Liberation for Transkei ?

Paul Martin

'Nkosi Sikelele Afrika' (God Save Africa), sang the swaying midnight crowds eighteen' months ago as a 101-gun salute boomed out across the Transkei hinterland. 'Nkosi Sikelele Afrika', sang too a small group on Robben Island, fourteen miles off the bright lights of Sea Point, Cape Town's bustling Atlantic seaboard suburb. The Transkeians were celebrating their liberation from South Africa; the Robben Islanders were Yearning for theirs. For it so happens that the fledgling state created by South Africa as the first fulfilment of its apartheid dream has adopted for its national anthem the same song, with the identical words, as that of the African National Congress, the country's main liberation movement banned in 1961 after the Sharpville incident.

The Transkei and the ANC represent two Opposite poles in the Black man's struggle for freedom in South Africa. Outwardly they appear to have nothing in common, except their anthems. The mass African Movements of the 'fifties and 'sixties chose to confront the government with meetings and speeches. marches and protests. The Transkeian leader, Chief Kaiser Mathanzima, chose cosy chats with Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. After their banning, the ANC chose revolution and guerrilla action; Transkei chose 'evolution'. The ANC chose a united Black front; Transkei chose to keep its Xhoza tribal identity. Finally, Transkei elected 'Independence' as part of a splitting of South Africa into a 'White heartland' and ten separate Black tribal states; the ANC demanded one land, one People, one destiny.

And yet, this week, that 'archcollaborator' Kaiser Mathanzima declared: We have been compelled to join the hberatory movements and claim the whole of South Africa as belonging to blacks and Whites, with blacks controlling the majority. We are going to propagate majority rule in southern Africa. Henceforth this will be the fundamental policy in our struggle for liberation.' Transkei broke off diplomatic relations with its creator and had the tem erity to 'threaten' a military struggle against the only nation which recognises Transkei's existence.

His militant remarks will be greeted with Much scepticism by the African states and liberation movements he is so clearly trying to impress, and with considerable hilarity by some white South Africans. The racist

1n-the-street shares with the radical African a supercilious contempt for toe man whom they both, for different reasons, see as a Vorsterian puppet.

Jokes ridiculing the very idea of blacks in Power died suddenly, together with hun

dreds of black youths, in the 1976 Soweto riots. 'What do you call a kaffir with a gun?' the racist 'wits' now asked. 'Sir.' It was finally filtering through to millions of intransigent whites that cosmetic changes to dupe local black and world opinion — flags anthems, titles — could not avoid a national bloodbath. There would now have to be a real sharing of power.

So even before the first bantustan, Transkei, gained its independence later that year, the architects of separate development,knew their policy would not solve the basic problem, which lay right where they were: in the cities. True, the facade of Grand Apartheid, Separate Freedoms, Plural Development, call it what you will, is being clung to all the more firmly by the Pretoria ideologues — but also all the more forlornly. Connie Mulder, having neatly transmuted himself from Minister of Bantu Administration to Plural Affairs Minister at the drop of a name ('Bantu' is synonymous in black minds with government stereotyping), is busily conjuring up an image of a 'process of rcdivision of the sub-continent' into ten black nations and a white one. South Africa had been artifically amalgamated by colonial powers, he told South African television viewers this week, implying that all the government was doing was returning the different parts of the country to their rightful owners. That of course meant 87 per cent, including all the major cities, to the whites, and 13 per cent to the ten black 'nations'.

Although the same cannot be said for the other black homelands (except perhaps Zululand, now Kwazulu), the Transkei was never really part of White South Africa. Mathanzima ruefully avers that but for a quirk of fate the Transkei could have been a British protectorate like Basotholand, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland, now the fullyfledged independent and universally recognised nations of Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland.

A glance at the map will reveal another marked difference between Transkei and the other bantustans. The latter appear to have been demarcated by an idle flick of the nib from an inky pen. Kwazulu, for instance, has no less than twenty separate pieces, and the newly-independent Bophutatswana has seven. But Transkei consists of a major piece of territory and an addendum nearly but not quite adjoining. In between lies the fertile soil of East Griqualand, originally given to the mixed-race Griqua people as compensation for being thrown out of West Griqualand, a long way away. It is South Africa's refusal to hand over the territory and its white-owned farms to Transkei that has sparked off Mathanzima's 'declaration of war'.

Black African nations have no right to point to Transkei's dependence on South Africa as the reason for denying it recognition: no less than thirty-three African states are less well off per capita, and a number are as dependent on South Africa for their own survival —Lesotho's men work on the South African mines even more extensively than the Transkeians; so in fact do over 100,000 blacks from Marxist Mozambique; yet both countries have adopted hostile political platforms against the hand that feeds them. This is why Mathanzima is now so keen to show, not only that Transkei is not a white 'creation' (it existed before), but also that it has teeth and will bite.

And he is, paradoxically, in a better position to do it than any other neighbouring country. For South Africa, having proc laimed Transkeian-type creations as the Southern African panacea, cannot afford to turn too savagely on its offspring. Mathan zima is a cool and calculating man who has always believed in patience while others counselled rashness; he has always believed that the end justifies the means. He is now an infinitely greater embarrassment to the South Africans than the guerrilla actions of the ANC. And he can achieve much more, it seems. For he is using the convoluted logic of apartheid to wring changes within the fabric of South African society. Compelled by their own propaganda, the South Afri cans will have to look on citizens of inde pendent homelands as 'foreigners', who as such should be treated in exactly the same way as, say, a Briton or an American. This

may mean very little if it simply entails opening a few plush hotels and opera,

houses, as has been done. But now the whole edifice of 'petty' apartheid, the dayto-day indignities heaped on blacks for decades, is starting to crumble.

If this does not happen, and fast, the whole policy will be revealed as the sham it was originally intended to be, but which has now been swept away by its original logic in directions not envisaged. And with the increasing animosity of its creations, deep inside South Africa, it is far from implausible that the tantustans' could eventually be used as springboards for guerrilla attacks on South Africa, as indeed members of the white 'opposition' argued might happen when trying to stop the creation of inde pendent black states. Could Mathanzima line up with his old opponents the ANC? It's far less unlikely than it sounds. If he is seen to be serious about his break with South Africa, the whole political climate may change.

Mr Vorster, being the astute politician that he is, will be pondering Mathanzima's move in a mood far from the light-hearted amusement in which many of his followers may look upon it. He may be wondering whether, in creating independent bantustans, he has created not puppets but, like Frankenstein, his very own monsters.