98-662: Ovamboland , also referred to as Owamboland , was a Bantustan and later a non-geographic ethnic-based second-tier authority, the Representative Authority of the Ovambos , in South West Africa (present-day Namibia ). The apartheid government stated that the goal was for it to be a self-governing homeland for the Ovambo people . Practically, however, it was intended by the apartheid government as
196-481: A Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland; Afrikaans : Bantoestan ) was a territory that the National Party administration of South Africa set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia ), as a part of its policy of apartheid . The term, first used in the late 1940s, was coined from Bantu (meaning "people" in some of
294-672: A United States House of Representatives resolution urging the President not to recognise Transkei, the South African government intensely lobbied lawmakers to oppose the bill. Arbitrary and unrecognized amateur radio call signs were created for the independent states and QSL cards were sent by operators using them, but the International Telecommunication Union never accepted these stations as legitimate. Each TBVC state extended recognition to
392-465: A general blueprint for the stages of constitutional development of all homelands (except Transkei) from the establishment of Territorial Authorities up to full independence. By 1984, all ten homelands in South Africa had attained self-government and four of them ( Transkei , Boputhatswana , Venda and Ciskei ) had been declared fully independent between 1976 and 1981. The following table shows
490-486: A handful of other ostensible homelands never being given autonomy. A new constitution effectively abolished the Bantustans with the complete end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. Beginning in 1913, successive white-minority South African governments established "reserves" for the black population in order to racially segregate them from the white population , similar to the creation of Indian reservations in
588-496: A number of affairs like land tenure, agriculture, education up to the level of primary school teachers' training, health services and social welfare and pensions) on the basis of ethnicity only and no longer based on geographically defined areas. Building upon institutions that had already been in existence since 1925 and 1962, respectively, representative authorities were also instituted for the white and Coloured population groups. No such representative authorities were established for
686-442: A principle remained in force, and the apartheid regime went on to rely on the Bantustans as one of the main pillars of its policy in dealing with the black population. Until 1990, attempts continued to urge self-governing homelands to opt for independence (e.g. Lebowa, Gazankulu and KwaZulu) and on occasion the governments of self-governing homelands (e.g. KwaNdebele) themselves expressed interest in obtaining eventual independence. It
784-551: A rejection of the Bantustan system in general: the goal of the apartheid regime during the second half of the 1980s was to "modernize" the organisational framework of apartheid while leaving its fundamental principles, including the homelands, unchanged. The government was forced to accept the permanent presence of blacks in urban areas as well as the practical unfeasibility of the hitherto very strict forms of "influx control" (replacing it by "softer" means of control), not to mention
882-488: A reservation that forced them into cheap labour by limiting movement; Ovambo men were not allowed outside Ovamboland unless they signed as a contract labourer for 16 months, while women were not allowed out at all. The term originally referred to the parts of northern Namibia inhabited by the Ovambo ethnic group: namely, the area controlled by the traditional Ovambo kingdoms in pre-colonial and early colonial times, such as Ondonga , Ongandjera , and Oukwanyama . Its endonym
980-592: A result of these interactions. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to Madagascar , the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Sultanate of Zanzibar . With the arrival of European colonialists,
1078-530: A role in South African politics since their abolition. Some had entered their own parties into the first non-racial election while others joined the ANC. Mangosuthu Buthelezi was chief minister of his KwaZulu homeland from 1976 until 1994. In post-apartheid South Africa he has served as president of the Inkatha Freedom Party and Minister of Home Affairs. Bantubonke Holomisa , who was a general in
SECTION 10
#17327725581041176-649: A series of "grand apartheid" measures such as the Group Areas Acts and the Natives Resettlement Act, 1954 that reshaped South African society such that whites would be the demographic majority. The creation of the homelands or Bantustans was a central element of this strategy, as the long-term goal was to make the Bantustans independent. As a result, blacks would lose their South African citizenship and voting rights, allowing whites to remain in control of South Africa. The term "Bantustan" for
1274-859: A significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and
