Word: ciskei
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...nominally independent homelands -- Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana and Ciskei -- are collectively known in South Africa as the TVBC states. Their sovereignty is recognized by no one apart from South Africa and other homeland ; states. That limited diplomatic visibility, however, has not prevented some of them from succumbing to banana-republic political and financial excesses on a world-class scale -- including the imposition of one-party rule, nepotism, official corruption and wildly extravagant spending...
...that Botha's act on July 1 abolishing the pass laws that restrict the movement of blacks within the country did not end restrictions on the 4 million blacks in South Africa who are technically residents of four tribal homelands that chose to become so-called independent states: Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and Venda. Despite government pledges that they could be granted citizenship in both their homelands and South Africa, they are now treated as aliens who must apply for residence and work permits whenever they move. Although the government promised not to enforce these alien requirements while negotiations over dual...
...years, blacks have streamed into the area and patched together flimsy huts out of odds and ends--bits of wood and plastic, old garbage bags, corrugated iron and cardboard. Most of the settlement's residents were "illegals" from the impoverished government-created tribal homelands of Transkei and Ciskei, which offer no employment, no money and no food. Almost as fast as the blacks kept pouring in, the authorities kept pushing them back, smashing their shacks and returning the illegals to the homelands. Despite the government's efforts, however, the population of Crossroads mushroomed...
...Sebe has seized upon the dubious gift with ebullience. Although unemployment in Ciskei has been running at 50%, its leader remains recklessly spendthrift. Just two weeks ago he announced a lavish scheme to furnish his dirt-poor homeland with an international airport, a harbor and an air force. Such tragicomic aspirations and the tyrannical rule that enforces them have made Sebe's fief something of an embarrassment even to its stepmother. Said the moderate Johannesburg Star: "Ciskei has become a byword for all the worst excesses of banana republics...
Over the past year, at least 90 citizens lave been killed by police and armed vigilantes; others have simply disappeared. The jails in Mdantsane, Ciskei's largest settlement (pop. 250,000), are often woefully overcrowded. During one state crackdown, police were reduced to holding 80 inmates inside a small room, beneath the stands of the central stadium, without food, water or toilets. Many detainees have also, it is said, been tortured or raped. Late last year the U.S. State Department warned Americans not to visit Ciskei because "public order appears to have broken down...