that was conceived and pursued with rapaciously exploitive motives. There is no redeeming it really.
The proper solution, from my point of view, would be to accept that colonial history had created a single nation comprising all inhabitants of SA, that like it or not were integrated by economic necessity, and therefore should enjoy equal civil rights in a democratic state. Any alternative to this is an acknowledgement, if not the justice of Nationalist (and others) racial segregationist claims, then anyway their determination to have it so. Any form of Apartheid is accepting the premise that races should be kept separated.
If I were an ASB in charge under some constraint to respect South African white racism as an inevitable fact to be worked with rather than a deplorable dysfunction to be cured, I suppose I would proceed like this:
In fact, colonialism had formed an integrated matrix, one in which Whites, as the Nationalist regime defined them, collectively enjoyed privilege, and some of whom enjoyed tremendous private wealth. And to be fair, they had brought with them the technology of European civilization which certainly did elevate the material standard of living of the whole nation, even to an extent the exploited non-White categories, though obviously to a far lesser degree than the exploiting invaders did generally. But the openly racist faction of the Whites were not the only ones with a beef about being forced to mix in day to day life; many though not all of the Native African peoples who had been resident on the land before the impact of European invasion had sufficient numbers to retain their separate identities. In fact the largest category of citizens divided up by racial criteria would be these more or less "pure" and separate tribal groups. Other categories under Apartheid existed though; "Coloured" people were racially mixed, mostly African with some European, and Indians and other Asians were relegated to a non-White and restricted category as well.
So, I would begin with the premise I have that the best thing would be an integrated Republic with its citizens all enjoying equal legal rights in a democracy, and first of all ask South Africans of all categories which among them would be willing to live in such a republic under those conditions, with no invidious racial distinctions recognized and ethnicity being a matter of personal history. I would not exclude some sort of affirmative action for non-whites to have opportunity to advance their relative economic status, since the collective history of exploitation is relevant. In this society, tribal African peoples would not have any particular legal claims over others; the territory is all shared. Whites of course might be reluctant to step forward to join this republic since they would have to share their wealth out as the developing political process might demand. But anyone who dissented from the Nationalist line on racial purity and separation could declare for the republic, and make a meaningful statement about their non-racism.
However many South Africans of all categories this number represents, they get that share of the total land and wealth of the RSA, and also the mantle of the name of "Republic of South Africa." Cape Town, I suppose, would be their logical center, but they start with all the land and the other categories get their 'Stans based on their historic claims balanced against technical viability. I believe the OP was talking exclusively about what I am here calling technical viability--by which I mean, does the land enclosed contain sufficient resources for the number of people it is meant to hold? But that's a red herring anyway; nations all over the world vary tremendously in their viability based on technical criteria. I think we all agree it is obvious that the Bantustans of OTL, had the Nationalist regime been strong enough to persist in perpetuating them, were at the extreme end of that spectrum, but really, what sort of line can one draw for minimal levels that some existing nation in the world is not below?
This justice-minded ASB is going to do the job based on a head count. It is not a simple process, because all forms of wealth have to be evaluated against the possibility of the technical operations necessary to realize them. If a diamond mine that goes two miles deep requires high tech supportive services, and it is on land allocated to a nation that has neither the capital wealth to maintain these nor the trained people to operate it, the wealth of the mine output, which would count if it were run by people who could run it, does not count. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the land in terms of the capital wealth that is distributed upon it. Now in fact I disbelieve that any of South Africa's national claimants would be unable to operate particular machinery; they can always be trained to do so. The real question is do they have the capital to do it? It would not be my ASB's philosophy to simply expropriate everything and distribute it all equally, but if a resource that is counted toward a tract of land's countable wealth does require some operating capital, and the particular people being given this land as their claim come up short, then the ASB would take the necessary amount from the current owner of the asset to permit the new owners to operate. That might be 100 percent of the old owner's investment, or less.