1372-399: A society relatively free from racial discrimination. The leaders of the Bantustans, despite their collaboration with the apartheid regime, occasionally criticized the South African government's racial policies and called for the repeal or softening of apartheid laws (most of which were repealed in nominally independent states). Various plans for a federal solution were at times mooted, both by
1470-484: A spirit of friendship and collaboration. In their own areas, black citizens would enjoy full rights." Verwoerd argued that the Bantustans were the "original homes" of the black peoples of South Africa. In 1951, the government of Daniel François Malan introduced the Bantu Authorities Act to establish "homelands" allocated to the country's black ethnic groups. These amounted to 13% of the country's land,
1568-488: A time. On the other hand, only 40% of Bophuthatswana's population worked outside the 'homeland' because the homeland was able to create industrial sites like Zone 15 and Babelegi. The homelands were extremely unpopular among the urban black population, many of whom lived in squalor in slum housing . Their working conditions were often equally poor, as they were denied any significant rights or protections in South Africa proper. The allocation of individuals to specific homelands
1666-436: A vast area from West Africa, to Central Africa, Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. Bantu people also inhabit southern areas of Northeast African states. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect" , it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in
1764-484: A vast genomic analysis of more than 2,000 samples taken from individuals in 57 populations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to trace the Bantu expansion. During a wave of expansion that began 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations – some 310 million people as of 2023 – gradually left their original homeland West-Central Africa and travelled to the eastern and southern regions of the African continent. During
1862-494: Is Ovambo ~ Owambo . In the 1960s, South Africa , which was administering South West Africa under a League of Nations mandate, came under increased international pressure regarding its minority White rule over the majority of Blacks. The solution envisaged by South Africa—the Odendaal Plan —was to separate the white and the non-white population, grant self-government to the isolated black territories, and thus make Whites
1960-471: Is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group . People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for the larger ethnolinguistic phylum named by 19th-century European linguists. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people". That is, idiomatically
2058-887: The Baganda people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu of South Africa (14.2 million as of 2016 ), the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million as of 2010 ), the Sukuma of Tanzania (10.2 million as of 2016 ), the Kikuyu of Kenya (8.1 million as of 2019 ), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), batswana of Southern Africa (8.2 Million as of 2020) and
SECTION 20
#17327725581042156-526: The Bantu homelands was intended to draw a parallel with the creation of Pakistan and India (" Hindustan "), which had taken place just a few months before at the end of 1947, and was coined by supporters of the policy. However, it quickly became a pejorative term, with the National Party preferring the term "homelands". As Nelson Mandela explained in a 1959 article: The newspapers have christened
2254-523: The Bantu languages ) and -stan (a suffix meaning "land" in the Persian language and some Persian-influenced languages of western , central , southern Asia and Eastern Europe ). It subsequently came to be regarded as a disparaging term by some critics of the apartheid-era government's homelands . The Pretoria government established ten Bantustans in South Africa, and ten in neighbouring South West Africa (then under South African administration), for
2352-825: The Cape Province for the Xhosa nation. KwaZulu, for the Zulu nation in the Province of Natal , was headed by a member of the Zulu royal family chief Mangosuthu ("Gatsha") Buthelezi in the name of the Zulu king. Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) were not Bantustans; they have been independent countries and former British protectorates. These countries are mostly or entirely surrounded by South African territory and are almost totally dependent on South Africa. They have never had any formal political dependence on South Africa and were recognised as sovereign states by
2450-849: The Congo rainforest by about 1500 BC and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the Great Lakes by 1000 BC, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups would have had reached parts of modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to
2548-580: The Himba and San peoples (mainly occupying their former homelands of Kaokoland and Bushmanland). These ethnic second-tier governments were de facto suspended in May 1989, at the start of the transition to independence , and de jure abolished on 21 March 1990 (the day Namibia became independent) in accordance with Schedule 8 of the Constitution of Namibia . The Basters lobbied unsuccessfully to maintain
