But the creation of individual, self-contained bantustans, as proposed by the commission, was farcical. Transkei, the showpiece of the proposed homeland system, would be broken into three geographically separate blocks. The Swazi bantustan, Lebowa, and Venda were composed of three pieces each; Gazankule, four; the Ciskei, seventeen; Bophuthatswana, nineteen; and KwaZulu, twenty-nine. The Nationalists were creating a cruel jigsaw puzzle out of people’s lives. The government’s intention in creating the homeland system was to keep the Transkei—and other African areas—as reservoirs of cheap labor
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