South Africa's Homelands in the Age of Reform: The Case of QwaQwa

Abstract

The removal of the Land Acts, the abandonment of Population Registration legislation, and the move to reincorporate the homelands into South Africa mean that the political status of the homelands is about to be changed once again. Central to the struggle over this change of political status will be the actual conditions on the ground in these areas. Once artificial creations of the apartheid state, the so-called self-governing and independent national states now display increasing levels of materiality with which opponents of the homeland system and future governments will have to deal.

The paper documents the changing geography of apartheid's homelands during the period of “reform”(1978–91) through a case study of QwaQwa, the smallest of the homelands. QwaQwa illustrates particularly well this dual process of landscape building and class formation and the ways in which local and national state powers have altered the geography of homelands in recent years. We see quite clearly the rise of a patronage politics of domination, the blooming of a local state bureaucracy, and the creation of industrial and commercial interests. The resultant processes and effects of social and spatial differentiation, and the consequent play of power within QwaQwa raise important questions about post-apartheid policies for the homelands.

Key Words:

• Apartheid
• homelands
• national states
• displaced urbanization
• social differentiation