In dividing up the land, the various Native African (aka "Black" in official apartheid terminology) tribes get first claim. We locate the major centers where any portion of them living more or less traditionally, with a minimum of interference, might exist, and also their historic range at the time they were confronted with European power, and using judgement determine a center for their claim, and working out from that center keep annexing land, of whatever race's current ownership, until sufficient shares of national wealth as we attribute it to land parcels have been allocated in proportion to their numbers. Numbers which, remember, have had any people of their tribes who would prefer to live in the integrated republic subtracted. In the course of this of course legions of people of other ethnicities will be displaced. Note that it might be that before a given territory has expanded enough to have its share of carrying capacity, other claims of other tribes might start to overlap--this means a border has been created, and that the particular tribes, perhaps all of them, that have run out of land need to be given a secondary center from which additional claims can expand. The outcome is either that the tribe is split between two or more different territorial states, or one government is over discontinuous territories.
Now who are the "tribes?" They might not just be Native African groups. Certain peoples deemed to be collectively in the "Coloured" category have a long established historical identity; they too might claim territory. Racist whites who have refused to consider the opportunities the integrated society offers might be regarded as tribes too, and required to choose a center from which their proportional claims extend. The Voortrekker republics seem likely indicators of where this center may be, with a second White Bantustan perhaps centered on Natal, if some other group doesn't take priority.
The economic viability of each group is assured by a fair and careful accounting of the resources of the land allocated, including capital investments necessary to realize particular values, and with due discounting for resources that tend to be depleted. Ideally each group forms a continuous and compact area. The integrated republic that all of these enclaves are carved out of, including a few reservations for uncompromising white supremacists, forms the matrix that gives each of them access to the world; rights of trade are considered when allocating the wealth of each subgroup.
This process involved a tremendous wealth transfer from the owners of assets expropriated by the process of land allocation to the majority of the separated peoples, who average poorer than the national average--but of course the white supremacists would take a tremendous hit as most of their property would be elsewhere than they are assigned to, and they'll only get the average collectively. That in my view is the price they pay for their dream of racial purity, and if they don't like it they can reconsider whether membership in the mixed and restriction free general republic is so bad after all!
Integrated republic citizens are going to have their lands with associated capital wealth largely expropriated and redistributed too. But enough should be left over, bearing in mind that neighbors who are destined for the reservation nations will leave the value of what they own behind them in the unassigned larger republic.
So, if we imagine such a process happening, this gives the shape of "bantustans" that are viable, if we remove white supremacists to their own concentrated reservations! The actual process of defining them and population exchange might be less ASB than I described, but this layout is the goal, if we continue to "respect" the idea of Grand Apartheid.
Quite obviously, the Nationalists had no intention of doing anything like this. They ruled out the possibility of an integrated republic on what they held were deep principles, which they projected onto all people of European extraction whether these individuals all believed it or not. They claimed by far the lion's share of the national wealth for themselves, and it seems plain to me the major motivation of carving off separate territories for different historic tribes was not in respect of their independent nationhood and agency, but a crude application of "divide and rule." By turning Xhosa against Zulu, the probability of the Native Black majority simply ruling was pushed back. Where, in the Grand Apartheid scheme, would the millions of "Coloured" live? Apparently they'd go on being dependent and subjugated on nominally White ruled land. What about non-European immigrants such as South Asians? For that matter, there was historically some controversy among Nationalist category makers whether Jews should be regarded as "White" or not!
Now, if one is not so idealistic or one might say, moon-beamy, as to demand the national wealth get evenly distributed, is there some middle ground of viability between the OTL Nationalist scheme and the sweeping and vast partition of South Africa into dozens of fairly large, capital-intensive, contiguous and racially "pure" mini states embedded in a cosmopolitan matrix I offer as "fair?" I daresay there is, but every hectare of land taken from the tribal territories to shrink them toward the OTL offer, every capital-intensive productive facility moved to White-run RSA territory from the tribes, every subdivision of their land and every step away from the larger matrix of RSA from the ideal integrationist republic toward a white supremacist regime writ large, is a step away from both justice and viability. If the ZuluStan or Bophusatswana is embedded in a racially integrated RSA, their options to communicate with the larger world are not prejudiced; if it is within a White Supremacist RSA they clearly are. Some may denounce the extremism of allocating all the national wealth on a one person, one share basis and argue that it was the European influx who created a lot of that wealth. That is a deep argument about who creates wealth and how they do it. Against this without getting into all that I can point out that the invaders most certainly did expropriate the land, and that the other categories their racist system wishes to define clearly deserve some level of compensation.
