Unhappy Apart

Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's grandiose scheme to transplant most of South Africa's 11 million natives into nine backcountry, all-black Bantustans was supposed to put an end to the country's racial unrest. Instead, it has only increased the dangerous tension between black and white.

The first Bantustan on Verwoerd's list was the Transkei, a Denmark-size (16,500 sq. mi.) area of eroded farm land on the Indian Ocean. Nobody knows the troubles it has seen. Ever since Africans went on a rampage there more than two years ago, murdering the government's handpicked tribal chiefs and setting fire to entire villages, mobile police patrols armed with Sten guns, armored cars, and helicopter spotter planes have had to stay on duty in parts of the Transkei. Fortnight ago, a white family of four were capriciously hacked to death with pangas as they stumbled down the steps of their burning trailer, set afire while parked on a road only 30 miles from the Transkei's capital of Umtata.

Last week, as the Parliament in Cape Town prepared to debate a bill legally establishing the Transkei Bantustan--certain to pass the Nationalist Party-controlled legislature, probably by June--there was more trouble. The government plans to make Kaizer Matanzima. a mission-educated Tembu chief, the chief minister of the new Transkei government. The bodyguard of a headman serving Matanzima got into a tribal fight with 40 warriors armed with spears and axes. Matanzima quickly mustered 500 men to crush the revolt, and South African police stood by with a truckload of men and a helicopter. The rebels fled into the hills. Police blamed the trailer murders and the tribal outbreak on the increasing influence of Poqo (pronounced Paw-kaw), an African terrorist society whose members, like Kenya's notorious Mau Mau, take secret oaths and are heavily influenced by witch doctors. Poqo fanatics recently tried to assassinate Matanzima because he frankly favors apartheid as "the best solution" for South Africa's racial troubles.

Matanzima's powers to govern the Transkei's 1,400,000 blacks, 15,000 to 20,000 whites, and 14,000 coloreds will be strictly limited. All measures passed by the local legislature of tribal chiefs and elected representatives are subject to veto by the central government; Cape Town still will control justice and internal security. Money to improve the barren region will be lacking. Verwoerd has promised an annual budget subsidy of $30 million, but this falls far short of meeting the need for housing, schools, land reclamation, establishing new industry. In addition, Matanzima faces powerful political opposition from another Tembu chief, Sabata Dalindyebo, who does not like the Bantustan idea at all. Dalindyebo demands multiracial political rule "in which the color of a man's skin plays no part in his civil rights. By accepting self-government," he warns, "we fear we will be enclosing ourselves in a pigsty."

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