Word: bantustans
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...system is enforced through the hated pass laws. Every African adult must always carry a "pass"; if caught without one in a "white" area, they face criminal charges or deportation to the Bantustans, where there is almost no hope of finding a job. It makes no difference if the pass was simply forgotten while going to the corner store for cigarettes or to visit friends. Africans who have lived in the city all their lives may be deported to starve in a Bantustan, a "homeland" they have never seen. Over a thousand people are prosecuted every day under the pass...
While Rhodesia's Ian Smith, South Africa's Vorster and South African Bantustan Chief Gatcha Buthelezi insist that American investments provide jobs for South African blacks, the trade union groups and leaders of South Africa's black liberation movements contend that American dollars only serve to shore up the apartheid regime...
...However, Bantustan leaders have realized that the "paper independence" they will get from South Africa would be a "sell out," Williams said...
Since then, the homeland has been under emergency rule, requested of Pretoria annually by Matanzima and his cohorts. Their power base is consolidated by free use of Proclamation 400, a security measure that allows the bantustan government unlimited power to suppress civil liberties and opposition parties. Last month, just before the referendum on whether or not to request independence, Matanzima rounded up 26 opposition leaders so they could not mobilize support against this sham of a vote. According to this month's Africa magazine, 57 high school students were jailed recently for protesting independence. And the Transkei's first independent...
Conditions on the bantustan are appalling. Black families are broken up, as the men must leave to support them. And no matter how bad conditions in the mines are, there will always be people willing to become migrant laborers rather than face starvation at home. Black children in South Africa suffer from endemic malnutrition; the nation's blacks have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. In certain areas, the Dutch Reform Church found women and children eat three times a week when food supplies for the bantustan run low. Education remains at a minimum, with...