Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!vassos
From: vassos@utcsri.UUCP (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Homelands wastelands? (Re: South African Blacks)
Message-ID: <1551@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 17:39:16 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1551
Posted: Mon Oct 28 17:39:16 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 28-Oct-85 19:46:16 EST
Distribution: can
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 65

In <1534@utcsri.UUCP> I said:
>>                                               What's free
>> about the economy of a country that banishes the overwhelming majority
>> of its population in restricted wastelands (so-called batustans)?

To which Riel Smit replied:

> Ever been to one of these "restricted wastelands", or do you blindly believe
> the propaganda against them?  I have been to most of them and some of them
> contain some of the most beautiful areas and some of the best
> agricultural land in Southern Africa [...]

No I have not been to SA. But I can use my brain.

Fact: Only 3% of SA's GNP is produced in the bantus (1975 figure) (1)
Fact: 70% of the bantus' GNP comes from migrant workers' wages (1976 figure) (1)
Fact: Only 13% of the bantus' GNP is generated within their boundaries,
	*including* funds from the central government. (2)
Fact: 2/3 of the people in the bantus are landless. (3)
Fact: 1,400,000 black workers work on white-owned farms in the "white areas".(4)

A paradise they surely must be, these bantustans, since they can sustain
such mind-boggling economic activity.

> Yes, their are homelands that could be termed "wasteland" (e.g. Bophutha-
> tswana), but they were not arbitrarily declared homelands and then
> all the blacks shipped off there.  The nations/tribes/ethnic groups 
> (whatever term you wish to use) living in those "wastelands", have been
> doing so for the past 100-300 years (some even longer).  It is their
> "anchestral lands".

The bantus were not created out of SA government's concern for black
peoples' "ancestral lands". They were created to control the movement
of black people and to ensure that they could not sustain independent
economic development and would therefore have to supply their labout
dirty cheap to white employers.

> At least a large proportion of the people living
> there have asked for it to be their homeland

I challenge you to substantiate this.

> -  just as some Indian
> and Inuit people are now asking for a homeland in what some people would 
> describe as "wasteland".

This sort of lets the cat out of the bag. Native people are not asking
for a homeland in "wasteland" areas because these were their "ancestral
lands" -- the entire North America was their homeland -- but because
these are the only areas their conquerors were/are willing to "concede".

--Vassos Hadzilacos.

References:

(1) C. Simkins, SA Labour and Development Research Unit, Working Paper,
    Cape Town, Sept. 1981.

(2) *South Africa Digest*, Aug. 1981.

(3) Rand Daily Mail, Johanesburg, 17.9.82

(4) *Apartheid: The Facts*, International Defence and Aid Fund for
    Southern Africa, London 1983.