New Histories of South Africa's Apartheid-Era Bantustans

The bantustans or homelands were created by South Africas apartheid regime as ethnically-defined territories for Africans. Granted self-governing and independent status by Pretoria, they aimed to deflect the demands for full political representation by black South Africans and were shunned by the anti-apartheid movement. In 1972, Steve Biko wrote that politically, the bantustans are the greatest single fraud ever invented by white politicians. With the end of apartheid and the first democratic elections of 1994, the bantustans formally ceased to exist, but their legacies remain inscribed in South Africas contemporary social, cultural, political, and economic landscape. While the older literature on the bantustans has tended to focus on their repressive role and political illegitimacy, this edited volume offers new approaches to the histories and afterlives of the former bantustans in South Africa by a new generation of scholars. This book was originally published as various special issues of the South African Historical Journal.