Jamaica and the British West Indies Must Reject the Notion of the Caribbean Bantustan!
In Apartheid South Africa, the white supremacist, white nationalist, National Party, implemented a collection of 10 Bantustans as a way to segregate its black and white populations. The Bantustans were designated as territories where the black native South Africans would be ghettoised and locked out of South African modernity and stripped of their rights as South Africans. The Black Britons of the British West Indies must reject this plot that has engulfed us since the early 60’s at all costs.
Now, there has been a conversation in the British West Indies nations that share the same Head of State as the United Kingdom. Every election cycle the conversation begins to become a little louder. It is a conversation about Republicanism and whether the British West Indies nations of the Commonwealth Realms should sever their ties with the United Kingdom and seek a path of full independence.
The 8 nations of the British West Indies that make up half of the 16 Commonwealth Realms nations and have a combined population of 4.1 million spread across 8 territories, including Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines, should not be encouraged to seek for their full independence or to become singular Republics. These nations should not let the Black radicalism of some pump up their pride. They should not let their pride cloud them from political and economic realities and they should never seek to settle for ruling independent Caribbean Bantustans rather than being integrated into the British civilisation within which they rightly belong.
The politics of Caribbean Bantustan-ism must be rejected in favour of deeper integration between the 4.1 million of the British West Indies and the 55 million of the United Kingdom. The population of the British West Indies that share the same Head of State with the nations of the United Kingdom should not be tricked into believing that Republicanism and full independence are in their favour. They must accept the conditions that led to the development of these dependent island plantation economies and accept the limitations placed upon them in the post slavery, post-colonial, global economy.
We must reanalyse the quest for independence by the British West Indies nations, such as Jamaica, as something that is to the detriment of the population rather than its benefit. We must rethink the formulation of Caribbean Bantustan-ism as somewhat of a ploy to ghettoise Black Britain overseas. We must rethink the Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968 as the beginning of the formulation of segregation and Apartheid between the black Britons of the British West Indies and the white Britons of the British Isles. We must consider the significance of the coming into being of the Commonwealth Immigration Act, brought into effect on July 1, 1962, that barred those without a parent or Grandparent born in the United Kingdom from migrating to the Isles and connect it to the significance of Jamaican independence, for example, just 18 days later on the 19th July, 1962. We must rethink Jamaican independence and the independence of the islands of Black Britain in the British West Indies and the Commonwealth Realms as a form of Bantustan-ism and the beginnings of a racial Apartheid, similar to that implemented in South Africa by the white supremacist, nationalist party.
The term Bantustans became popular in the 1950’s. It refers to territories in South Africa that were designated as homelands for the native black populations that lived in South Africa prior to the arrival of the British Empire and later the white Afrikaners. Bantustans were created as self-governing, independent homelands, where the black populations of South Africa could exercise their political rights outside of white South Africa. The native populations were placed in these Bantustans through a process of forced resettlement by the South African white led government and its National Party. The Bantustans enabled white South Africans to keep the black South Africans out of South Africa and to strip them of all rights within the South African parliament.
The idea of racially segregated Bantustans grew out of the reserves that were created by the British colonial government during the era of British Imperialism in Southern Africa. At the time there was informal racial segregation between the natives and the settlers and there had been the passing of the Native Locations Act in 1879 that restricted the movement of black South Africans out of certain areas where they had traditionally occupied in large groups. In 1902, the British parliament passed the Native Reserve Locations Act that designated the areas where black South Africans had traditionally occupied in larger communities as the natural locations of the indigenous black populations of the land.
In 1909, the British Parliament passed the South Africa Act that united its colonies in southern Africa and the Union of South Africa was born as a independent nation of the Commonwealth Realms with the British Crown as the Head of State, an independent Parliament and Prime Minister and a Governor General. The same political set-up used by nations such as Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada today.
In 1927, we began to see the beginnings of an even more rigid system of racial hierarchy and the beginnings of a sadistic racism, similar to that experienced by black slaves in the West Indies, that would make South Africa world infamous. The South African government implemented the Native Administrations Act which gave them the power to begin to figure out a system of administration for the places designated as reserves by the British colonial government.
In 1948 when the white nationalist and white supremacist National Party took power in South Africa the idea of Apartheid segregation was a popular idea that had 2 main factions. One faction sought for complete segregation between the Afrikaners and the native population. The other faction sought segregation but were happy to exploit the labour of the native black population if their labour was used to further the interests of white South Africa.
In 1951, the South African National Party led by Daniel Francois Malan passed the Bantu Authorities Act. The Act was created as an attempt to restructure the governance of the reserves that were created out of the 1902 Native Reserve Locations Act. An act that allowed the colonial British government to set up and control black African residential areas outside of its towns and colonies.
