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The Bantustan Proposals for South-West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Anthony A. D'Amato
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Extract

What Southern Africa will look like a generation from now is an immediate problem for the South African Government's top policy makers, who realise the precarious nature of apartheid. These planners have rejected both the do-nothing approach of the right-wing elements (e.g. the Republican Party) in South Africa and the multi-racial society solution pressed by Mrs Helen Suzman, the only Member of Parliament of the (relatively) left-wing Progressive Party. Between these two alternatives a host of partition schemes have been advocated, and one of them has been accepted: the ‘Bantustan’ proposals. By geographical isolation of each of the non-White ethnic groups into separate homelands or ‘Bantustans’, leaving the remainder of the territories of South Africa and South-West Africa to the Whites, the Nationalist Government is proceeding to change the face of Southern Africa.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , October 1966 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

Page 177 note 1 The names of the various ethnic groups are used in the senses defined in South African and South-West African laws and regulations. A typical set of definitions, taken in this case from the Population Census of South-West Africa of 8 May 1951, is as follows: ‘(a) Whites. Persons who in appearance obviously are, or who are generally accepted as white persons, but excluding persons who, although in appearance obviously white, are generally accepted as Coloured persons. ‘(b) Natives. Persons who in fact are, or who are generally accepted as members of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa. ‘(c) Asiatics. Natives of Asia and their descendants. ‘(d) Coloureds. All persons not included in any of the three groups mentioned above.’

Page 177 note 2 See South African Bureau of Affairs, Racial, Integration or Separate Development? (Stellenbosch, 1952)Google Scholar; Cowen, D. V., The Foundations of Freedom (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Thompson, Leonard M., The Republic of South Africa (Boston, 1966), pp. 81–9.Google Scholar

Page 177 note 3 Nielsen, Waldemar A., African Battleline (New York, 1965), pp. 59–68.Google Scholar

Page 178 note 1 Hill, Christopher R., Bantustans: the fragmentation of South Africa (London, 1964), pp. 102–9.Google Scholar

Page 178 note 2 The Odendaal Commission, which advocated Bantustans for South-West Africa, was appointed on 25 September 1962, two years after Ethiopia and Liberia had instituted legal action in the International Court of Justice against South Africa relating to the administration of the mandated territory of South-West Africa. See Republic of South Africa, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into South-West Africa Affairs, 1962–1963 (Pretoria, 1964)Google Scholar, hereinafter cited as Odendaal Report.

Page 178 note 3 International Status of South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion: I.C.J. Reports 128 (1950). See in general First, Ruth, South-West Africa (Baltimore, 1963)Google Scholar, and Leiss, Amelia C., Apartheid and United Nations Collective Measures (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 178 note 4 See Mason, Philip, ‘Separate Development and South-West Africa: some aspects of the Odendaal Report’, in Race (London), v, 4, 04 1964, pp. 83–97Google Scholar; and United Nations Secretariat, Working Paper, 8 April 1964 (A/AC.109/L. 108).

Page 179 note 1 Source: Odendaal Report, facing p. 110.

Page 180 note 1 Many observers who are rightly apprehensive of a racial war in South Africa have welcomed the Bantustan proposals as the only possible solution. See e.g. Giniewski, Paul, The Two Faces of Apartheid (Chicago, 1961), pp. 315–51Google Scholar. For a discussion of the High Commission Territories as potential Bantustans, see Waldemar A. Nielsen, op. cit. pp. 104–5; also Halpern, Jack, South Africa's Hostages (Baltimore, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 180 note 2 Republic of South Africa, Decisions by the Government on the Recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry into South-West African Affairs (Cape Town, 1964), pp. 11 and 24.Google Scholar

Page 181 note 1 Odendaal Report, Tables A, B, and G, pp. 109 and 111; Tables XVIII and XIX, pp. 39 and 41; Table XI, p. 29. Population figures here exclude from the total of Natives the ‘4,528 employees mostly from Angola’ listed in Table XVIII. Land allocation figures here have been converted from hectares, and ‘Coloured settlement’ has been added to the allocation for Coloureds in Table G.