2646-694: The Indian Ocean slave trade . The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arab members of the Bantu Swahili people . With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many Arabic loanwords as
2744-605: The Inkatha Freedom Party , which was the ruling party of KwaZulu. But since especially the African National Congress made it clear that the principles of "one man - one vote" and a unitary state were non-negotiable, confederal schemes were eventually dropped. Because of this, the Inkatha Freedom Party threatened to boycott the April 1994 general election that ended apartheid and decided only in
2842-706: The Kingdom of Matamba the Kuba Kingdom , the Lunda Empire , the Luba Empire , Barotse Empire , Kazembe Kingdom , Mbunda Kingdom , Yeke Kingdom , Kasanje Kingdom , Empire of Kitara, Butooro , Bunyoro , Buganda , Busoga , Rwanda , Burundi , Ankole , the Kingdom of Mpororo , the Kingdom of Igara , the Kingdom of Kooki , the Kingdom of Karagwe , Swahili city states , the Mutapa Empire ,
2940-695: The Maluti a Phofung council where it is the largest opposition party. The Ximoko Party , which ruled Gazankulu, has a presence in local government in Giyani . Similarly, the former KwaNdebele chief minister George Mahlangu and others formed the Sindawonye Progressive Party which is one of the major opposition parties in Thembisile Hani Local Municipality and Dr JS Moroka Local Municipality (encompassing
3038-465: The National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of apartheid . By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethnic-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans , at about
Ovamboland - Misplaced Pages Continue
3136-450: The Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018). Abantu is the Xhosa and Zulu word for people. It is the plural of the word 'umuntu', meaning 'person', and is based on the stem '--ntu', plus the plural prefix 'aba'. In linguistics, the word Bantu , for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans" . It
3234-589: The Zulu Kingdom , the Ndebele Kingdom , Mthethwa Empire , Tswana city states , Mapungubwe , Kingdom of Eswatini , the Kingdom of Butua , Maravi , Danamombe , Khami , Naletale , Kingdom of Zimbabwe and the Rozwi Empire . On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, Zanzibar being an important part of
3332-551: The bantustans , and the remainder of the land was called the Police Zone . Forthwith, all non-white people employed in the Police Zone became migrant workers , and pass laws were established to police movement in and out of the bantustans. The combined territory of all bantustans was roughly equal in size to the Police Zone. However, all bantustans were predominantly rural and excluded major towns. All harbours, most of
3430-491: The first democratic elections began) in terms of section 1(2) and Schedule 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 ("Interim Constitution"). The drive to achieve this was spearheaded by the African National Congress (ANC) as a central element of its programme of reform. Reincorporation was mostly achieved peacefully, although there was some resistance from the local elites, who stood to lose out on
3528-412: The 3rd century AD along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by AD 500. Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu pastoralist groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from Central Sudanic , Kuliak and Cushitic -speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in
3626-831: The 9th and 15th centuries, Bantu-speaking states began to emerge in the Great Lakes region and in the savanna south of the Central African rainforests. The Monomotapa kings built the Great Zimbabwe complex, a civilisation ancestral to the Shona people. Comparable sites in Southern Africa include Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in Mozambique. From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This
3724-573: The Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples extirpated and displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as Pygmy groups in Central Africa, the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact. Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that
3822-454: The Bantustan governments and by opposition parties in South Africa as well as circles inside the white ruling National Party. In January 1985, State President P. W. Botha declared that blacks in South Africa proper would no longer be deprived of South African citizenship in favour of Bantustan citizenship and that black citizens within the independent Bantustans could reapply for South African citizenship; F. W. de Klerk stated on behalf of
3920-697: The Bantustan. Self-government was granted in 1973. Ovamboland was the setting of a protracted insurgency waged by the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) during the South African Border War . Following the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference the system of Bantustans was replaced in 1980 by Representative Authorities which functioned on the basis of ethnicity only and were no longer based on geographically defined areas. The Representative Authority of
