Bophuthatwana (Bop) is land shy but with some freehold a possibility. Freehold plots are available in Soweto and in other areas for African elites. Patterns of investment in land and business by black civil servants in the homelands and in townships is similar to other African states. At the local level, bureaucrats can get involved in conflicts with local traditional leaders who have little or no economic influence. There is a burgeoning black bureaucratic and organizational elite in the homelands.

Labor unions in the homeland have had much trouble. It is the Bop. Department of Manpower which deals with border industry around Pretoria. There is resentment of whiter trade union agitators. Bop’s goal is to supply skilled middle level labor. They are far from this.

The homelands, to its apologists, are a way of trying social and economic arrangements free from the extreme right wing. There is a new coalition developing in South Africa which includes internationally oriented Afrikaners and new industrialists. They are trying to avoid right wing obstacles.

Homeland responsibility is being shifted out of the Department of Cooperation and Development. Magistrates will fall under justice. If homelands are independent they deal with the Ministry of foreign Affairs. The Bop elites link up with the ideas of P.W. Botha as presented at the Carleton Center. Below is a picture of the Winterveld taken in 2011.

May 22, 1984
I met with Ronald Kaplan, senior lecturer in public administration at the University of Bophuthatswana and an advisor on planning to the Office of the President of Bop. He argues that proposals on local structures are as far as Bop. can go. In practice, there is no real bureaucratic structure below the regional authority. There are no administrative structures for tribal authorities, only for municipalities and towns. There is a two track system developing in Bop between a) urban, modern and bureaucratic and b) rural, traditional and “self-help.” This mirrors the SA system between urban Africans who have to be brought into the system and rural Africans who stay as surplus.

There is a possible quote for an opening of a chapter: “Geography as the basis of politics” in Aubrey Richards, African Political Systems– Introduction.