Source O Nelson Mandela, writing in the article “Verwoerd’s Grim Plot”, published in the magazine Liberation (May 1959).

There is … no democracy. No self-government… Politically, the talk about self-government for the reserves is a swindle [fraud]. Economically, it is [a nonsense]. The few scattered African reserves in various parts of the Union [of South Africa], comprising about 13 percent of the least desirable land area, represent the last shreds of land ownership left to the African people of their original… home. … The facts are… that the reserves are congested [overcrowded] distressed areas, completely unable to sustain their present populations. The majority of the adult males are always away from home working in the towns, mines, or European-owned farms. The people are on the verge of starvation. The [government] speaks of teaching Africans soil conservation and agriculture and replacing European agricultural officers by Africans… [In fact, the main] problem of the reserves is the intolerable congestion which already exists. No amount of agricultural instruction will ever enable 13 percent of the land to sustain 66 percent of the population.

The government is, of course, fully aware of [the] fact. They have no intention of creating African areas which are genuinely self-supporting (and which could therefore create a genuine possibility of self-government). If such areas were indeed self-supporting, where would the Chamber of Mines and the Nationalist farmers get their supplies of cheap labour?

[Source: Adapted from Verwoerd’s Grim Plot. Nelson Mandela. First published in Liberation number 36, May 1959.]

Source P Roger B Beck, an historian specializing in South African history, writing in the academic book The History of South Africa (2000).

The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) limited African political rights to the reserves, thereby taking away their elected White parliamentary representatives. … The bantustans were allotted within the limits of the 13.7 percent of land earlier set aside and varied considerably in size and quality. There were eventually ten homelands, or bantustans, based on ethnicity. Furthermore, in an effort to guarantee White access to the best farming land and mineral wealth, only the tiny bantustan of Qwaqwa was a single piece. Bophuthatswana consisted of nineteen fragments, some separated by hundreds of miles; and KwaZulu had twenty-nine major and forty-one minor fragments. …

Verwoerd argued that South Africa was “decolonizing” the bantustans and granting them independence; as citizens of their respective bantustans, Africans enjoyed full political rights according to their own practices and traditions. According to Verwoerd, there could be no racial discrimination against Africans in South Africa because there were no African citizens; African rights in White South Africa were not restricted because of race but because they were foreigners.

To present an acceptable face to the world, Verwoerd increasingly referred to “separate development” rather than apartheid; “Natives” became Bantu; bantustans became “homelands”.

[Source: Republished with permission of ABC-CLIO from History of South Africa, Roger Beck, 2013;
permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.]