Word: transkei
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Also envisioned are changes in so-called "grand apartheid," the long-range plan to divide South Africa into a constellation of ten "independent" tribal enclaves scattered across a surrounding white territory, which includes 84% of the country. Three such homelands (Transkei, BophuthuaTswana and Venda) have already received their nominal freedom. But the scheme has been roundly criticized because most of the new states are fragmented parcels with few resources. Botha and his advisers are now redrawing the boundaries of these mininations, so that they will be contiguous and better endowed economically. If the scheme is completed, the new nations would...
...three homelands that are now nominally independent, seven are in transitional stages on the road to autonomy. But that road is fraught with difficulties. Only three of the homelands, Ciskei, Qwaqwa and KaNgwane, are unitary territories; the rest are fragmented enclaves, surrounded by land reserved for whites. Only Transkei possesses a deep-water seaport. Apart from BophuthaTswana and Lebowa, which have rich mineral deposits, the rural homelands lack exploitable resources. Their inhabitants are engaged mainly in subsistence-level farming, while about half of the men are forced to migrate to South Africa in search of employment...
...most outside observers, that dream seemed more like a mirage. The mango-patch "republic" (pop. 480,000) is unlikely to win recognition from any nation apart from South Africa, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and its fellow black homeland states of Transkei and BophuthaTswana, which obtained "independence" from Pretoria in 1976 and 1977. The fragility of Venda's new status was even reflected in its stage-prop capital, Thohoyandou ("head of the elephant"). Pretoria had hastily fitted out the town for the occasion with a cluster of government buildings, a hotel, a supermarket and the stadium...
...find myself wondering what happens to the minds of white South Africans, how they can build up such powerful blinders. What happened to the white doctor in the Transkei--nominally an independent black state within South Africa--who last month refused to let a black baby into the whites-only hospital? It didn't matter that there were no beds free in the black hospital, he said; the baby could share with another black. Or the white farmer who severely beat his black maid to get her to confess to stealing the madam's purse; it wasn't shocking because...
...easy story to read, this tale of depersonalized murder. It is made somewhat more hopeful only by the inclusion of another, related story--that of Donald Woods's own transformation. Woods describes in detail his own responses to the South African situation. Born in the Transkei--not far, incidentally, from where Stephen Biko would grow up several years later--Woods did not begin to question his superiority to the blacks around him until he went to college, where he was introduced to the concepts of Western liberalism and humanism. He was persuaded to question the apartheid system with which...