The fact is I think the creation of "Bantustans" was a terrible idea that was conceived and pursued with rapaciously exploitive motives. There is no redeeming it really.
Could some bantustans specialize in low-tech industries, creating sweat-shops and maquiladoras with South-African companies, to make money, since, in most cases, the soil was too poor to do much?
So, ASB.
Apartheid meant "separate development" of the various ethnic communities.
So, ASB.
Apartheid meant "separate development" of the various ethnic communities.
That's an interesting idea. If they had set up stuff like this, then maybe the independent Bantustans would be seeing a lot of investment from China once they set their eyes on Africa post-2008
Which internal contradictions of apartheid you'd deem inherent and fundamental?
Even if apartheid was sincere in its desire to allow the different peoples--unmixed, of course--to progress in the own ways, there was no prospect of white South Africans allowing the different bantustans to emerge as credible rivals for power. What happens when KwaZulu manages to out-industrialize the Cape Province, say, or when white workers begin commuting to the bantustans to find work? In actual practice, apartheid's planners wanted the bantustans to remain highly dependent on South Africa for the good reason that dependent societies would be much less threatening than independent ones.
Okay, I just want to clarify this--is there a perception here that the Bantustan system was to some substantial degree about the self-determination and self-development of the African tribal peoples?
Or just cold-bloodedly answering an abstract challenge of how evil can prosper?
The OTL plan was that the "maquiladoras" would be on RSA soil so that it would be white owned companies that would make the profits; the "citizens" of the Bantustans would get nothing but wages, and have the status of aliens in the Republic that would appropriate all the wealth except whatever was doled out in wages. The Bantustans would bear all the responsibility of all social welfare of their subjects, and realistically there would be no effective democracy in any of them since the Bantustan leaders would be hand-picked and supervised, if not by legal channels than informally, by the presumably still Nationalist controlled RSA white regime. OTL there was a lot of corruption in them, since the supposedly tribal elected or appointed leaders would in fact owe their power and privileges to gratifying RSA people, not their own.
Now why on Earth would the Nationalists consider taking their hands off the controls and handing real power and real wealth over to these puppet states?
And how could the Bantustans practically have real independence if they don't collectively get a big share of the collective national wealth of South Africa?
To be sure if they were to be sincere and consistent, then the Bantustan peoples would perhaps be left alone to develop, from this scanty pittance, as they wish without the RSA interfering. But do you honestly believe this would be allowed to happen, if a predictable interest of the peoples crowded so densely with so little would be to break the bonds, and appropriate a much larger and more desirable share of South Africa's land and infrastructure for themselves? South African security would demand interference, to make sure there is no possibility of such self-interested development.
Perhaps no internal contradictions at all. If the Whites (again, not necessarily all South Africans of European extraction, just the ones accepting Nationalist positions as their own) were to hand over a fair share of the wealth and infrastructure and land to the majority of the inhabitants, and then take their hands off and make do with a mere 10 percent or so of South Africa's pre-self-dismembership resources, closing their eyes to everything happening in their internal neighbors, perhaps there is no contradiction, merely the consistent and frank affirmation of the claim that the different races simply cannot work together. Which I think is absurd and morally outrageous, but it would be consistent. Also brutal of course.
But less brutal than what they really meant to do and actually did. The intended and partially accomplished crowding of the majority of South Africa's people on far too small and poor shares of land, broken up into absurdly discontinuous fragments in at least one case I know of because the regime did not have the gumption to impose any sacrifices on any subset of the Whites who benefited and therefore could not relocate them and concede a portion of good land; the consistent arrangement for the necessary labor sites for the pent-up tribal peoples to be forced by circumstances to work in white-owned capacities on RSA soil, all demonstrated that in fact South Africa had evolved with tremendous intertwining of all the various racial categories the government so zealously defined and policed. To declare that different peoples should not mix and unmix them seems deplorable and quixotic, but the actual plan OTL actually did no such thing, merely substituted a new pretext to police people of non-white race for the old ones. But it did not foresee actually disentangling their affairs at all, merely washed the hands of the White state of any responsibility for people that it would in fact seek to continue to control, and exploit. That's contradictory!
