Department of Bantu Administration and Development

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The Department of Bantu Administration and Development ( afrikaans Departement van Bantoe-Administrasie en -Ontwikkeling , Ministry of Bantu Administration and Development , often short Bantu-Administration ( afrikaans Bantoe Administrasie )), was a ministry with an administrative authority of the same name for the implementation of apartheid policy in South Africa . It emerged from the Department of Native Affairs in 1958 and had two additional names shortly before it was split up in 1985. The Bantu administration operated without parliamentary oversight and exercised almost complete paternalistic control over the lives of the black population of South Africa.

With Bantu (as a synonym for Natives ) in the sense of the authority all inhabitants of South Africa were meant who were considered to be a "member of any aboriginal race or tribe in Africa" ​​(" [...] a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa; [...] ] ”) Were viewed.

Initial situation and precursor structures

Colonial times

In the Cape Colony, which was under British colonial administration , and in Natal , a special administrative authority already existed, which dealt extensively with affairs of the indigenous population. This colonial administrative structure was called Native Administration . A similar authority also existed in the Transvaal republic, which was formerly ruled by the Boers .

The tasks of the officials entrusted with this included regional planning specifications, investment management activities , everyday administrative administrative activities for the respective settlement areas, political-social control functions and the administrative-political leadership of the respective chiefs . The heads of the tribal organizations, who received their authority through the administration of the British or Boers, were designated as chiefs. In fact, they were not exclusively traditionally legitimized tribal chiefs, but instead performed a leadership role within colonial policy that was conceived from a European perspective.

Forerunner authority in the South African Union

A Department of Native Affairs , or DNA for short, had existed in the Union of South Africa since 1911 . This department worked under this name until 1957. Around 1920, further administrative substructures in the country were available, for example the Municipal Native Affairs Department (NAD), headed by a “municipal officer”. They formed an important regional part of administrative segregation .

From its colonial past, South Africa already had an experienced administrative practice with supremacy by “white” officials. The regional exercise of power in the reservations was ensured by chiefs who were supervised by Native Commissioners (native commissioners ) on the basis of the Native Administration Act of 1927.

By the 1930s, the influence of the Native Commissioners on the lives of the Bantu population was already having far-reaching consequences. They decided on the allocation of land and thus on employment structures in this majority of the population. Without their permission, the people concerned could not legally settle anywhere or use land they had selected.

The Bantu Administration

Ministry structure plan

In 1958, the previous ministry was renamed the Department of Bantu Administration and Development . This designation was in use until 1977. During this period, the responsible minister, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, transformed the subordinate Bantu administration into a " state within a state ". The central ideological basis for the formation of the authority was the view of African- nationalist currents of thought that South Africa is a multinational state.

In 1978 the agency name changed twice, first to Department of Plural Relations and Development and then to Department of Co-operation and Development . Even before this year, the criticism of the authority had become noticeable in government circles in South Africa. The Riegert Commission (Commission of Inquiry into Legislation affecting the Utilization of Manpower ...), entrusted by Balthazar Johannes Vorster with the investigation of internal uprisings , proposed the liquidation of the Bantu administration in 1978, because its work is one of the reasons for the increasing political instability of the Landes recognized. The government did not follow this vote at the time.

With the new Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha since 1978 , the authority steadily lost powers, influence and public acceptance until its dissolution. This development was based on the changed government program, the so-called Bothanomics . With increasing criticism of the work of this department, it was finally divided into two areas in 1985. This resulted in the Department of Constitutional Development and Planning and the Department of Development Aid . This restructuring took place in a situation when the then government of South Africa was under pressure to change domestic and foreign policy because of its racist policy and the Bantu administration still persisted in the spirit of the Verwoerd doctrine, irreformable.

With the division of the department and its restructuring, the policy pursued the intention of weakening the obviously racist disposition in administrative activities and delegating tasks to other structures, some of which are now occupied by Africans (blacks). In concrete terms, the result was that responsibility for separate residential areas was distributed to other ministries, the Bantu Courts were outsourced, and individual tasks were transferred to community councils and operational superiors.

