At the height of “grand apartheid,” the South African government under HF Verwoerd produced a diabolical scheme to grant independence to ten ‘homelands’ – Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Venda, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa.
You may never have heard or read of these territories. That’s because they disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, even though the damage done still lingers to this day.
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Known also as “Bantustans,” the homelands were established under South African law as the centerpiece of a policy of “separate development” – the idea being to establish states where black South Africans were forced to take citizenship.
Each of these areas was supposedly tribally or linguistically based: KwaZulu for the Zulus, Transkei for the Xhosa, Bophutatswana for the Tswana nation, Qwa Qwa for the Basotho, Venda for the Venda, Lebowa for the Pedi speakers, and so on. Not only would this scheme supposedly link thus with a nationalistic urge for self-determination, but these homelands would conveniently excuse the racist character of rule in apartheid South Africa.
It was never going to work, and of course it didn’t.
Only four of these ten territories ever became nominally independent: the Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981.
No other country, save for South Africa, recognized these Potemkin states, despite their possession of the symbols of statehood in flags, armies and uniforms, various levels and administration and their elaborate trappings, and even their own stamps – not to mention unrecognized “embassies” all over the world.
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No matter the vast amounts of money South Africa threw at them and the development of so-called “border industries” to create employment in these territories, they remained development backwaters and sources of instability (for example, frequent coups took place in Transkei, Ciskei and Venda) and weak governance.
While a few desperado ex-Rhodesian military established the army in Transkei and it attracted a sprinkling of Ghanaian emigres fleeing serial instability in their West African country, no African country touched these Bantustans. The Organization of African Unity OAU), the predecessor of today’s African Union, for example in its resolution of its 27th ordinary session of June-July 1976 condemned and rejected “the Bantustan policy” and urged its member states “to refrain from establishing contact with the emissaries of the so-called Bantu Homelands” and invited “all states and in particular member states of the OAU in their totality not to accord recognition to any Bantustan.”
Instead of taking off economically, these Bantustans proved an economic drag on South Africa, one of the key reasons why apartheid eventually became as unaffordable as it was morally indefensible.
African delegation brazenly sent to occupied Ukraine
It is thus with some obvious lack of irony that this past December, the Pan African Parliament (PAP) unhesitatingly dispatched a 17-strong delegation to the unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) carved out of Ukrainian territory in the east and occupied by Russia in contravention of international law.
The delegation was headed by the Second Vice President of the Pan-African Parliament Ashebir Woldegiorgis Gayo. Other members were drawn from Mozambique, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Djibouti and Somalia.
On Feb. 21, 2022, just three days before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree “recognizing” the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. To date they have been “recognized” additionally by South Ossetia and Abkhazian authorities (themselves unrecognized internationally), Ba’athist Syria and North Korea in an alliance of demagogues.
On Dec. 20, 2024, Putin said: “I recently spoke with [Denis] Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic. He told me about how he received a delegation from Africa. I am delighted to have our friends and guests. And I am planning to go to Africa myself. This is very good and right. We must maintain relations.”
Earlier, Dr Gayo, in an interview with the Russian News Agency said that the “legislative body would invite the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, to the South African city of Johannesburg.”
Miles Sampa, a Zambian parliamentarian, has defended the trip, whose purpose, he says, “was fact finding and ways [sic] how as Africa MPs we can then advocate or influence for the end of war given the negative economic impact it’s having on Africa due to the trade embargo … [with] cheaper fertilizer, grain, oil etc, into Africa.”
Sampa added, correctly, that “as MPs who represent Africa, we can’t afford to be mute and do nothing about that war.”
Yet this is precisely not the way to positively influence a peaceful outcome to this war. Exactly how this group were going to do this by tacitly providing recognition to what has effectively become a terrorist pseudo-state is unclear, particularly in the light of subsequent statements. As the Ukrainian government observed: “The statements made by them during this visit about opposing colonialism, made on Ukrainian land illegally seized by Russia during the neo-colonial war of aggression against Ukraine, are entirely absurd.”
This trip and the support, lent as a consequence to Russia’s imperial ambitions, is akin to a visit by leading Africans to the Bantustans in the 1980s premised on the argument that this would help to end apartheid. It’s pure political fantasy and egregious expediency.
Even if one forgave these parliamentarians of their motives and hapless understanding of international and Ukrainian law, they display a recklessness with their own circumstances. Dr Gayo might like, for a moment, to consider the implications of his words and deeds on his own country, Ethiopia, currently embroiled in a series of regional conflicts. Breaking off bits of African states to satisfy imperial ambitions would create havoc, stitched together as the continent’s states are across a tapestry of peoples, tribes and religions.
There are differences of course between these Russian creations and the Bantustans. The ethnic criterion forms no legal basis for their creation by Putin, no matter his attempted justification about the freedom to use the Russian language.
Unlike the Bantustans, which formed part of South African territory, the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” were the product of a violent military annexation. If this trip was not paid for by Russia, which is problematic in itself, African taxpayers should ask for their money back from their PAP contribution.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the PAP delegation are from countries commonly judged as authoritarian. Equatorial Guinea for example ranks a lowly 5/100 on Freedom House’s index of political rights and civil liberties, where 100 is judged as perfectly free. Uganda is 34/100, Ethiopia 20/100, Eswatini 17/100 and South Sudan at the bottom of the pile on 1/100. Russia is also, no surprise, judged at 13/100, below Burundi, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Presumably the citizens of Tanzania, Comoros, Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia, which all make Freedom House’s “partly free” roster, might have something to say at the next ballot about the manner of this use of their hard-earned tax dollars.
With the advent of democracy, South Africa’s Bantustans ceased to exist on April 27, 1994, and were reincorporated into the country’s nine provinces. Inevitably, the same fate will befall Russia’s version of the Bantustan in Ukraine’s east.
History will remember the names of Moscow’s moochers and opportunistic fellow travelers.
The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.
Dr Oleksandr Merezhko heads the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, and is a Professor of International Law; Dr Greg Mills, the author most recently of The Art of War and Peace, heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation.
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