So you ask, "how could it be that the Bantustans are set up to be genuinely independent?" And I have answered--they'd need orders of magnitude higher shares of the wealth of the Republic, so much so that if one did not (as I, admittedly deviating from the premise quite a bit) first separate out people who would be willing to repudiate the Nationalist program of apartheid in all forms and make a go of a comprehensive republic not based on legal caste hierarchy, with all having equal rights and the discretion to associate as they pleased, then it would follow that all the separate categories of each race, including the mixed-race people and Asians, would each need to be assigned homelands. The Republic of South Africa would cease to exist, replaced by a Balkanized patchwork of little countries. The whole premise of Nationalism was that these diverse peoples cannot cooperate, so an effective confederation for purposes such as mutual self-defense would be out. Whites too would have to suffer the majority of themselves being uprooted from homes they had lived in in some cases for centuries and be moved into a Bantustan of their own (or two or more of them, separating Afrikaners from English speakers). It would be massively disruptive and leave the racially purified fragments, all of them, including the new White homelands, so small that none of them are very viable anymore. Whites, and Africans, and Coloureds, and Asians, who individually disagreed with the Nationalist line that cooperation and cosmopolitan mixing was unworkable and bad would be overruled and faced with a choice of either accepting their assigned place in the purified nation the government's racial accounting allocated them to, or exile themselves from South Africa completely. I therefore suggested that people willing to make an attempt at mixed unification become the default inheritors of the remnant matrix surrounding all the purified homelands and embedding them in South Africa proper. Guessing that these would be something between a quarter and 2/3 the total population, such an inclusive Republic could reasonably be the neutral territory each of the separatist nationalities can travel through for access to the larger world.
What the Nationalists actually wanted to do was handle the largest single category of non-Whites, the African natives who retained their old identity, by subdividing them, assigning them small reservations that confined them and divided them against each other, and thus make the job of running a white supremacist Republic ruling over all remaining non-white categories and exploiting them, while retaining de facto control over the allegedly independent African peoples trapped and helpless as well. They made themselves the default, treated themselves as a special category ruling all the rest and setting the rules for all. For what reason should they wish to trade that advantageous "solution" for a fair and unprofitable shattering of South Africa into many separate countries?
And of course quite aside from the moral outrage that such a triumph of racist pig-headedness would represent, even if done with fairness regarding the apportionment of resources to each group, it would be a dangerous and unstable situation, as the broadly similar shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s demonstrated. Having been divided into invidious little groups, what is to stop any number of them from seeking to improve its fortunes by right of conquest at the expense of neighbors the Nationalist ideology claimed they had no common bond with? The choices would be, principled (if on a repulsive principle) and fair separation of all from all, followed by ruthless and mutually ruinous warfare, or for some overarching organization to exist. The Nationalists held that that could hardly be a federation since their whole premise was the inability of the diverse races to cooperate, therefore they reserved this role for themselves, kingmakers for the whole region and subject to no reciprocal accountability themselves.
If we attempt to pretend that the whole thing was not merely and essentially a cynical reconfiguration of white rule and exploitation, but had some higher principle that would be followed by all, it clearly becomes dysfunctional.
In order to enforce fairness in the division of national wealth if this great divorce were to go forward, it would be necessary for the Nationalists to be defeated politically anyway. With them defeated, the much superior idea that the peoples of South Africa had in fact been entangled with each other by history and therefore should unite as equal individuals under the law, with universal and equal rights, and let individuals decide for themselves how much association with others they wished to pursue versus locating in blocks to live with their own kind as they perceived it, would have a way forward. All forms of apartheid, Grand or otherwise, should have been discarded and eventually were OTL, at any rate as legally sanctified rules imposed by the law. This has always been the way forward for South Africa, with the doctrine of racial separation exposed for the evil it has always been.
Are you serious? That's a "yes" to my question above I guess.
Again, seriously? You are seeing the Nationalists setting up the Bantustans as captive, dependent so-called autonomous states that have no choice but to either starve or prostitute themselves in this way as some sort of win-win?