Position and tasks in the apartheid system of South Africa

Constitution and social role of the Bantu administration

As part of the “white” state administration, the Bantu administration had a special position with omnipotent competence. This state of affairs was expressed in the way that it was not subject to parliamentary control, the minister responsible was a member of the government with special powers and its internal reports and assessments of the situation vis-à-vis the government and parliament were kept secret. This strong, self-sufficient role of the Bantu administration within the South African state initially made stringent action possible, prevented increasingly effective internal revision mechanisms and promoted distorted assessments of the situation on the basis of questionable information. This structural problem created a parallel administrative development in the late phase of apartheid, with the Pieter Willem Botha government creating the so-called Joint Management Committees (JMC) with local and regional structures in the 1980s . These were informal working groups of the security organs in cooperation with business representatives and local authorities as well as some homeland representatives (for example the chiefs). They served the prompt discussion of regional threat situations , the short-term analyzes of which represented a warning system for the State Security Council, which was established in 1972 . However, the measures subsequently decided by the South African government had to be implemented by the Bantu administration. This parallel structure broke the administrative powers originally aimed at self-sufficiency.

This Bantu administration downgraded the black population to second-rate citizens without the right to vote and with severely restricted civil rights. Efforts to transform the homelands into independent states were linked to a de facto expatriation from South Africa. The working population, endowed as “foreigners” with fewer individual rights , existentially dependent in the paternalistic sense, was thus kept easily available for the labor needs of the industry operating in South Africa. Desmond Tutu quotes in his speech (1984) on the occasion of the acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo a statement by the former Bantu Administration Minister Cornelius Petrus Mulder :

“The corollary of our policy is that […] not a single black man will have South African citizenship […] every black man in South Africa will ultimately be housed in an independent new state in this honorable way, and the government will not become moral Have more obligation to politically accommodate these people. "

There were no representatives of this majority of the population in the Bantu administration of South Africa and there were no institutionalized communication channels between it and the government of the country. Instead, the Bantu administration was an authority set up by the government legitimized by the “white” parliament for the complete administration of the numerically largest population group without legal equality in South Africa. According to Heribert Adam, this state of affairs corresponds to the essence of a " master people democracy", which Pierre L. van den Berghe noted in 1981 with reference to the Act of Union from 1911.

While the concrete effects of apartheid policy are divided into small and large apartheid by some authors, van den Berghe differentiates:

  • As micro-segregation are racialised separations in public and private service areas designated (trains, washrooms, waiting rooms of any type, etc.).
  • As Meso-segregation is the separation of residential areas and the creation of ghetto structures ( townships referred).
  • As macro-segregation the application of separate residential areas, reserves, later the true Bantustans .

He derives the South African policy of the "Group Areas" from the practice of implementing meso-segregation . The precarious socio-economic framework conditions that emerged led to a state that, on the one hand, experienced booming industrialization, embedded in a separate democracy for the “master people”, and, on the other hand, produced massive impoverishment in the neglected regions with an almost complete absence of the rule of law or effective democratic structures . These upheavals, which arose from the activities of the Bantu Administration, left complex demographic, sociological, cultural and economic repercussions on South African society well into the 21st century.

The important political impulses in the expansion of the Bantu administration by Hendrik Verwoerd (Minister from 1950 to 1958) and the State Secretary for Native Affairs Werner Willi Max Eiselen are attributed to the fact that they, like other apartheid exponents, had studied in Germany and therefore from the Concept of a "people" as an organic unit with a common cultural history were influenced. Within Boer nationalism they represented what is known as the “ neo-Fichtean ” current. In its administrative practice, the Ministry followed in many points the 1955 report of the Tomlinson Commission , which had thus provided extensive conceptual preparatory work for the future and legislatively secured apartheid policy.

