Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T10:31:17.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - ‘Blunting the prickly pear’: Bophuthatswana and its consequences 1977–1994

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2018

Get access

Summary

Beware that Bophuthatswana is like a prickly pear. It is very tasty but it is also dangerous. I warn you strongly not to abuse me. If you do I will prick you and pierce you like the prickly pear.

Lucas Mangope, speech to Braklaagte residents, 19 May 1989.

Introduction

During the 1970s, the National Party set in motion its plans for the creation and then consolidation of the Bophuthatswana homeland on the basis that its black inhabitants were culturally and politically homogeneous. All the land comprising the western Transvaal bushveld and the former Bechuanaland reserves was to be incorporated into the nascent ‘state’. Apart from a few urban nodes, such as some townships around Pretoria and Brits, the homeland comprised predominantly rural people. This chapter examines how the occupants of Bophuthatswana were affected by and reacted to this development. From the outset, the period witnessed a good deal of civil conflict between the various African communities occupying the area and the Bophuthatswana state, as well as internal disputes within several merafe.

Like all the homelands, Bophuthatswana was created on the platform of what the government interpreted as ‘traditional’ leadership. Through elections, political parties and a presumed democratic process, the homelands were provided with the illusion of independence. As indicated in Chapter Four, like his father before him, Lucas Mangope was the government's preferred candidate to lead the Tswana people to independence and had been to some extent groomed to take over. This meant that he had to establish dominance over those rivals whom he saw as a threat to his authority. It was ‘a particularly sore point with Mangope, as his own traditional authority over others was widely refuted, and he depended to a large extent on the support of the South African state’. One of those who contested the elections to the Tswana Territorial Authority, the precursor to the Bophuthatswana Legislative Assembly, was the Kgatla kgosi, Tidimane Pilane. Pilane's conception of a Tswana homeland was that it should at a later stage amalgamate with other homelands. He claimed that his party, the National Seoposengwe Party, stood for African, as opposed to narrowly Tswana, unity, and espoused a form of ‘federalism’. The National Seoposengwe Party wanted a full referendum to gauge the support for independence. In contrast, Mangope's Bophuthatswana National Party ‘embraced a far narrower ethnic and chiefly constituency’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Land, Chiefs, Mining
South Africa's North West Province Since 1840
, pp. 124 - 141
Publisher: Wits University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×