Or just cold-bloodedly answering an abstract challenge of how evil can prosper?
The OTL plan was that the "maquiladoras" would be on RSA soil so that it would be white owned companies that would make the profits; the "citizens" of the Bantustans would get nothing but wages, and have the status of aliens in the Republic that would appropriate all the wealth except whatever was doled out in wages. The Bantustans would bear all the responsibility of all social welfare of their subjects, and realistically there would be no effective democracy in any of them since the Bantustan leaders would be hand-picked and supervised, if not by legal channels than informally, by the presumably still Nationalist controlled RSA white regime. OTL there was a lot of corruption in them, since the supposedly tribal elected or appointed leaders would in fact owe their power and privileges to gratifying RSA people, not their own.
Now why on Earth would the Nationalists consider taking their hands off the controls and handing real power and real wealth over to these puppet states?
And how could the Bantustans practically have real independence if they don't collectively get a big share of the collective national wealth of South Africa?
Apartheid means segregation. It means the Whites of South Africa, an identity the Nationalist Party felt free to define and govern no matter what people who happened to be of pure European extraction themselves might want to offer as dissents, affirm that mixing with people of other races is dangerous and unhealthy. The ship of "separate development" sailed centuries ago when the various European powers--first the Dutch/French Huguenot derived Afrikaners and then the British--each overwhelmed native African peoples, appropriated whatever land they wanted, reorganized the work force with formal slavery and later forms of dependency as closely tantamount to slavery as relations of legally free African-American slaves in the USA under Jim Crow were, appropriated the lion's share of all profits, and now at this late date want to say "all that wealth is ours, the best land is ours, here, go make something of yourself on this scanty reservation we give you." How is this "separate development?"
To be sure if they were to be sincere and consistent, then the Bantustan peoples would perhaps be left alone to develop, from this scanty pittance, as they wish without the RSA interfering. But do you honestly believe this would be allowed to happen, if a predictable interest of the peoples crowded so densely with so little would be to break the bonds, and appropriate a much larger and more desirable share of South Africa's land and infrastructure for themselves? South African security would demand interference, to make sure there is no possibility of such self-interested development.
Perhaps no internal contradictions at all. If the Whites (again, not necessarily all South Africans of European extraction, just the ones accepting Nationalist positions as their own) were to hand over a fair share of the wealth and infrastructure and land to the majority of the inhabitants, and then take their hands off and make do with a mere 10 percent or so of South Africa's pre-self-dismembership resources, closing their eyes to everything happening in their internal neighbors, perhaps there is no contradiction, merely the consistent and frank affirmation of the claim that the different races simply cannot work together. Which I think is absurd and morally outrageous, but it would be consistent. Also brutal of course.
But less brutal than what they really meant to do and actually did. The intended and partially accomplished crowding of the majority of South Africa's people on far too small and poor shares of land, broken up into absurdly discontinuous fragments in at least one case I know of because the regime did not have the gumption to impose any sacrifices on any subset of the Whites who benefited and therefore could not relocate them and concede a portion of good land; the consistent arrangement for the necessary labor sites for the pent-up tribal peoples to be forced by circumstances to work in white-owned capacities on RSA soil, all demonstrated that in fact South Africa had evolved with tremendous intertwining of all the various racial categories the government so zealously defined and policed. To declare that different peoples should not mix and unmix them seems deplorable and quixotic, but the actual plan OTL actually did no such thing, merely substituted a new pretext to police people of non-white race for the old ones. But it did not foresee actually disentangling their affairs at all, merely washed the hands of the White state of any responsibility for people that it would in fact seek to continue to control, and exploit. That's contradictory!