4018-434: The Bantustans differed from those in South Africa proper. The South African elite often took advantage of these differences, for example by constructing large casinos , such as Sun City in the homeland of Bophuthatswana . Bophuthatswana also possessed deposits of platinum , and other natural resources, which made it the wealthiest of the Bantustans. However, the homelands were only kept afloat by massive subsidies from
Ovamboland - Misplaced Pages Continue
4116-749: The Bantustans. The government made clear that its ultimate aim was the total removal of the black population from South Africa. Connie Mulder , the Minister of Plural Relations and Development, told the House of Assembly on 7 February 1978: If our policy is taken to its logical conclusion as far as the black people are concerned, there will be not one black man with South African citizenship ... Every black man in South Africa will eventually be accommodated in some independent new state in this honourable way and there will no longer be an obligation on this Parliament to accommodate these people politically. But this goal
4214-629: The Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion. Biochemist Stephan Schuster of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues found that the Khoisan population began a drastic decline when the Bantu farmers spread through Africa 4,000 years ago. Before the Bantu expansion had been definitively traced starting from their origins in
4312-600: The Motsweda Ba hurutshe-Boo-Manyane tribe of the Tswana and head of Bophuthatswana is president of the United Christian Democratic Party , effectively a continuation of the ruling party of the homeland. Oupa Gqozo , the last ruler of Ciskei , entered his African Democratic Movement in the 1994 elections but was unsuccessful. The Dikwankwetla Party , which ruled Qwaqwa , remains a force in
4410-569: The National Party during the 1987 general election that "every effort to turn the tide [of black workers] streaming into the urban areas failed. It does not help to bluff ourselves about this. The economy demands the permanent presence of the majority of blacks in urban areas... They cannot stay in South Africa year after year without political representation." In March 1990, de Klerk, who succeeded Botha as State President in 1989, announced that his government would not grant independence to any more Bantustans. However, These remarks were not meant as
4508-754: The Nationalists' plan as one for "Bantustans". The hybrid word is, in many ways, extremely misleading. It relates to the partitioning of India , after the reluctant departure of the British, and as a condition thereof, into two separate States, Hindustan and Pakistan. There is no real parallel with the Nationalists' proposals, for (a) India and Pakistan constitute two completely separate and politically independent States, (b) Muslims enjoy equal rights in India ; Hindus enjoy equal rights in Pakistan , (c) Partition
4606-476: The Ovambos had executive and legislative competencies, being made up of elected Legislative Assemblies which would appoint Executive Committees led by chairmen. As second-tier authorities, forming an intermediate tier between central and local government, the representative authorities had responsibility for land tenure, agriculture, education up to primary level, teachers' training, health services, and social welfare and pensions and their Legislative Assemblies had
4704-554: The South African Bantustans were independent— Transkei , Bophuthatswana , Venda , and Ciskei (the so-called "TBVC States"), but this declaration was never recognised by anti-apartheid forces in South Africa or by any international government. Other Bantustans (like KwaZulu , Lebowa , and QwaQwa ) were assigned "autonomy" but never granted "independence". In South West Africa, Ovamboland , Kavangoland , and East Caprivi were declared to be self-governing, with
4802-488: The South African government; for instance, by 1985 in Transkei , 85% of the homeland's income came from direct transfer payments from Pretoria . The Bantustans' governments were invariably corrupt and little wealth trickled down to the local populations, who were forced to seek employment as "guest workers" in South Africa proper. Millions of people had to work in often appalling conditions, away from their homes for months at
4900-566: The TBVC states) were intended to be fully sovereign. These areas received little attention from the colonial and later South African governments however, and were still very undeveloped. This greatly decreased these states' ability to govern and made them very reliant on the South African government. Throughout the existence of the independent Bantustans, South Africa remained the only country to recognise their independence. The South African government lobbied for their recognition. In 1976, leading up to
4998-498: The United States. The Natives Land Act, 1913 , limited blacks to seven percent of the land in the country. In 1936 the government planned to raise this to 13.6 percent of the land, but it was slow to purchase land and this plan was not fully implemented. When the National Party came to power in 1948, Minister for Native Affairs (and later Prime Minister of South Africa ) Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd built on this, introducing
