Word: ciskei
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...downtrodden descendants of the ancient Xhosa tribe, it was an unfamiliar and perhaps unfathomable exercise. At countryside polling places in Ciskei, a Delaware-size tribal territory on the southeast coast of South Africa, women in bright bandannas and beads danced and sang the words Enkululele kweni (Go forward to independence). Since many of the voters could neither read nor write, election officials, under the close scrutiny of local police, showed them how to mark their ballots. The outcome was never really in doubt: by a lopsided vote of 295,891 in favor and only 1,642 against, the tribesmen chose...
...much of the rest of the world, the election was denounced as a sham engineered by South Africa. The chairman of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, Akporode Clark, scoffingly dismissed Ciskei's independence as "a pernicious project." Clark called it another step to perpetuate "white domination in most of South Africa while relegating the African people to client states that can be no more than dumping grounds for the aged and infirm...
...Ciskei's vote for freedom is part of South Africa's grand strategy, begun almost 30 years ago, to segregate its 23 million blacks into ten autonomous homelands scattered across the country. Although blacks make up more than 80% of South Africa's population, the territories set aside for them occupy only about 15% of the land. Moreover, the lines have been carefully drawn to leave most of South Africa's industrial areas and its diamond and gold mines in the hands of the 4.5 million whites. The three homelands that have already declared their "independence...
...Ciskei is an even less likely candidate for self-reliance. Its barren, eroded soil supports few crops or even trees. The pastoral people subsist on beans, maize, goats and a few dairy cattle. A drought last summer was so severe that it took $9.28 million in emergency aid from Pretoria to avert mass starvation. Though the territory is already densely populated, the government, under a "resettlement" program, sends in truckloads of unwanted blacks from urban areas. Once in Ciskei, many of the new arrivals live in stark tent towns with no schools, shops or running water...
...February a seven-member international commission, including some prominent Afrikaners, recommended against autonomy because Ciskei was too poor to stand on its own. Undeterred, Ciskei Chief Minister Lennox Sebe launched a propaganda campaign urging his people to vote for freedom. Critics charged that Sebe had become a puppet of South Africa interested mainly in enhancing his own power. Responded one of Sebe's ministers: "We are not just a group of blacks in South Africa. We are a nation. As blacks in South Africa, we have no rights. We are just pigs...