Task profile

"Separate development"

The central task of the Bantu administration was to bundle and coordinate all state communication with the black population. Furthermore, she was responsible for extensive development tasks, which were supposed to set in motion and guarantee industrial growth in the homelands and in the other parts of South Africa in favor of the “white” upper class. After the implementation of the principle of separate development , the so-called Great Apartheid, the Bantu administration was commissioned to develop political structures in the homelands in order to prepare these areas for future state independence. The authority was also tasked with planning and managing the state financial transfers for the homeland administrations, managing the budget of the Homeland Development Corporation and ensuring the political conformity of all structurally significant homeland officials through targeted privileges. With the exception of the homeland KwaNdebele , the latter task went largely smoothly.

Education

The education system controlled by the ministry was strictly regulated and differed in many ways from the institutions of the European population in the country. In addition, there was a Bantu Education department in its area of ​​responsibility , the legal basis of which was primarily the Bantu Education Act of 1953. This authority, based on racist segregation criteria, sometimes referred to as the "Ministry of Native Education", emerged from a comprehensively prepared basis. To this end, the Commission on Native Education , headed by Werner W. Max Eiselen, had submitted a preliminary and a final report to the government, which documented its results from 1949 to 1951.

The few higher education institutions available to the black population were assigned to specific groups. Specifically, it was the University of Fort Hare for the members of the Xhosa , the University of Zululand for the group of the Zulu and the University of the North near Pietersburg for Xhosa in their northern settlement areas in South Africa. However, the higher education qualifications that enabled them to practice were only useful in the homelands or other assigned settlement areas.
There was no organized system of training for skilled workers, because the employment policy of the Bantu authority largely relied on the controlled deployment of unskilled industrial workers in the conurbations. The migrant workers structure thus promoted created huge problems in settlement development and job creation. In order to solve these undesirable developments, domestic and foreign experts therefore advocated extensive investments in labor-intensive industrial complexes within the homelands or in their outer border zones. Other opinions were in favor of expanding Bantu agriculture.

With the Bantu Education Act of 1953, the entire school system for the African population was placed under the supervision of the Ministry. This meant a strong intervention in the previously existing and traditionally anchored mission schools . The aim was to prepare the pupils for the role assigned to them in the apartheid state for the low-wage sector with a lower quality school education.

Influences on industrial development and the labor market

As part of the industrial policy pursued by the Bantu Administration, employment placement activities took a large part. These labor market activities were in line with the government's objectives for land distribution and settlement policy. The main concern was influx control within the steadily growing group of migrant workers . The regulations of the Pass Laws were used to decide which person was granted a right of residence in the “white” settlement areas (Section 10 rights, first in the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act No. 45 of 1945) or not.

For the effective and controlled recruitment of labor from rural areas, the ministry established a Central Labor Bureau in 1968 with subdivisions, the Regional and Tribal Labor Bureaux . With these employment agencies there was a compulsory registration for all jobseekers and employed persons from the circle of the Bantu population. People living illegally in “white” areas could not register because the individual work permits gave them the character of guest worker status. The later legal basis for this procedure was the Bantu Laws Amendments Act (1965). On the basis of this, the Minister for Bantu Administration was able to define “ proscribed areas ” in which work stays were strictly limited.

Government agencies use recruiting agents to select the workforce . They were officials from the Department of Bantu Labor . They selected the workers they considered suitable according to their individual appearance (healthy and intelligent impression), but not according to their qualifications, and presented them with ready-made employment contracts. From the resulting contracts, the jobseekers found out which employer and under what conditions they would work there in the future.

The practice of the Bantu Administration required substantial tax revenues over long periods of time. As early as 1959, the government founded a financially strong institution for economic development in the reservations (later homelands). The joint stock company called Bantu Investment Corporation was a state-owned company, as a result of which further regional development companies were created and for which they specified corporate goals. For example, in the early 1970s, the Department acquired several hotels and motels in the Ciskei and Transkei homelands to facilitate the base of operations for the Xhosa Development Corporation (XDC). Between 1969 and 1971 their share capital was increased from 7.35 to 20 million rand .