SECTION 50
#17327725581045096-484: The Whites. The term "Bantustan" is therefore a complete misnomer, and merely tends to help the Nationalists perpetrate a fraud. "While apartheid was an ideology born of the will to survive or, put differently, the fear of extinction, Afrikaner leaders differed on how best to implement it. While some were satisfied with segregationist policies placing them at the top of a social and economic hierarchy, others truly believed in
5194-625: The Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century. In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the native African intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native". After World War II ,
5292-528: The ability to pass legislation known as Ordinances. Ovamboland, like other homelands in South West Africa, was abolished in May 1989 at the start of the transition to independence. The region is now commonly referred to as The North but the term Ovamboland is still in use. More than half of the entire population lives here on just 6% of the Namibian territory. 17°55′00″S 15°57′00″E / 17.9167°S 15.9500°E / -17.9167; 15.9500 Bantustan A Bantustan (also known as
5390-447: The apartheid state apparatus and radical pro-apartheid groups like the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging . With the demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994, all Bantustans (both nominally independent and self-governing) were dismantled and their territories reincorporated into the Republic of South Africa with effect from 27 April 1994 (the day on which the Interim Constitution, which formally ended apartheid, came into force and
5488-555: The area. Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu-speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers, in turn, got their initial cattle from Cushitic-influenced Khwe-speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu-speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of
5586-607: The autonomous status of Rehoboth , which had previously been autonomous under German rule , and Basterland. In the former Bantustan of East Caprivi , Lozi nationalists in 1999 launched an unsuccessful insurgency in an attempt to gain independence from Namibia. The land in the Bantustan territories fell to the Namibian state, and is today called "Communal Areas". Bantu peoples The Bantu peoples are an indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages . The languages are native to countries spread over
5684-423: The bantustan status of which was similar to the autonomy previous under German rule. The main religion of Ovamboland is Lutheranism , which is why Finnish missionaries, such as Martti Rautanen (who also developed the local literary language), and later Heikki Saari, among others, have worked in the area since the 1870s. As a result of the work of the Finnish envoys, the Ovambo-Kawango Evangelical Lutheran Church
5782-401: The bantustans. The combined territory of all bantustans was roughly equal in size to the Police Zone. However, all bantustans were predominantly rural and excluded major towns. All harbours, most of the railway network and the tarred road infrastructure, all larger airports, the profitable diamond areas and the national parks were situated in the Police Zone. An exception to this was Rehoboth ,
5880-473: The concept of 'separate but equal'. For the latter, the ideological justification for the classification, segregation, and denial of political rights was the plan to set aside special land reserves for black South Africans, later called 'bantustans' or 'homelands'. Each ethnic group would have its own state with its own political system and economy, and each would rely on its own labour force. These independent states would then coexist alongside white South Africa in
5978-424: The development of different "joint" institutions charged with mutual consultation, deliberation and a number of executive functions in relation to "general affairs" common to all population groups, insofar as these institutions would pose no threat to apartheid and the preservation of overall white rule. This "confederation" would include the so-called "common area"—meaning the bulk of South African territory outside of
SECTION 60
#17327725581046076-588: The fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical [term] without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into a designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"." Bantu languages derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in West / Central Africa (the area of modern-day Cameroon). They were supposedly spread across Central, East and Southern Africa in
6174-411: The homeland of Transkei from 1987, has served as the president of the United Democratic Movement since 1997. General Constand Viljoen , an Afrikaner who served as chief of the South African Defence Force , sent 1,500 of his militiamen to protect Lucas Mangope and to contest the termination of Bophuthatswana as a homeland in 1994. He founded the Freedom Front in 1994. Lucas Mangope, former chief of
