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Homeland (South Africa)

A homeland, in the context of apartheid South Africa, is one of a number of small, quasi-sovereign nation states created by the white[?] government from the 1960s to the 1980s, under the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act[?].

The white government had exempted 13% of its territory from white settlement, and transformed this fraction into regions of black[?] home-rule. Then they tried to bestow independence on these regions (the "homelands"), claiming that the other 87% was white territory. The black South Africans were divided (often incorrectly) into ethnic groups which were assigned certain homelands. The motivation for the establishment of these states was to take away the few rights that black South Africans had in South Africa, by making them nationals of the homelands. In the majority of these transfers of citizenship, the individuals assigned to homelands did not live in or originate from the small areas which the homelands encompassed.

See also: History of South Africa



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