bantustan, noun

/ˈbɒntuˌstæn//ˈbæntuˌstæn//ˈbantuˌstɑːn/
Origin:
EnglishShow more Formed by analogy with English Pakistan, Hindustan, etc.; see Bantu noun (sense 1) and -stan.
1. obsolete. As a proper noun: The putative name of a proposed Black state inside the boundaries of South Africa.
[1949 J.S. Franklin This Union 188I should like to remind Hon. Senators that back of and beyond our Bantu Hindustan there lies the Continent of Africa with its 250 millions of black-skinned people.]
1949 Round Table June 208A great Bantu State or group of States to which at least one ingenious thinker has affixed the term ‘Bantustan’.
1949 E.H. Brookes in Survey of Race Rel. 1947–8 2The word ‘apartheid’..has proved as ambiguous as its predecessor ‘segregation’. It has been interpreted..as being the creation of a new large Bantu state. Some speakers have referred to it as ‘Bantustan’.
1951 J.D.L. Kruger Bantustan: Study in Prac. Apartheid 19The proposed area which is contemplated as the non-white State..will be referred to as Bantustan.
1952 Rand Daily Mail 1 Dec. 8Dr. Malan, the leader and architect of apartheid and Bantustan, has sidestepped the issue once again.
1960 M. Ballinger in H. Spottiswoode S. Afr.: Rd Ahead 22Even those Nationalists who fear the new idea of Bantustan..still maintain an attachment to this conception of a home for Africans where alone they might enjoy rights of domicile and property.
2. Now only derogatory. Often with initial capital. homeland sense 1. Also attributive.
1954 Observer (U.K.) 20 June 4The ‘Bantustan’ conception of the Nationalist intellectuals and the Dutch Reformed Church..means the absolute division of South Africa into Black and White territories.
1959 H.F. Verwoerd in Hansard 27 Jan. 62If Britain can establish something that the United Party describe as a Bantustan inside South Africa, and can do so with their blessing..why cannot the Union of South Africa..say:– We are giving the Bantu as our wards every opportunity in their areas to move along a road of development.
1962 L.E. Neame Hist. of Apartheid 159The Opposition in Parliament, and the public, promptly called these Bantu national units ‘Bantustans’.
1968 Cole & Flaherty House of Bondage 98There are three tribal colleges for blacks, administered by whites, and located only in the Bantustan reserves.
1973 Drum 18 Jan. 27The White man tells us about bantustans, and do you know what he says when he is with his White brother? He says ‘daar sal die Bantu Staan in the Bantustan and he won’t progress further than that.’
1976 Sunday Times 31 Oct. 16Not a single country, apart from South Africa, recognises Bantustan sovereignty.
1978 Sunday Times 5 Mar. 16The primary objective of this ‘bantustan’ or ‘homeland’ policy is to create a legal basis for treating the black urban population as foreigners in a country which belongs to them just as much as to the whites.
1979 Voice 30 Sept. 3We have witnessed with dismay the calculated dissection of our country into bantustans. The disembodiment of the country into separate worthless ‘independent’ and subservient entities — the culmination of the apartheid policies.
1980 Rand Daily Mail 23 Aug.What were once the ‘reserves’ became ‘Bantustans’, then the ‘homelands’; now they are ‘national states’.
1984 E. Aarvik in Daily Dispatch 13 Dec. 18Blacks are expected to exercise their political ambitions in unviable, poverty-stricken, arid bantustan homelands, ghettoes of misery, inexhaustible reservoirs of cheap black labour, bantustans into which South Africa is being balkanised.
1985 Weekly Mail 28 June 15The organisation’s continuing stand for a united, non-tribal, non-Bantustan South Africa helps to make it a deadly enemy to the Government.
1985 Platzky & Walker Surplus People 18The Status Acts conferring independence on the bantustans say that every person who is a citizen of the bantustan in terms of any law ‘shall cease to be a citizen of South Africa’.
1985 Platzky & Walker Surplus People [see nation].
1987 Frontline Aug.–Sept. 30They (sc. the chiefs) are so closely identified with bantustan power structures — structures inimical to mainstream black political thought — that oblivion is an option they ought to consider.
1988 ‘Vusi’ in Pace June 12The Zambians..are the vanguard of Frontline States. Their anti-apartheid, anti-bantustan stance is very well known.
1990 Weekly Mail 9 Mar. 2‘Away with bantustans!’ ‘Away with Mangope, forward to a democratic South Africa!’
As a proper noun: The putative name of a proposed Black state inside the boundaries of South Africa.
Often with initial capital. homeland sense 1. Also attributive.
Derivatives:
Hence Bantustania  noun, Drum magazine’s satirical collective name for the ‘homelands’; see also -stania (-stan); so Bantustanian  noun, a Black South African; and adjective, of or pertaining to a Bantustan; see also -stanian (-stan); Bantustanism  noun, the policy of balkanising South Africa.
1974 Drum 8 Mar. 45At times I wonder if a Bantustanian has any right to think at all. That is why my Bantustanian brain is in a muddle.
1974 Drum 8 Apr. 32Once every year the witches of Bantustania have a get-together.
1979 M. Matshoba Call Me Not a Man 185The Act established councils along tribal lines through which Apartheid and Bantustanism were forced down the people’s throats through the manipulation of the appointed chiefs.
1982 Voice 24 Jan. 4Bantustanism far from solves some of the burning issues in South Africa.
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Bantu Education, noun phrasen. phr.Bara, nounn.
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