Bantustan in the context of "National Party (South Africa)"

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⭐ Core Definition: Bantustan

A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland; Afrikaans: Bantoestan) was a territory that the National Party administration of the Union of South Africa (1910–1961) and later the Republic of South Africa (1961–1994) set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as a part of its policy of apartheid.

The term, first used in the late 1940s, was coined from Bantu (meaning "people" in some of the Bantu languages) and -stan (a suffix meaning "land" in Persian and other Persian-influenced languages). It subsequently came to be regarded as a disparaging term by some critics of the apartheid-era government's homelands. The Pretoria government established ten Bantustans in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South West Africa (then under South African administration), for the purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating autonomous nation states for South Africa's different black ethnic groups. Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the government stripped black South Africans of their South African citizenship, depriving them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these homelands.

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Bantustan in the context of KwaZulu-Natal Province

KwaZulu-Natal (/kwɑːˌzl nəˈtɑːl/, also referred to as KZN) is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province.

It is located in the southeast of the country, with a long shoreline on the Indian Ocean. It shares borders with three other provinces and the countries of Mozambique, Eswatini and Lesotho. Its capital is Pietermaritzburg, and its largest city is Durban, which is also the city with the largest port in sub-saharan Africa. It is the second-most populous province in South Africa, after Gauteng.

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Bantustan in the context of Apartheid

Apartheid (/əˈpɑːrt(h)t/ ə-PART-(h)yte, especially South African English/əˈpɑːrt(h)t/ ə-PART-(h)ayt, Afrikaans: [aˈpart(ɦ)əit] ; transl. "separateness", lit.'aparthood') was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap (lit. 'boss-ship' or 'boss-hood'), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.

Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which strictly separated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.

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Bantustan in the context of Provinces of South Africa

South Africa is divided into nine provinces. On the eve of the 1994 general election, South Africa's former homelands, known as Bantustans, were reintegrated into the country, and the four provinces were increased to nine. The borders of Natal and the Orange Free State were retained, while the Cape Province and Transvaal were divided into three provinces each, plus North West Province which straddles the border of and contains territory from both these two former provinces. The twelfth, thirteenth and sixteenth amendments to the Constitution of South Africa changed the borders of seven of the provinces.

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Bantustan in the context of KwaZulu

KwaZulu was a semi-independent Bantustan in South Africa, intended by the apartheid government as a homeland for the Zulu people. The capital was moved from Nongoma to Ulundi in 1980.

It was led until its abolition in 1994 by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and head of Inkatha, who implemented the limited self-governing powers decided by the South African government as part of apartheid, but rejected the nominal independence which four other homelands accepted, complaining about the fragmented nature of the state, and the inability of the apartheid government to consolidate a viable and contiguous territory for KwaZulu, in the face of stiff resistance from whites. F. W. de Klerk later commented in an interview that he believed that Buthelezi would have accepted independence had his homeland been given the port of Richards Bay, a proposal that failed due to the white population's resistance to the idea.

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Bantustan in the context of Natal Province

The Province of Natal (Afrikaans: Natalprovinsie), commonly called Natal, was a province of South Africa from May 1910 until May 1994. Its capital was Pietermaritzburg. During this period rural areas inhabited by the black African population of Natal were organised into the Bantustan of KwaZulu, which was progressively separated from the province, becoming partially autonomous in 1981. For the significant population of Indian South Africans residing in Natal, the third-largest city of Durban was organised for them. Of the white population mostly in the largest city of Johannesburg, the majority were English-speaking people of British descent, causing Natal to become the only province to vote "No" to the creation of a republic in the referendum of 1960, due to very strong monarchist, pro-British Commonwealth, and anti-secessionist sentiment. In the latter part of the 1980s, Natal was in a state of violence between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress, with violence subsiding soon after the first non-racial election in 1994.

In 1994, the KwaZulu Bantustan was reincorporated into the territory of Natal and the province was redesignated as KwaZulu-Natal.

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Bantustan in the context of Mpumalanga

Mpumalanga (/əmˌpməˈlɑːŋɡə/) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name means "East", or literally "The Place Where the Sun Rises" in the Nguni languages. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, bordering Eswatini and Mozambique. It shares borders with the South African provinces of Limpopo to the north, Gauteng to the west, the Free State to the southwest, and KwaZulu-Natal to the south. The capital is Mbombela.

Mpumalanga was formed in 1994, when the area that was the Eastern Transvaal was merged with the former bantustans KaNgwane, KwaNdebele and parts of Lebowa and Gazankulu. Although the contemporary borders of the province were formed only at the end of apartheid, the region and its surroundings have a history that extends back thousands of years. Much of its history and current significance are as a region of trade.

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Bantustan in the context of Ovamboland

Ovamboland, also referred to as Owamboland, was a Bantustan and later a non-geographic ethnic-based second-tier authority, the Representative Authority of the Ovambos, in South West Africa (present-day Namibia).

The apartheid government stated that the goal was for it to be a self-governing homeland for the Ovambo people. Practically, however, it was intended by the apartheid government as a reservation that forced them into cheap labour by limiting movement; Ovambo men were not allowed outside Ovamboland unless they signed as a contract labourer for 16 months, while women were not allowed out at all.

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Bantustan in the context of Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape (Afrikaans: Oos-Kaap [ˈuəs.kɑːp]; Xhosa: eMpuma-Kapa) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, and its largest city is Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). Due to its climate and nineteenth-century towns, it is a common location for tourists. It is also known for having been home to many anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Chris Hani.

The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km) after the Northern Cape, it was formed in 1994 out of the Xhosa homelands or bantustans of Transkei and Ciskei, together with the eastern portion of the Cape Province. The central and eastern part of the province is the traditional home of the indigenous Xhosa people. In 1820 this area, which was known as the Xhosa Kingdom, began to be settled by Europeans who originally came from England, Scotland and Ireland. Eastern Cape is the only province in South Africa where the number of Black Africans declined from 86.6% to 85.7% since Apartheid ended in 1994.

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