June 27, 1984
I returned to the Government Secretary’s Office to have a second discussion with W. B. Matthews.

July 1, 1984
I see a number of themes in the study as of mid-1984. First, there is a great deal of the politics of symbolism and political quiescence in the homelands. Because of the economic neglect, they rely on the use of Tribal Authorities and magistrates in a manner unchanged for the last hundred years. There is a problem in the urban and semi-urban areas in terms of use of traditional authorities. There they have what are called township and community councils. Secondly, there has been an evolution of local level politics in the “white” areas: Provinces and Municipalities and the “Coloured” voters. The effect of the new dispensation on the regional and local level has been negative. There is confusion about the responsibility for liaison with the “black” areas and relationships with Seconded officials, and third, there is much discussion and many new ideas about economic regionalism, decentralization and the growth points concept. These tie in with the dependency literature and on the use of the homelands as

a) commuter bedrooms, communities next to urban areas;
b) as depositories of surplus labor;
c) as responsible for the problem of clashes between ethnic nationalism, such as in the Winterveld area and the economic needs for cheap labor competition. In other words, within the homeland context whose problem are the alien ethnics behind homeland boarders; and
d) as one notes the irrelevance of the homeland issue except in tracing lines of communications, ie. a verligte (Enlightened) Ministry of Foreign Affairs as opposed to a verkrampte (Very Conservative) Cooperation and Development Department. Ultimately these will be treated as ethnically based regional authorities with a high degree of economic dependency. The dependency literature suggests that “politico-economic” decision-making is a continuum of relationships in which de jure status has little relevance outside of “international communication and access to certain IGOs. Dependency theorists who ignore this continuum because it is ideologically messy have in effect “copped out.”