6272-405: The homelands was expanded in 1959 with the passage of the Bantu Self-Government Act , which set out a plan called " Separate Development ". This enabled the homelands to establish themselves in the long term as self-governing territories and ultimately as nominally fully "independent" states. This process was to be achieved in a series of four major steps for each homeland: This general framework
6370-450: The homelands—under continued white-minority rule and limited power-sharing arrangements with the segregated Coloured and Indian / Asian population groups, the independent and self-governing homelands as well as possible additional black entities in urban areas. From 1990 to 1994, these "confederational" ideas were in principle still entertained by large parts of the National Party (and in various forms also by certain parties and groups of
6468-423: The impossibility of a total removal of all blacks to the homelands even in the long run. It was hoping to "pacify" the black urban population by developing various plans to confer upon them limited rights at the local level (but not the upper levels of government). Furthermore, the urban (and rural) residential areas remained segregated based on race in accordance with the Group Areas Act . "Separate development" as
6566-411: The incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago. Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic ), as well as Nilotic and Central Sudanic speaking groups. According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached
6664-489: The independence of their homelands: a majority was sceptical, remained cautious and avoided a definite decision, some outright rejected it due to their rejection of "separate development" and a professed commitment to "opposing apartheid from within the system", whilst others believed that nominal independence could serve to consolidate their power bases (to an even higher degree than the status they enjoyed as rulers of self-governing homelands) and presented an opportunity to build
6762-404: The international community from the time they were granted their independence by the UK in the 1960s. In the 1960s, South Africa , which was administering South West Africa under a League of Nations mandate , came under increased international pressure regarding its minority white rule over the majority black population. The solution envisaged by South Africa—the Odendaal Plan —was to separate
6860-484: The last minute to participate in them after concessions had been made to them and as well as to the still-ruling National Party and several white opposition groups. In the period leading up to the elections in 1994, several leaders in the independent and self-governing homelands (e.g. in Boputhatswana ), who did not wish to relinquish their power, vehemently opposed the dismantling of the Bantustans and, in doing so, received support from white far-right parties, sections of
6958-504: The majority population in the vast remainder of the country. Moreover it was envisaged that by separating each ethnic group and confining people by law to their restricted areas, discrimination by race would automatically disappear. The demarcated territories were called the bantustans , and the remainder of the land was called the Police Zone . Forthwith, all non-white people employed in the Police Zone became migrant workers , and pass laws were established to police movement in and out of
7056-553: The mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa , or roughly 5% of the total world population ). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g.the large majority of West Africa, notably the most populous African nation Nigeria , Rwanda , Tanzania , Uganda , Kenya , Burundi (25 million),
7154-579: The number of black citizens of South Africa. The process of creating the legal framework for this plan was completed by the Black Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, which formally designated all black South Africans as citizens of the homelands, even if they lived in "white South Africa", and cancelled their South African citizenship, and the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act of 1971, which provided
7252-484: The opportunities for wealth and political power provided by the homelands. The dismantling of the homelands of Bophuthatswana and Ciskei was particularly difficult. In Ciskei, South African security forces had to intervene in March 1994 to defuse a political crisis. From 1994, most parts of the country were constitutionally redivided into new provinces . Nevertheless, many leaders of former Bantustans or Homelands have had
7350-507: The other independent Bantustans while South Africa showed its commitment to the notion of TBVC sovereignty by building embassies in the TBVC capitals. The Bantustans were generally poor, with few local employment opportunities. However, some opportunities did exist for advancement for blacks and some advances in education and infrastructure were made. The four Bantustans which attained nominal independence (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei) repealed all apartheid legislation. Laws in
7448-536: The peoples involved were Khoisan , not Bantu, and the Rehoboth Basters are a complex case. Of these ten South West African homelands, only three were granted self-government (comparable to the Bantustans in South Africa) between 1973 and 1976. In July 1980, the system was changed to one of separate governments ("representative authorities") as second-tier administrative units (responsible for
