bantustan

once the Venda homeland’s Parliamentary assembly room. This was the seat of power for the regimes of Mphephu, Ravele and Ramushwana, rulers of the Bantustan from independence in 1979 to reincorporation in 1994. Throughout the seventies and eighties political issues in Venda mirrored the issues ...

... of the republic. But MK didn’t see the homeland as merely a safe corridor. In October 1981 guerrillas hit the Sibasa station in the heart of the Bantustan capital itself. Three policemen died in the attack. When someone informed the police that the bombers had been harboured by the local ...

answer to all opposition: crush it. This week’s Truth Commission hearing in Thohoyandou proved just how well he did it. Human rights abuses in the Bantustans were carried out mainly by its police and army. Tales of severe torture to deaths in detention spanned more than a decade from the late ...

... the first months of 1994 the spirit of freedom spread like wild fire throughout South Africa. The only real resistance came from the last remaining Bantustan, Bophuthatswana. The ANC was not allowed to operate freely. Lucas Mangope was still in charge. But by March, a few weeks before South ...

... of the eighties was the so-called kitskonstabels, a quick fix policing strategy that ended up terrorising rather than protecting. But first, the Bantustan, the colonel’s wife, and the coup that wasn’t. In 1990 Bantu Holomisa annoyed Pretoria enough for them to want him dead and his ...

No dictatorship ever lasts. The fall of Lucas Mangope and his Bantustan were inevitable. But it had an unexpected by-product, the image of fierce Afrikaner warriors in khaki were shuttered forever.

... Bahurutshe line was installed as president of Bophuthatswana in 1977. Leader of the Bafokeng, the late chief Labone Molotlegi, strongly opposed the Bantustan system. The Bafokeng insisted on tribal independence and on their seat of power, Phokeng to remain a part of South Africa. Mangope was ...