So you ask, "how could it be that the Bantustans are set up to be genuinely independent?" And I have answered--they'd need orders of magnitude higher shares of the wealth of the Republic, so much so that if one did not (as I, admittedly deviating from the premise quite a bit) first separate out people who would be willing to repudiate the Nationalist program of apartheid in all forms and make a go of a comprehensive republic not based on legal caste hierarchy, with all having equal rights and the discretion to associate as they pleased, then it would follow that all the separate categories of each race, including the mixed-race people and Asians, would each need to be assigned homelands. The Republic of South Africa would cease to exist, replaced by a Balkanized patchwork of little countries. The whole premise of Nationalism was that these diverse peoples cannot cooperate, so an effective confederation for purposes such as mutual self-defense would be out. Whites too would have to suffer the majority of themselves being uprooted from homes they had lived in in some cases for centuries and be moved into a Bantustan of their own (or two or more of them, separating Afrikaners from English speakers). It would be massively disruptive and leave the racially purified fragments, all of them, including the new White homelands, so small that none of them are very viable anymore. Whites, and Africans, and Coloureds, and Asians, who individually disagreed with the Nationalist line that cooperation and cosmopolitan mixing was unworkable and bad would be overruled and faced with a choice of either accepting their assigned place in the purified nation the government's racial accounting allocated them to, or exile themselves from South Africa completely. I therefore suggested that people willing to make an attempt at mixed unification become the default inheritors of the remnant matrix surrounding all the purified homelands and embedding them in South Africa proper. Guessing that these would be something between a quarter and 2/3 the total population, such an inclusive Republic could reasonably be the neutral territory each of the separatist nationalities can travel through for access to the larger world.
What the Nationalists actually wanted to do was handle the largest single category of non-Whites, the African natives who retained their old identity, by subdividing them, assigning them small reservations that confined them and divided them against each other, and thus make the job of running a white supremacist Republic ruling over all remaining non-white categories and exploiting them, while retaining de facto control over the allegedly independent African peoples trapped and helpless as well. They made themselves the default, treated themselves as a special category ruling all the rest and setting the rules for all. For what reason should they wish to trade that advantageous "solution" for a fair and unprofitable shattering of South Africa into many separate countries?
And of course quite aside from the moral outrage that such a triumph of racist pig-headedness would represent, even if done with fairness regarding the apportionment of resources to each group, it would be a dangerous and unstable situation, as the broadly similar shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s demonstrated. Having been divided into invidious little groups, what is to stop any number of them from seeking to improve its fortunes by right of conquest at the expense of neighbors the Nationalist ideology claimed they had no common bond with? The choices would be, principled (if on a repulsive principle) and fair separation of all from all, followed by ruthless and mutually ruinous warfare, or for some overarching organization to exist. The Nationalists held that that could hardly be a federation since their whole premise was the inability of the diverse races to cooperate, therefore they reserved this role for themselves, kingmakers for the whole region and subject to no reciprocal accountability themselves.
If we attempt to pretend that the whole thing was not merely and essentially a cynical reconfiguration of white rule and exploitation, but had some higher principle that would be followed by all, it clearly becomes dysfunctional.
In order to enforce fairness in the division of national wealth if this great divorce were to go forward, it would be necessary for the Nationalists to be defeated politically anyway. With them defeated, the much superior idea that the peoples of South Africa had in fact been entangled with each other by history and therefore should unite as equal individuals under the law, with universal and equal rights, and let individuals decide for themselves how much association with others they wished to pursue versus locating in blocks to live with their own kind as they perceived it, would have a way forward. All forms of apartheid, Grand or otherwise, should have been discarded and eventually were OTL, at any rate as legally sanctified rules imposed by the law. This has always been the way forward for South Africa, with the doctrine of racial separation exposed for the evil it has always been.
Direct translation is 'separateness'. The development was tacked onto the English translation to make it more palatable.
I don't think KwaZulu ever had casinos actually - could be wrong. The Transkei had the Wild Cost Sun (which is still going and I made the mistake of going there on one New Years Day).
These can only bring in so much money though, real development would come from manufacturing etc. I think.
There is a conspiracy theory that the reason Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966 is because he was planning on splitting SA into two, and giving black South Africans enough land to make a viable state, but that hardliners in the NP were against this.
According to this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Apartheids-Friends-Rise-South-Africas-Secret-Service/0719566754
PS: bantustans is spelled without an 'h'.
So I looked on Wikipedia and there was piece of legislation called the Bantu Investment Corporation Act, 1959 which was then replaced by the:
Maybe these could have provided the impetus for "maquiladoras" in the Bantustans