Class formation and ideology: the Transkei region

On October 26, 1976, The Transkei became the first Bantustan to receive its independence under the South African Policy of Separate Development. This event has provoked much commentary from various sides, ranging from its epoch-making celebration in the National Party press to its dismissal as a fraud by most groups left of the ProgressiveReform Party. The handing over of power in a chronically underdeveloped region to a collection of paid functionaries of the South African state groups whose political survival since 1960 has rested on the coercion of the Apartheid state is clearly far removed from the exercise in self-determination claimed by the government, and at this level is tragic farce. Yet this formal transfer of the trappings of power on the 26 October does have a far reaching significance for the definition of the arena in which political action and political organisation occur. To dismiss the event as a sham or as meaningless misses this significance.