Bophuthatswana was the richest of all the ten apartheid homelands, and thus a near perfect propaganda tool for the purpose of discrediting the objectives of the black liberation movement. It was also an illusion of a native heaven: where Africans could vote, gamble and sell sex.
The quirky, little, tribalist state spent enormous amounts of money - millions of which were sponsored by the exploitative apartheid regime and its mining conglomerates - to maintain a happy citizen body. The consequence of such an investment is that today a sizable portion of its loyalist support base yearns for a return to the past.
Nostalgia for the days of racial oppression and segregation has always been a common theme among some white South Africans. "This follows logically after their initial assumption that they, being the settler minority, can have the right to be supreme masters."(Steve Biko)
So, how does a self-respecting black person begin to insult the democratic gains of 1994 - minimal as they may be - in the name of Bophuthatswana? How would logic explain that?
It is either a show of gross insensitivity to the collective experience of black people here and all over the world, or an act of gross ignorance driven by a heavy dose of misguided and unconscious self hatred; which could be the only logical motivation for such utterances.
The formation and pseudo- independence of Bophuthatswana signified the height of black dispossession under the apartheid regime. The combined geographical size of all the allotted homelands represented a mere 13% of South Africa's total land, leaving a chunk of the remaining 87% to a white minority who then constituted not more than 28% of the population.
When Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, then Minister of Native Affairs, decided to allocate "native reserves" where Africans could be dumped, it was not because he was driven by a strong conviction that Africans needed to govern themselves, but rather by his own selfish intentions to rid SA of blacks and thus forge a demographic majority for whites.
However, Lucas Manyane Mangope bought into the facade - if not only for his narrow political and economic interests. "We would rather face the difficulties of administering a fragmented territory, the wrath of the outside world and accusations of ill-informed people. It is the price we are prepared to pay for being masters of our own destiny."(Mangope, 1977)
While Mangope was busy mastering his own destiny, the vast majority of people in Bophuthatswana were poor. In an area where average income per capita was estimated at $339 - $495, Chief Mangope received a salary of $27,500 a year and ran an expenses account. (Richard Knight, 1984)
In the eyes of the Republic, Mangope could have only been a "useful black man". After all, it was not a secret that once the homelands policy was to strip black people of their South African citizenship. "If our policy is taken to its logical conclusion as far as black people are concerned, there will not be one black man with South African citizenship... and there will be no longer be an obligation on this Parliament to accommodate these people politically." (Connie Mulder, SA Minister of Plural Relations and Development, 1978)
It is worth noting that the legacy of Mangope still lives within a sizable few of "his people," particularly some of those residing in the present day North West Province. The most striking characteristic of this group is that they suffer from some kind of ‘outsider complex'. Their popular rhetoric include: "they came here and closed our radio and television stations" (a false notion by any measure); they came here and took our jobs" etc.
Therefore, one should not hesitate to give Mangope some credit: his propaganda machinery was par none. That today remnants of his loyalists view freedom and democracy as an attack on their ethnic identity, is evidence that the man was a slick politician.
And for the record, it was Mangope - in his resistance to free political activity - who first shut down Radio Mmabatho, Radio Bop, Radio Sunshine, Bop TV and Mmabatho TV, when he fired the staff at Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation in 1994. (Wikipedia) These stations were subsequently dissolved because they were not financially viable.
But then again, Mangope's defenders transcend our borders. On March 26, 1994, Phillip B. Auebach and James Fields wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times, in which they sought to dispel any reference to Bophuthatswana as a "bastion of apartheid" or an "an apartheid homeland." They argued that such truths are a "gross distortion of reality."
Penning their missive from an elite perspective, and most importantly as facilitators of Mangope's $1 billion investment in pension schemes, the two conclude that Bophuthatswana was the epitome of an ideal and non-racial state.
I am sure both these gentlemen - with all the praises they heaped on their cash cow - never had the privilege to live in a mud house or shack somewhere within the thick bushveld surrounding Tsetse, Six Hundred, Magokgwane, Ikopeleng or Miga. It would have been much better for them to argue that the caricature of Bophuthatswana as an organ of the apartheid state is a gross distortion of their own reality, rather than that of the poor majority.
The acute denialism of the homelands structural foundations is not worth debating, save to say that individuals like these need to be hauled before our courts so they could account for their role in aiding and abetting apartheid and/or its satellite structures.
If Bophuthatswana was so prosperous, how do we explain that most of our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters were "migrant workers" in white areas, and that many of these were "commuter workers", who had to travel long hours by bus or train - morning and afternoon - because they were prohibited from living near their place of work?
How do we justify the exploitation and devaluing of our black sisters in the name of casual integrated sex (a euphemism for cheap prostitution) as it used to be the practice at Sin City? Richard Knight (1984) observed that laws in South Africa which made it illegal to gamble or for a black and white to have sex together did not apply in Bophuthatswana. It was therefore not unusual for white men to come to Bophuthatswana to do what they cannot do in Johannesburg. Ironically, all these immoral economic opportunities were sanctioned by Mangope's United ‘Christian' Democratic Party.
Even the platinum mining industry, which accounted for around 53% of Bophuthatswana's GDP, were controlled by companies based in apartheid SA. Impala Platinum Mines (Implats) was controlled by then Genmin (General Mines - now Gencor), while Rustenburg Platinum (Rusplats) was controlled by Johannesburg Consolidated Investments. (The O'Malley Archives)
What then did the people of Bophuthatswana own?
The mining industry in SA was an active player in designing apartheid. In the late 1890s, Genmin's owner George Albu proposed that legislation be passed to force black South Africans to become cheap labourers. ‘The law is not the same for the kaffir as for the white man', Albu stated. Albu's views were shared by all the country's mining bosses. (Norm Dixon, 2001)
Having said that, I wrote this piece after hearing a hip hop song by a certain Mafikeng-born artist, in which he express similar sentiments in some hidden bonus track on his album. It pains me that for a homeboy, my respect for his consciousness has sharply diminished.
It is one thing for one to express anger against the present government and/or its hiccups on service delivery. But a call for the return of Bophuthatswana is downright insulting to the collective black experience.
Logic and consistency dictates that if one were to call for Bophuthatswana to be reinstated, then one would surely not have a problem with the reinstatement of all the other nine homelands and ultimately the reinstatement of white supremacy rule.
Yes, the present government ought to be criticised when they set a foot wrong or fall short in meeting people's expectations, but to call for a return to the apartheid days is highly irresponsible, more so when such a poisonous message is disseminated to the unsuspecting black youth.
Setumo Stone is a writer, social commentator and youth activist
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