The government's stance on the importance of the Bantu population in terms of labor market policy is evident from the following quote from an internal ministerial communication:

“The Bantu are only temporarily resident in the European areas of the Republic, for as long as they offer their labor there. As soon as they become, for some reason or another, no longer fit for work or superfluous in the labor market, they are expected to return to their country of origin or the territory or the national unit where they fit ethnically. ”

“The Bantu are only temporary residents of the European areas of the republic as long as they offer their labor there. As soon as, for whatever reason, they are no longer able to work or are redundant for the labor market, they are expected to return to their country of origin or to the area of ​​their national unit to which they ethnically fit. "

- Department of Bantu Administration and Development : General Circular No. 25, 1967

Further activities of the Bantu administration

  • 1953 Takeover of responsibility for residential area planning for the black population from municipal authorities, in addition to the establishment of the National Housing Commission ,
  • 1953 State control of all schools for the black population on the basis of the Bantu Education Act as a result of the recommendations of the Eiselen Commission ,
  • 1957 Reservation of Separate Amenities Act entered into force ; Establishing the separation of public areas of life (so-called Little Apartheid),
  • 1965 With the Bantu Homelands Development Corporations Act , the Bantu authority tried to activate private investment capital for the Homelands through state development agencies.
  • 1967 The Physical Planning & Utilization of Resources Act (No. 88) is intended to induce industrial companies to remain in industrial establishments through tax breaks, low-wage tariffs and the controlled supply of low-wage workers.
  • 1968 The Promotion of Economic Development of Homelands Act seeks to encourage the mobilization of "white" capital to invest in the homelands and the collaboration of "white" agents with the South African Bantu Trust .
  • 1971 End of the responsibility of “white” city administrations for townships, instead the establishment of 22 Bantu Affairs Boards, which were directly subordinate to the Bantu Administration.
  • 1976 the homeland of Transkei became officially independent
  • 1977 the homeland of Bophuthatswana was formally independent from the state
  • 1978 renaming of the ministry to the Department of Plural Relations and Development
  • 1979 Formal state independence of the homeland Venda
  • 1981 the homeland of Ciskei was formally independent from the state

Attempts at reform and changes from 1980

Dissatisfaction with the Bantu administration grew in the 1980s. It became less and less successful to permanently settle significant numbers of the population in the homeland areas. The growing number of migrant workers in the industrial areas of the South African cities created an enormous exacerbation of complex problems and a growing security risk for the apartheid system. A reaction to this emerged at the Good Hope Conference in 1981 from Prime Minister Pieter Willem Botha. There he announced a change in investment subsidies and promoted private sector participation in this process. In the course of these changes he brought about the dissolution of the Bantu Investment Corporation of SA Ltd, founded in 1959 with the Bantu Investment Corporation Act , in the Department of Bantu Administration and Development . It was replaced by the newly founded Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), for which a capital volume of 1.5 billion rand was planned for the period 1984 to 1989. For this purpose, the target areas were converted in parallel, according to which a distinction was made between:

  • Metropolitan Areas (established industrial and mining regions )
  • Deconcentration Points (near metropolitan areas and homelands to prevent further migrant workers from moving in)
  • Industrial Development Points (new industrial projects in structurally weak regions)
  • Other Development Points (business settlements in economically weak areas) and
  • Ad hoc areas (settlement projects after short-term planning).

In 1984 there were 185 assisted areas. Of these, 12 were in the independent homeland states, 23 in the self-governing homeland areas and 150 in the “heartland” South Africa. The high rate of corruption in the homeland administrations, which occurred as a result of the Bantu administration, hampered the effective effect of these new funding policy concepts. Larger sums were used for ineligible purposes. In this way, the expansion of necessary transport infrastructure projects was delayed and some companies went bankrupt. Another major setback for this political initiative was the withdrawal of many initially interested companies.