At the time, the serving Minister for Native Affairs was Hendrik Verwoerd. He would later become the Prime Minister and in 1961 declare South Africa a Republic, independent from the British Empire. Verwoerd, an applied psychologist, is considered by most scholars to be the architect of Apartheid. It was Verwoerd, a leading political strategist in the National Party since its formation, that led the charge to create the separate black homelands that would bolster his Apartheid vision, during his tenure as Minister for Native Affairs from 1950 to 1958.
Verwoerd was sympathetic towards both of the Apartheid factions. On one hand he supported complete geographical and spatial segregation for the Afrikaners population but he also sympathised with those that wanted to exploit the labour of the black population. His idea was separation with some access to the native black population to bolster the Afrikaners labour force.
When Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958. Segregation existed in some what of an informal way. Verwoerd on becoming the Prime Minister aimed to further his values and formalise the system. In 1959 his government implemented the Promotion of Bantu Self Government Act. The Act allowed for the government to turn rural areas into independent, self-governing nations for the black South African natives. These fully fledged independent Bantustans would give the Black population self-determination but remove their rights in South Africa and relieve them of representation in the South African parliament.
The Act was part of an attempt by the white supremacist government to implement its grand plan of Apartheid segregation. The plan would mean that the white Afrikaners population, that held Dutch heritage, would control the bulk of the land and the indigenous black population would be placed into one of 10 Bantustans created by the white Afrikaners government. Each Bantustan would be the home of one of the indigenous language groups or nations within traditional Southern Africa. Each of the Bantustans would be appointed a Governor-General who would be given the task of shaping the Bantustan homeland into an independent state where the black populations would have full political rights. Whilst negating their rights in white South African modernity.
In 1961, just one year before Jamaica became independent in 1962, South Africa declared itself an independent Republic. Independent from the Commonwealth Realms led by Queen Elizabeth II. At this point Verwoerd and his National Party were given a free reign to inflict their severe Apartheid policies upon black South Africans without any pressure from the United Kingdom. They no longer needed for laws and legislation to be ratified or authorised by the Crown in any way and the Parliamentary system was disbanded.
As soon as South Africa gained independence as a Republic, they began to implement the policies of Apartheid aggressively and the Bantustans were created. By 1963, the first Bantustan to be given self government came into being. It was called Transkei and was to become the home of the native Xhosa speaking people.
In 1970, the Bantu Authorities Act was followed by the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act which sought to attach the citizenship of the government created homelands to all blacks and exclude the black population from citizenship in South Africa where the whites resided.
In 1971, the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act sealed the deal and the South African government was given the right to declare the Bantustans, the black homelands, as independent from white South Africa and therefore no longer the responsibility of the South African white led government. This act robbed the native black population of its citizenship and rights in the African modernity of South Africa.
By 1972, more and more of the Bantustans were given the right to self-government. Bophuthatswana, the land designated to the Tswana peoples; Ciskei designated to the Xhosa nation and Lebowa, the location of the Northern Sotho tribe were given self-government in 1972. Venda, the Bantustan of the Venda speaking people and Gazankulu, of the Tsonga people followed in 1973. Later in 1974, Qwa-Qwa, where the Southern Sotho were designated followed suit. Then in 1977, 81 and 84 respectively, KwaZulu, the land of the Zulu; KwaNdebele of the Ndebele and KaNgwane of the Swazi people were given self-determination.
Though all the Bantustans were given self-determination. The areas designated as Bantustans were not all officially given the status of independent nations. The South African government gave independence to 4 of its Bantustans. Transkei where the Xhosa people were designated, Bophuthatswana of the Tswana, Venda occupied by the Venda speakers and Ciskei, another Bantustan of the Xhosa people. On South Africa declaring these 4 Bantustans independent it came to learn that the governments of the world and those that were activists and intellectuals within the anti-Apartheid movement refused to acknowledge the existence of the independent Bantustans and insisted that the black native population were considered South Africans.
In 1994, with the end of Apartheid, the Bantustans were scrapped and a new South Africa was born. A South Africa where there were no independent territories for the various language communities just one nation for all.
The Black Britons that occupy the islands of the British West Indies and share the same Head of State as the United Kingdom must stand firm to resist the demands of Bantustan-ism that the British government has inflicted upon the British West Indies through plantocracy induced independence and the Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968 that legally excluded those that have belonged to Britain for 4 centuries and for whom Britain is their cultural Motherland.
Black Britain and the good British population must not stand for this racial ghettoization and must as Reagan told Gorbachev demand that we tear down the wall that has divided us for almost 60 years
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