Page 181 note 2 Ibid. Table XII, p. 29, and Table G, p. 111.

Page 182 note 1 Republic of South Africa, Rejoinder: South-West Africa Cases (Cape Town, 1964), vol. I, pp. 310–11.Google Scholar

Page 182 note 2 Odendaal Report, Figs. 4 and 5 opposite p. 14.

Page 182 note 3 Ibid. Fig. 6, opposite p. 16.

Page 182 note 4 Ibid. Fig. 8, opposite p. 24.

Page 182 note 5 Republic of South Africa, Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly (Pretoria, 1964), col. 5544.Google Scholar

Page 182 note 6 Odendaal Report, Figs. 55–8, facing pp. 374, 376, and 388.

Page 183 note 1 Source: Republic of South Africa, South-West Africa Cases: Counter Memorial (Cape Town, 1963), vol. III, map opposite p. 16.Google Scholar

Page 184 note 1 Fuller, Lon L., ‘The Forms and Limits of Adjudication’ (1959, mimeo.), p. 39.Google Scholar

Page 186 note 1 The greatest difficulties arise in determining an individual's ‘race’. Although statistics are not available for South.West Africa, the South African Minister of the Interior stated on 22 March 1957 that approximately 100,000 ‘race classification decisions’ were then pending before the Director of Census and Statistics which were regarded as ‘borderline’ cases. In addition, 968 cases were pending before an appeals board to determine objections to the Director's classifications. Suzman, A., ‘Race Classification and Definition in the Legislation of the Union of South Africa, 1910–1960’, in Acta Juridica (Cape Town), 1960, pp. 339 and 355Google Scholar. The classification ‘Coloured’ obviously does not alleviate the difficulty since it erects two fences where before there was one. Most of the litigated cases concern persons who claim that they were wrongly classified as ‘Coloured’ instead of ‘White’.

Page 188 note 1 Prime Minister Verwoerd had stated in the South African Parliament in 1963 that ‘it is only when the races are separated and live like neighbours that discrimination will be able to disappear.’ Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly (1963), col. 230.

Page 188 note 2 In 1961 Prime Minister Verwoerd told the South Africa Club in London that the Bantustans would follow ‘the model of the nations, which in this modern world means political independence coupled with economic interdependence’. Union of South Africa, Fact Paper 91 (Cape Town), 04 1961, p. 147.Google Scholar

Page 189 note 1 There is no doubt that this applies to the smaller Bantustans, whose economic subservience has been openly conceded in the South African Parliament. See e.g. Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly (1964), col. 5490.

Page 190 note 1 One of South Africa's official witnesses at The Hague, Professor J. P. van S. Bruwer (who had served on the Odendaal Commission), admitted on cross-examination that the White economy of South-West Africa ‘would not be able to thrive or possibly survive’ without the use of non-White labour, although it might at some time in the future—which he agreed might be anything up to 300 years. International Court of Justice, Verbatim Record, C.R. 65/56, pp. 22and 25.

Page 190 note 2 Another official South African witness at The Hague, P. J. Cillie (editor of Die Burger, an influential Afrikaans newspaper), said of the Bantustans, ‘Some of those units could obviously not be independent states in any accepted sense … Some of them are so small and the numbers are so low that obviously you cannot speak of all those smaller areas as viable states, you cannot envisage that, not for the foreseeable future’. International Court of Justice, Verbatim Record, C.R. 65/62, p. 14.Google Scholar

Page 190 note 3 SirGraaf, De Villiers, Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly (1964), col. 5465.Google Scholar

Page 191 note 1 Parliamentary Debates: Senate (1951) cols. 2893–4.

Page 191 note 2 Republic of South Africa, Rejoinder: South-West Africa Cases, vol. I, p. 314.Google Scholar

Page 191 note 3 Parliamentary Debates: House of Assembly (1958), col. 3805.

Page 191 note 4 Ibid. (1965), col. 5481.

Page 192 note 1 Lelyveld, Joseph, ‘Apartheid Wins New Mandate,’ in The New York Times, 3 04 1966.Google Scholar