Minister (only from 1948) for Native Affairs / Bantu Administration and Development and relevant follow-up institutions

Organ of publication

The Department of Native Affairs and its successor, the Bantu Administration and Development , published a monthly magazine. It contained messages from the administration as well as articles on ethnographic aspects, reports, strategic discussions and trivial contributions. The magazine was discontinued in connection with the dissolution of the authority. In detail, they appeared under the following titles:

  • Bantoe, Departement van Bantoe-Administrasie en –Ontwikkeling. Pretoria 1954 to 1959
  • Bantu, Department of Information. Pretoria 1960 to 1978
  • Progress / Progressus Bureau for National and International Communication. Pretoria 1978
  • Informa, Information Service of South Africa. Pretoria 1979 to 1980
  • Informa, Department of Foreign Affairs and Information. Pretoria 1980 to 1983
  • Informa, Department of Co-operation and Development / Department of Foreign Affairs. Pretoria 1984 to 1985
  • Informa, Department of Constitutional Development and Planning. Pretoria 1985 to 1986
  • Informa, Department of Constitutional Development Planning / Department of Planning and Provincial Affairs. Pretoria 1986 to 1990

As a reaction to the uprising in Soweto , a special issue on the subjects of "Bantu Education" (July 1976) and "Soweto Projects" of the administrative units Bantu Administration Boards , Department of Bantu Education and Bantu Administration appeared in the series of publications and Development (August 1976). Both editions served as part of the desired central political education work to justify the system of government and as a counter position to the protesters.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ivan Evans: Bureaucracy and Race . Chapter: The DNA, Urban Industry, and Local Authorities , 1997
  2. ^ Howard Rogers: Native Administration . 1948 pp. 12-13
  3. ↑ Zimmermann, Visser: 1996, p. 84
  4. ^ Ivan Thomas Evans, 1997, p. 2
  5. ↑ Alexander, 2001, p. 44
  6. ↑ Desmond Tutu: Speech at the award ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize . 1984 Oslo
  7. ^ Heribert Adam: South Africa - Sociology of a racial society . 1977 p. 49 ISBN 3-518-00343-7
  8. ↑ Andrea Lang: Separate Development , p. 17
  9. ↑ Alexander, 2001, p. 21
  10. ↑ Defining ethnocracy . University of Oslo, Faculty of Social Sciences
  11. ^ Pierre L. van den Berghe: Racial Segregation in South Africa: Degrees and Kinds . In: Cahiers d'études africaines. Vol. 6 (1966) No. 23, pp. 408-409, 410, 417
  12. ↑ Heike Niederig, 2000, p. 59, footnote 51
  13. ↑ Klimm et al., 1980, pp. 28-29
  14. ↑ Klimm et al., 1980, pp. 24, 35
  15. ^ Nelson Mandela Center of Memory and Dialogue: 1965. Bantu Laws Amendment Act
  16. ^ South African Institute of Race Relations: A survey of race relations in South Africa . 1972, pp. 196-197
  17. ↑ Zimmermann, Visier, 1996, p. 87 (quoted here)
  18. ↑ Jeffrey Butler, Robert I. Rotberg, John Adams: The Black Homelands of South Africa. The Political and Economic Development of Bophuthatswana and Kwa-Zulu . Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1978 (Preface to the 1978 Edition)
  19. ↑ Ivan Thomas Evans, 1997, p. XIII
  20. ^ SAIRR: A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1978 . Johannesburg 1979, p. 321, based on the Second Bantu Laws Amendment Act No, 102 of 1978
  21. ↑ a b Shelagh Gastrow: Who's Who in South African Politics (Number Two) . Johannesburg 1987, p. 337, ISBN 0-86975-336-3
  22. ^ SAIRR: Race Relations Survey 1989/90 . Johannesburg 1990, p. 767