Gazankulu was a Bantustan in South Africa, intended by the apartheid government to be a semi-independent homeland for the Tsonga people. It was located in both the Northern Transvaal, now Limpopo province and Eastern Transvaal, now Mpumalanga province.
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.
Mpumalanga (/əmˌpuːməˈlɑːŋɡə/) 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.
Venda (/ˈvɛndə/ VEN-də), officially the Republic of Venda (Venda: Riphabuliki ya Venḓa; Afrikaans: Republiek van Venda), was a Bantustan in northern South Africa. It was fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while, to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black homeland, Gazankulu. It is now part of the Limpopo province. Venda was founded by the South African government as a homeland for the Venda people, speakers of the Venda language. The United Nations and international community refused to recognise Venda (or any other Bantustan) as an independent state.
The Vhembe District Municipality (Venda: Masipala wa Tshiṱiriki tsha Vhembe; Tsonga: Masipala wa Xifundza xa Vhembe) is one of the 5 districts of the Limpopo province of South Africa. It is the northernmost district of the country and shares its northern border with the Beitbridge District in Zimbabwe and on the east with the Gaza Province in Mozambique. Vhembe consists of all the territories that were part of the former Venda Bantustan; however, two large densely populated districts of the former Tsonga homeland of Gazankulu, in particular, Hlanganani and Malamulele, were also incorporated into the municipality, hence the ethnic diversity of the district. The seat is Thohoyandou, the capital of the former Venda Bantustan. According to the 2011 census, the majority of the municipality's 800,000 inhabitants spoke TshiVenda as their mother language, while 400,000 spoke Xitsonga as their home language. However, the Tsonga people form the majority south of the Levubu River, while the Venda are the minority south of Levubu at 15%. The Sepedi speakers number 27,000. The district code is DC34.