7546-644: The purpose of concentrating the members of designated ethnic groups, thus making each of those territories ethnically homogeneous as the basis for creating autonomous nation states for South Africa's different black ethnic groups . Under the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, the government stripped black South Africans of their South African citizenship, depriving them of their few remaining political and civil rights in South Africa, and declared them to be citizens of these homelands. The government of South Africa declared that four of
7644-455: The railway network and the tarred road infrastructure, all larger airports, the profitable diamond areas and the national parks were situated in the Police Zone. Beginning in 1968, following the 1964 recommendations of the commission headed by Fox Odendaal , ten homelands similar to those in South Africa were established in South West Africa (present-day Namibia ). The term "Bantustan" is somewhat inappropriate in this context, since some of
7742-1002: The range of Cushitic speakers. Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded: Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the Sahara , amid the Kiffian period at Gobero , and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of West Africa (e.g., Benin , Cameroon , Ghana , Nigeria , Togo ), as a result of desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE. From Nigeria and Cameroon, agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to migrate , and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo ) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo, Gabon ) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Irish (2016) also views Igbo people and Yoruba people as being possibly back-migrated Bantu peoples. Between
7840-2234: The reflexes of * bantʊ in the numerous languages often have connotations of personal character traits as encompassed under the values system of ubuntu , also known as hunhu in Chishona or botho in Sesotho , rather than just referring to all human beings. The root in Proto-Bantu is reconstructed as *-ntʊ́ . Versions of the word Bantu (that is, the root plus the class 2 noun class prefix *ba- ) occur in all Bantu languages: for example, as bantu in Kikongo , Kituba , Tshiluba and Kiluba ; watu in Swahili ; ŵanthu in Tumbuka ; anthu in Chichewa ; batu in Lingala ; bato in Duala ; abanto in Gusii ; andũ in Kamba and Kikuyu ; abantu in Kirundi , Lusoga , Zulu , Xhosa , Runyoro and Luganda ; wandru in Shingazidja ; abantru in Mpondo and Ndebele ; bãthfu in Phuthi ; bantfu in Swati and Bhaca ; banhu in kisukuma ; banu in Lala ; vanhu in Shona and Tsonga ; batho in Sesotho , Tswana and Sepedi ; antu in Meru ; andu in Embu ; vandu in some Luhya dialects; vhathu in Venda and bhandu in Nyakyusa . Within
7938-578: The region between Cameroon and Nigeria, two main scenarios of the Bantu expansion were hypothesized: an early expansion to Central Africa and a single origin of the dispersal radiating from there, or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of dispersal, with one wave moving across the Congo Basin toward East Africa, and another moving south along the African coast and the Congo River system toward Angola. Genetic analysis shows
8036-425: The remainder being reserved for the white population. The homelands were run by cooperative tribal leaders, while uncooperative chiefs were forcibly deposed. Over time, a ruling black elite emerged with a personal and financial interest in the preservation of the homelands. While this aided the homelands' political stability to an extent, their position was still entirely dependent on South African support. The role of
8134-532: The same time that the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all non-European South Africans (Bantus, Khoisan, Coloureds and Indians ). In modern South Africa, the word's connection to apartheid has become so discredited that it is only used in its original linguistic meaning. Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include: [REDACTED] This article incorporates text from
8232-531: The so-called Bantu expansion , comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, together with a broad international consortium, retraced the migratory routes of the Bantu populations, which were previously a source of debate. The scientists used data from
8330-509: The territory of the former homeland). The homelands are listed below with the ethnic group for which each homeland was designated. Four were nominally independent (the so-called TBVC states of the Transkei , Bophuthatswana , Venda and the Ciskei ). The other six had limited self-government: The first Bantustan was the Transkei, under the leadership of Chief Kaiser Daliwonga Matanzima in
8428-417: The time-frame of the institutional and legal development of the ten South African Bantustans in light of the above-mentioned four major steps: In parallel with the creation of the homelands, South Africa's black population was subjected to a massive programme of forced relocation. It has been estimated that 3.5 million people were forced from their homes from the 1960s through the 1980s, many being resettled in
8526-548: The white and the non-white population, grant self-government to the isolated black territories, and thus make whites the majority population in the vast remainder of the country. Moreover, it was envisaged that, by separating each ethnic group and confining people by law to their restricted areas, discrimination by race would automatically disappear. The inspiration for the Odendaal Plan came, in part, from South African anthropologists. The demarcated territories were called
8624-429: The white liberal opposition), but their overtly race-based foundations gradually became less pronounced in the course of the negotiations to end apartheid, and the focus shifted to securing "minority rights" (having in mind primarily the white population in particular) after an expected handover of power to the black majority. Federalist plans also met with support from some homeland governments and parties, most importantly
8722-441: Was also contemplated in circles of the ruling National Party to create additional nominally independent entities in the urban areas in the form of "independent" black "city-states". The long-term vision during this time was the creation of some form of a multi-racial "confederation of South African states" with a common citizenship, but separated into racially defined areas. Plans were made (of which only very few were realised) for
8820-506: Was born in 1954 (since 1984 the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Namibia ). In their footsteps, there are many given names of Finnish origin in the local nomenclature, such as Martta, Toivo , Onni , Helmi and Martti. In the 1920s, there was even a project planned by Finnish university scholars lobbying to make Ovamboland the first overseas colony of Finland, though this never transpired. Ovamboland, set up in 1968,
8918-465: Was first introduced into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu ) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. The name was said to be coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀ - "some (entity), any" (e.g. Xhosa umntu "person" abantu "people", Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people"). There
9016-563: Was not achieved. Only a minority (about 39% in 1986 ) of South Africa's black population lived in the Bantustans; the remainder lived in South Africa proper, many in townships , shanty-towns and slums on the outskirts of South African cities. Bantustans within the borders of South Africa were classified as "self-governing" or "independent". In theory, self-governing Bantustans had control over many aspects of their internal functioning but were not yet sovereign nations. Independent Bantustans (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei; also known as
9114-409: Was not in each case followed in a clear-cut way, but often with a number of intermediate and overlapping steps. The homeland of Transkei served in many regards as a "testing ground" for apartheid policies; its institutional development started already before the 1959 act, and its attainment of self-government and independence were therefore implemented earlier than for the other homelands. This plan
9212-444: Was often quite arbitrary. Many individuals were assigned to homelands they did not originate from, and the designation of an individual as part of a particular ethnic group was often arbitrary, especially for individuals with mixed ancestry. Bantustan leaders were widely perceived as collaborators with the apartheid system, although some were successful in acquiring a following. Most homeland leaders had an ambivalent stance regarding
9310-437: Was stepped up under Verwoerd's successor as prime minister, John Vorster , as part of his "enlightened" approach to apartheid. However, the true intention of this policy was to fulfill Verwoerd's original plan to make South Africa's blacks nationals of the homelands rather than of South Africa—thus removing the few rights they still had as citizens. The homelands were encouraged to opt for independence, as this would greatly reduce
9408-455: Was submitted to and approved by both parties, or at any rate fairly widespread and influential sections of each. The Government's plans do not envisage the partitioning of this country into separate, self-governing States. They do not envisage equal rights, or any rights at all, for Africans outside the reserves. Partition has never been approved of by Africans and never will be. For that matter it has never been really submitted to or approved of by
9506-520: Was the first fully functional Bantustan in South West Africa. As the Ovambo people already resided here, resettlement was not necessary. Furthermore, the area already had an existing structure of governance in the form of traditional authorities. The population was, however, split into those who farmed near their homes, and those who worked in mines, factories, on farms and in households outside
9604-449: Was the result of several factors such as a denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualisation of royalty as the source of national strength and health. Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo , Anziku Kingdom , Kingdom of Ndongo ,
#103896